{"id":41,"date":"2014-02-20T12:00:40","date_gmt":"2014-02-20T12:00:40","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.risen.org.uk\/?p=41"},"modified":"2014-02-26T18:44:15","modified_gmt":"2014-02-26T18:44:15","slug":"blog-feb-20th-if-love-had-never-died","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/risen.org.uk\/?p=41","title":{"rendered":"Blog Feb 20th \u201cIf Love Had Never Died\u201d"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"IMG_1882[1]\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Just out of the loft- first song with Grundig TK24<\/p>\nhttp:\/\/www.risen.org.uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/02\/02-Because-of-Your-Grace.mp3<\/a><\/audio>\n

“Because of Your Grace” featuring Harun Kotch<\/p>\n

After I left King Alfred\u2019s College as a fully -fledged PE teacher I wasn\u2019t sure if I really needed to actually go into teaching to earn money as I had this other career bubbling under – that of song writer!
\nI was convinced that a top star or his\/her agent would pay a fortune for \u201cIf Love Had Never Died.\u201d or \u201cAffection\u201d or All My Loving\u201d or other songs I had written (made up) such as \u201cWe shouldn\u2019t Be Apart\u201d and \u201cToday\u2019s The Day.\u201d Trouble was I could not really go into the office of a recording producer like Cat Stevens had famously once done and just sing \u201cI Love My Dog.\u201d First because I could not sing and second because I did not look as cool as Mr Stevens.
\nWhat to do? Well fortunately I discovered that my Grundig TK24 open reel tape recorder had a microphone. I also remembered a kind music student at King Alfred\u2019s College (female) – so I put these two good pieces of fortune together and she (sorry if you are her and are reading this because I can\u2019t remember your name) came up with written musical scores for about five songs. I know you all believe me but just in case you don\u2019t I have braved the cobwebs of my loft to retrieve the original written score of \u201cIf Love Had Never Died\u201d a pic of which is attached with the Grundig TK24.
\nWhat next? Well I found a record company directory from The New Musical Express and sent off photo copies of the scores to numerous said companies ( I think photo copiers had been invented by then but if not they would have been duplicated by Gestetner en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Gestetner\u200e\u200e<\/a> or Roneo www.memidex.com\/roneo+duplicator\u200e<\/a>
\nSo there I was just waiting for the offers to roll in, just working hard on how I was going to spend my millions and what I was going to do with my now redundant teaching qualification. Then the letters came in- each with different words but the same message – not \u201cYes please we would love Shirley Bassey to sing your fabulous song If Love had Never Died\u201d\u201d or \u201cBarbara Streisand has just told Burt Bacharach to get lost as she has just found a far superior song writer\u201d – no the letters were basically \u201cthanks but no thanks\u201d. Shattered dreams – hopes in tatters – did the record industry not realise what they were missing- perhaps I had sent the songs to the wrong companies – but could 97 companies be wrong?!
\nNothing else for it then but to teach!
\nAnd that is what I did – first at Whitchurch Secondary (now Testbourne) and then I saw an advertisement for a brand new school in Stubbington – Crofton School. I applied and despite the Head – Mr Boulton at first hating me I got the job because I was in with the PE Inspectors after going on lot of PE courses at Calshot Activity Centre and buying them a few drinks. And what a brilliant move going to Crofton turned out to be!
\nMr Boulton did not like me at first because he regarded me as a bit of a \u201cJack the Lad\u201d bit of a \u201cDel Boy\u201d – looking to do deals even during my job interview- (tried to sell him a second hand minibus cheap! ) However I organised a sponsored stone pick to raise money for the school, not just the PE department – that was the brain wave. The school field could not be used because it was full of flints (the school had just opened on the Marks Road site when I joined as Head of PE in 1975- aged about 12!) So to \u201ckill two birds with one stone\u201d (sorry) the sponsored stone pick raised money but also got rid of the stones. What I did not realise was that in the corner of the school field was a disused road and so people weren\u2019t just bringing in flints they were bringing in lumps of concrete and brick. As sponsorship was by weight some students brought in a fortune – notably Nick Hutton – who apparently was accepting cheques and possibly credit cards (he was ahead of his time) when sponsors did not have enough cash to meet their apparent debts.
\nMr Boulton loved this additional money that came into the School\u2019s coffers. When I sensed that this was \u201cthe way to win his heart\u201d I organised more fund raising schemes such as a raffle, but not with the first prize being your standard food hamper, oh no first prize was a weekend in Rome and believe it or not the winners went on the weekend that the Pope made his public address from the Vatican window. (I think I may have pretended that I\u2019d had a word with him)
\nRegardless of the quality of my PE teaching (actually it was not that bad) Mr Boulton decided that he could not do without me (very astute man!) and so he gave me promotion – so much promotion that if I moved to another school I would have to take a reduction in pay- and so I never did move- I stayed and stayed – and loved it!
\nHowever I digress from the song writing. Next blog Feb 27th I\u2019ll tell how my love for music resulted in \u201cThe Tube\u201d and later \u201cThe Heat\u201d discos. In the meantime I have included a song \u201cBecause of Your Grace\u201d which is sung by Harun Kotch and produced by ex -Crofton student Ross Gill (more of him later) My old mate Darren Bovis- Coulter gave me the idea for this song and we made it up together. It\u2019s on the Mustard Seed\u00a0 album \u201cThe Season of Singing
\nwhich we produced to support a charity to shelter street children in Manila, Philippines run by two friends Craig and Elizabeth Johnson – House of the Heroes www.houseoftheheroes.org<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Just out of the loft- first song with Grundig TK24 “Because of Your Grace” featuring Harun Kotch After I left King Alfred\u2019s College as a fully -fledged PE teacher I wasn\u2019t sure if I really needed to actually go into teaching to earn money as I had this other career bubbling under – that of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-41","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-ken-shearsmiths-blog"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/risen.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/risen.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/risen.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/risen.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/risen.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=41"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/risen.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":52,"href":"https:\/\/risen.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41\/revisions\/52"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/risen.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=41"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/risen.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=41"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/risen.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=41"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}