In a post to the
Chalkhills newsletter, the fine personage of Cheryl McGregor
asked "What songs draw you in emotionally and take you for a
ride?" This, slightly rewritten, was my response.
Good question. The first song that drew me in on Skylarking, after "Ballet For A Rainy Day" cracked its hitherto impenetrable shell, was "Mermaid Smiled". The rush of guitar strummery that makes up the opening few bars of that song sent shivers up my spine. I was brought up near the coast - our house was mere yards from some preciptious cliffs (now I think of it, my parents bought me a lot of kites, I may have to bring that point up with them one day) - and the instrumentation really does conjure up pictures of the waves racing in across the long fingers of rock that curled into the sea from Salter's Gate.
I can't hear the galloping beat (sea horses?) or the echoing bell without thinking of the half-submerged burst boiler of the sunken ship just off Sugar Sands - the waves would close over it on stormy days, scudding through the gaping rust-bite holes and rocking the whole sorry mess. A buoy, thethered nearby to warn off the boats of potential divers, used to ring out a clear bell of notice.
It helps that the song is all about childhood, the lost innocence, the sudden realisation that mermaids, dragons and small cats in waistcoats are things you are expected to stop believing in as you age. So the mermaid, silver and slippery, elusive as smoke, is, for me, that innocence - that fleeting view of yourself you get from time to time, when you gape in wonder at something new and remember, for a tiny while, that same feeling from the days when everything seemed to leak magic.
I played the song over and over; it pulled me back to the days when things were as simple as the ABC's I had just learned, when all I needed to get through the day was a stick and a dog to throw it for. For me it is just the most magical song.
When Andy said that it had been inspired by a book he had as a kid, a book with a thick back cover which actually held a case of water filled with fish and divers that could be glimpsed through cut outs in the preceeding pages I nearly swooned dead away. I had one of those books too, and like him it fascinated me for hours.
So, while "Mermaid Smiled" may not be my favourite XTC song ever, it is certainly a song that takes me for a real ride like no other. I become five and a half (half years were important then), and the past just floods in. Blonde hair and scabby knees; pockets stuffed with seaweed and shells; clarty plimpsolls splattering wet sand with each step; me and my dog chasing monsters through the gorse; scratching for fossils in the shale; getting cut off in the cove and wondering which of the two death defying options (climb the cliff or wade around the corner) is likely to be the least fatal; leading an army of invisible knights as we lay siege to the hollow shell of Dunstanburgh Castle.
A great song.
Simon Sleightholm
