This
is nearly true, and tells of an idyllic 1965 holiday in Bewdley where
Nanny Baynham did indeed rent a "ramshackle chalet" on a
caravan site in a cherry orchard by the river Severn for £14
a year. Grandad Fred used to walk there from Smethwick for summer
weekends, eighteen miles each way, and - the phrase seems obligatory
- think nothing of it.
I know that this and the song could be seen as a bit rose-tinted,
but hold on. It gets even ickier. The caravan site in the cherry orchard
by the river, on Northwood Farm in Rag Lane, is still there. Worse
yet, it was - is - next to the old GWR Kidderminster-Bridgnorth line,
which in those days had only an irregular, single-car diesel shuttle
service, the nearby Northwood Halt being a request stop. All gone
now, of course, long since ruthlessly refurbished as, er, the most
majestic steam railway in England. On which Northwood Halt remains
a request stop. And, thirtysomething years later, the old willow (gulp)
still stands.
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Untrue
bits include:
The
girl in the song - blond, not redheaded - was called Vanessa and
not Rebecca: Michael Flanders had already used the name and the
couldn't-care-less-about rhyme. My Vanessa came from Ashby-de-la-Zouch
and wasn't at all the precocious creature of the song. That was
another girl entirely. And our lot had neither a van nor a cousin
Janine, with or without a wart.
The accompaniment is unusual: except for the bridge, the guitar
simply plays the melody in a single line, same register as the voice.
This turns out to be oddly tricky: try it on any song you like.
In fact, I fluffed once on the original, and the second occurrence
of the line "when Rebecca was eleven and I was ten" is
literally identical with the first: Graham's editing genius, once
more.
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