The great virtue of writing is, of course, its ability to transport you to a time and place you can never otherwise visit. Planet earth and human history is pretty big and I found myself transported to a rather obscure corner of it by Inga Clendinnen's memoir,
Tiger's Eye. May I do for you what she did for me? Invite you to imagine her hometown, Geelong, a coastal town in New South Wales, as it was in the 1940s:-
In this setting she introduces us to her father, who she used to follow around devotedly when she was a child of about eight. He was a bee-keeper who of necessity had to chase his bees wherever they should go when they decided to swarm. This would entail tramping rough-shod through other people's gardens as he kept his eye on the sky:-
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"He would climb over back fences, with the householders anxiously peering out of windows, especially if they hadn't noticed the swarm bouncing along in the sky. If he happened to see them peeping, my father would tip his hat to them and point heavenwards, which did not seem to reassure them much."
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What a likeable guy he sounds! In fact his carefree attitude hid something sombre; he was leading an unambitious life after surviving the trauma of Flanders' trenches in the First World War. Perhaps that's where he first heard the song that Inga mentions:-
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"... and all the way home he would sing snatches of his only song: Where the Mountains of Mourne Sweep Down to the Sea."
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My Verdict: A little slow for my liking perhaps, but the words are clever; the format of the letter home, the glitter of London and the homesickness for the "dark Mourne" are all done very well. Also, to know that this was the favourite song of a long-dead Australian beekeeper makes me listen to it with extra sympathy. Thinking about it, speeding the song up wouldn't do justice to its atmosphere of nostalgia and yearning. Good call, Don McLean!