Baby-lon and on Sept. 24, 2007
Eden is where I live (it’s actually run by Eden District Council : a good name for a band). Babylon it turns out is/was that land now smashed by war and counter-invasion. Iraq.
Babylon for me will always be Selsey Bill in Sussex, where my family have always holidayed. I was standing in the Spar looking at the paper headlines, when over the supermarket radio came a song that had me in a trance. I was all but accused of shoplifting, such was my odd behaviour, gripped with something so stunning. It was that song from nowhere, by David Gray.
Years on , at a a Festival, I find my toddling Ava ‘watching’ David Gray live at Cornbury and being moved by the same spirit. Smiling uncontrollably, gathering up hands to hold. Dancing. Rocking.
And another babylon moment – again at Selsey just this week, near to my father’s ashes on the field by the Point overlooking the sea – something like 25 a side game of football and they wanting me and my brother to join in.
In looking around for an adult to see who had organised the game, we were told that the kids had done it themselves. One estate had challenged another to a game and the Monday fixture had grown organically – from 4 a side to almost biblical numbers. We watched – as no doubt my father was watching having spent so many years of his life organising youth football – and here it was beside the sea, organising itself in the autumn breeze and sunshine beneath an endless sky my father keeping score.
Babylon.
