in Just

- spring            when the world is...

messier than a Cummings poem, but I’m grateful for my new bicycle (after twenty years with my Malvern Star) and I’m fully Pfizered.

I was recently challenged to write a Covid-related song and was wary about doing the weighty topic justice. In the end I ran with good ol’ personal experience, and wrote about Cath and I visiting Granada in March last year. I’d been planning to write a travel story about this (and maybe still will), but for now here’s the condensed song version. For context, the photo above is the one referenced in the lyrics.

Guilt and Gratitude

We went into the painting above our bed and took a photograph
From the Albaicin to the Red Fortress crowned in melting white
We were tourists drinking wine, not yet wearing masks
The pastel hues from the sun and the moon at the edge of day and night
A fort over the river, fought over for hundreds of years

Who gets to live where? Who gets to live?

We went up to the peak at the top of the scene to scratch my eight year itch
To feel the cold and touch the snow, but now it just was slush
We watched sunburnt Englishmen, ignorance is bliss
A conversation you overheard, two cleaners on the bus
Being sent home too early, the virus was circling near

Who gets to live where? Who gets to live?
Guilt and gratitude, guilt and gratitude
Guilt and gratitude, guilt and gratitude

From zero cases in the province, it jumped to 28
By the end of the week and our lucky streak, everything was closed
We made some calls and changed our flights, the luxury of escape
A national state of emergency about to be imposed
But the fast train to Madrid took our privilege into the air

Who gets to live where? Who gets to live?
Guilt and gratitude, guilt and gratitude
Guilt and gratitude, guilt and gratitude
Guilt and gratitude, guilt
Who gets to live where? Who gets to live?

We came out of the painting into our room and started quarantine
You lamented you hadn’t been able to show me all your history
But I’ll never complain, that I didn’t get to see…. the Mediterranean Sea

Oh, you want to actually hear it?

Well there’s this live in the lounge take I did on one of the social media thingos. A proper recording will ensue.