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Since chucking in my teaching job in February, I’d been on the waiting list for an Arvon songwriting course at Totleigh Barton in Devon in south-west England, 19th-24th June. Four days before its start I was contacted because there was a free place, and I jumped at the chance. The two tutors – Kathryn Williams and Emma-Lee Moss – and the other thirteen participants were a lovely, talented, vibrant, colourful bunch of people, and we had a fabulous time. Several of the participants had previously been on the same course with Kath. It was Emma’s first time.

On the first evening we introduced ourselves by performing a song. I was so unprepared that I had to pare my nails and play the one song I know by heart, Leonard Cohen’s “Suzanne”. There was a great vibe.

The next morning one of the exercises was to write a song in plenum. I kicked it off with:

I’m sitting in Devon,
I think I’m in heaven…

I’d never written a song in collaboration before, nor written a song to a deadline before, but I wrote five songs in four days: three collaborations and two alone. We had to write them during the day and then perform them at the evening concert. Fifteen minutes before the final evening concert on the Friday (where we performed our greatest hits from the week) Emma asked me if I’d written a song since lunchtime, where we’d done a solo acapella. It was the only free time we’d been given the whole week, and I said, quite rightly, no. She then said that I had fifteen minutes to write a song to start the concert with. I might well have refused, but one of the other participants on the course, Ashley Horner, was present, and he insisted that I had to do what the tutors said, so I thought I might as well give it a go. Its theme had to be “Tomorrow”, and I had to use the chords C G F Am. It took me just ten minutes, and it went down a treat. I asked Emma to present me, and she just said: “May I present… Duncan!” I had to explain what I’d been asked to do myself. I later asked Kath and Emma if they’d asked anyone else to do a song in fifteen minutes, and they said no. “What makes me so special,” I asked. And Kath replied: “Because you’re lazy, and we think you can do better.” Now, this might sound harsh, but she said it with a twinkle in her eye, and she was instantly forgiven. I’ve been in survival mode for over three years now, and it’s great to be challenged by empathetic creatives. Ashley told me afterwards that he felt that the song was finished, but he’d have liked me to repeat the verse at the end. Which is what I’ve now done. I’ll be doing a new version soon with my wife’s cousin Claus on trombone. Click on the title for the sung version.

Spark of Love

Call me up in the morning.
don’t give any warning,
just call,
just call me up.

It’s never too late, baby, you’ll see.
I’m gonna make you crazy, just like me.
’Cause I’m skating in the dark,
waiting for a spark
of love,
your spark of love.

Call me up in the morning.
don’t give me any warning.
just call,
just call me up.

Here’s the first song I wrote last week, a collaboration with an accordion player, Richard Vahrman. We had quite a bit of preamble, sharing anecdotes etc., but then we got talking about Ken Loach’s film I, Daniel Blake, and when I told Richard I’d recently read an article about Tory councillors in Dartford enjoying a lavish buffet after the opening of a food bank, our indignation was fired. Click on the title for the sung version.

Land of Plenty

Kicked out of my home.
Sunak’s got five.
Living all alone,
barely alive.

I’m running on empty
in this great land of plenty.
Champagne and caviar for you.
Give me a reason
to spend the Christmas season
standing in the food bank queue.

Had to sell my car.
Rees-Mogg’s got four.
Can hardly play guitar,
cold, sick, and sore.

I’m running on empty
in this great land of plenty.
Champagne and caviar for you.
Give me a reason
to spend the Christmas season
standing in the food bank queue.

First child on its way.
Johnson’s got ten.

Again, this is a primitive version. Richard is working on a more sophisticated one.

At my request we performed it again at the final concert. Kath said to me afterwards that I was a charismatic performer: “You don’t always hit the notes cleanly, but you have such self-confidence and charisma that it doesn’t matter.”

This group photo was taken just before the final concert:

Back row: Ashley Horner, Martin J. Grundy, Martyn Macdonald-Adams, Phil Lovell, Duncan G. MacLaurin
Middle row: Chris Albery-Jones, Danielle Banks, Richard Vahrman, Jess Tuthill, John Murray
Front row: Drew Stephenson, Kathryn Williams, Emma-Lee Moss, Alex C., Davey Gabriel O., Dutch Van Spall

The Chinese characters on Emma’s sweater mean “Trust yourself” (reading from the right).

We had a superb guest midweek – Matt Deighton – and had a bit of party afterwards, so we were still partying when my birthday and birth time came along at 1 a.m. on the Thursday. I was spoiled stupid on my birthday. Hugs, songs, cakes, presents. Kath drew a tree on a card for me and inside wrote the words of the song we’d composed on the first morning. Dutch gave me a sweet birthday card. I told him I didn’t get to celebrate my birthday at boarding school, and when we were later asked to write a letter to someone, he wrote me this beautiful letter:


Jess had been ill on the Wednesday, but she’d recovered on Thursday, and I told her that that was the best birthday present I could have hoped for. She and Chris made a fantastic duo, and it turned out they only live ten miles from each other. We were set a special challenge on Thursday, where the tutors dressed up as different weird pop stars and asked each of the five groups to write a song for them. The level of writing had been high before, but this time we went totally through the roof. Freed of our egos, we just set about writing good songs.

Here are a few more photos taken by Chris or by Kath or Emma when he’s in the photo: