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Friday 14 June 2019

Sixteen


The little girl in this photograph, our daughter Eliza, turns sixteen today (coincidentally also the day she takes her last GCSE exam). The toddler in The Clash t-shirt seems a long time ago now. In recent time honoured fashion she has booked a day ticket for the Leeds festival, a rite of passage for today's teenagers. Happy birthday Eliza- enjoy the physics exam and your last day at school.

For many years Eliza and her friend have gone to dance classes, joined the team and performed locally and at shows. I've often gone to pick them up in the car from the classes. On one occasion when they were both much younger I had Misty Waters by The Kinks playing on the car CD player. They latched onto it and started singing along. It then became a thing, playing Misty Waters and all of us belting it out on the drive back from dance. We were still doing it a few weeks ago.

Recorded by The Kinks in 1968 Misty Waters was an outtake- an outtake!- that failed to make it onto either Four Well Respected Gentlemen or The Village Green Preservation Society and only turned up much later on The Great Lost Kinks Album.

Misty Waters 

Amps cranked up and at double the speed, Billy Childish and The Buff Medways covered the song for their 2000 album Steady The Buffs, about the time I started to get into Wild Billy Childish and his enormous back catalogue.

Misty Water

10 comments:

Walter said...

Happy birthday Eliza

Martin said...

Happy birthday to your daughter.

Time is a wheel, isn't it? Even when you're not looking, it keeps on turning and can run away from you before you know it.

Love this Kinks track, and also how curious things like "group singing obscure-ish Kinks track in the car on the way to dance class" become embedded in family ritual. Excellent.

Rol said...

Happy birthday, Eliza. Hope the GCSEs went well.

Not sure I've heard Misty Water before, but you're right - it ain't no outtake!

londonlee said...

Happy birthday Eliza!

Mine is 13 soon. Don’t know where the time went

C said...

Happy birthday to Eliza!
Great Kinks track (and accompanying story) and great cover too.

drew said...

Happy Birthday Eliza. I hope you've had a great day

Brian said...

Love this Kinks image. Happy birthday, Eliza.

Dirk said...

Happy birthday Eliza!

Adam Turner said...

Thanks everyone, she had a really good day.

Jez said...

Belated Birthday wishes to Eliza, hope those pesky exams didn't spoil it too much for her.