Last Updated on 29 April 2024 by gerry
This week I point my spotlight on a rather private song I wrote in 1987. It was born out of the shock of hearing that my flatmate George had suffered quite a serious fall, smashing his elbow in the process.
In my second and third years as a student in Edinburgh, I shared a flat with the same 3 friends. Two years is like an eternity when you’re 19 and 20, so we became a really close-knit bunch. We shared our flats in Tollcross and Marchmont with a couple of canine flatmates: Acorn and Ember. So regular dog-walking trips to the Meadows, the Hermitage of Braid and Blackford Hill.
George took the dogs for a walk up Blackford Hill on one occasion and the walk went horribly wrong. Somehow he slipped off the edge of a precipice and fell some distance down a sheer drop. He recalls hearing the amusing reaction of the person who found him and called the ambulance: “Oh look a dog! Another dog! And a body!”
Thankfully George’s only serious injury was a smashed up elbow that was reconstructed in Edinburgh’s Royal Infirmary. My song, Don’t Fall Again, effectively was my Get Well present for George. Ultimately for me it was also an expression of gratitude to the serendipitous series of events that led to those fun times and stable times with my surrogate family George, Issy, Lou, Acorn and Ember.