Rosina and Jenny

Interviewer: So, it’s Jenny?

Jenny: Yes Jenny.

Interviewer: And you are?

Rosina: Cor blimey this takes back memories. [laughter].

Jenny: What’s your name my love? Name?

Rosina: This? Rosina.

Interviewer: Rosina.

Rosina: R-O-S-I-N-A.

Interviewer: And I understand, is it you Jenny that’s got the connection to Pink Floyd?

Jenny: Yes, it is. When I was what, fifteen and a half/sixteen the boyfriend I had at the time was the son of the Professor of Anatomy at Cambridge University, a very, very clever boy, but he played alto sax, and he and his friends had a little jazz band, and they played alto sax, they played clarinet, trumpet and I think they had some drums. And they used to hire a small hall on a Saturday and people would come in and we’d dance and generally dance and dance and dance all night long. We used to go occasionally we went up to London and we’d go to Humphrey Lyttleton’s jazz club. Terribly proud of the clothes I wore to get up there to find out I was really somebody from the sticks, [Laughter] and wasn’t dressed appropriately and it was ‘oh look at her’ you know, ‘she’s come up from the sticks.’

Rosina: Where did you come from then?

Jenny: Cambridge.

Rosina: Oh Cambridge. Well I’ve lived in the sticks myself.

Jenny: So that was that but anyway that was fine and then he went off to do National Service and the relationship obviously fell apart. But, he was the eldest of a large family of five, and the third boy, whose name unfortunately I can’t remember was the boy who joined Pink Floyd as Syd whatever it was, and I can’t remember that either.

Interviewer: Syd Barratt?

Jenny: Syd Barratt, yes. He was my boyfriend’s brother. That was a family connection and Syd unfortunately blew his brains with all sorts of everything that was going at the time and obviously, as you know he finally committed suicide and died. But we knew his mother obviously. My mother knew his mother and she used to get so distraught over this boy because she’d go home and find he’d just wrecked the place. And there was nothing he could do about it nothing she could do about it and that was tragic.

Rosina: It is.

Jenny: When you think of all the music that they made. Basically, that’s about it really but obviously we’ve always been interested in music. I’m not musical I’m afraid. I love music but I can’t produce it. So, I’ll just have to listen. Basically, that’s about it really it was just the connection with Syd Barratt and my boyfriend who was Alan Barratt, obviously, who then went on to become Professor of Botany at Cambridge University. They were an incredibly clever family. Sometimes that doesn’t work though does it? But there does seem to be this connection between maths and music.

Interviewer: I was actually thinking there was maybe a double connection; you’ve sort of got sort of maths and music.

Rosina: They go together don’t they?

Interviewer: And also drugs and music, I mean don’t know to what extent…

Jenny: Do you think so though?

Interviewer: Well, perhaps with the Jazz generation with the purple hearts and all the rest of it and then of course you get the heroine and psychedelic drugs of the rock ‘n’ roll years. I mean I don’t know with Syd to what extent it was…

Jenny: I think Syd’s downfall was LSD. I’m pretty certain that’s what it was. It just wrecked his brain. There you are. Now, your turn Rosina.

Rosina: Well I have a grandson who plays the saxophone. He’ll be sixteen in September now. He plays in the jazz band at Westcliffe Grammar School on his Saxophone. But there is a lot of music in the family, but I hasten like Jenny, that I am not musical, even though I love it, because if I sing they say ‘up a bit mom, down a bit mom’. But my young daughter the one who’s the mother of the one who plays the saxophone, she was teaching the flute when she was… cos she went to Westcliff Grammar, teaching the flute when she was at Westcliffe Grammar School. She used to come here on a Friday to the flute club to teach young children flute. And she even was teaching people the flute at home. Her young daughter now is learning the flute who’s the brother of the one with the saxophone and my oldest son, he’s played in the Cliff’s Pavilion he plays the trombone. Which is a hard instrument to play because you’ve got to pull it in and out haven’t you? And he plays in the Royal Leamington Spa Brass Band now and he’s teaching himself the trumpet because he said he wants to, of course he wants a key instrument as well. But I mean we have a lot of music in the family. Unfortunately, I haven’t got a husband now - he died nearly three years ago - he used to sing in a male voice choir. And he could tell you if people were singing properly or not. He knew if they were out of key, I mean ask me and I wouldn’t know. But occasionally I could tell, but he would know. You see ‘I don’t know what they’re singing’ he used to say.

Interviewer: Would you say there’s more sort of organised music now, I mean hearing about this younger generation all playing in organised bands and having lessons and all the rest of it. Was it always like that?

Jenny: I don’t know. I don’t think it was as available.

Rosina: But I think they’re bringing it more into schools now cos….

Jenny: We didn’t have music lessons at school. We had [to] listen to music.

Rosina: They do have it now at school music lessons.

Jenny: You couldn’t learn an instrument.

Rosina: No, you couldn’t, no. I mean my daughter started at the age of ten because she wanted a flute and we went to Hodges and Johnsons. You remember Hodges and Johnsons do you, up in the Hamlet Court Road? And he said, we rented it first because he said parents make the mistake of getting the child an instrument and they haven’t got a teacher. Well we got a teacher. Funny thing is she was a girl at Westcliff High School, I mean older than my daughter, so we managed to get a teacher straight away, you know, to start teaching her. Cos I mean she’d taken all the grades, they used to play together. But my older son, he was very keen. I mean, he was young at the junior school when he’d got money from granddad for Christmas and he went and bought his self a recorder and the book to teach himself, afterwards he went up to a treble. And I went over the school because they told me, and I’m not a mother to make a fuss, you know, if my kids have done wrong they’ve done wrong and that was it. I’d want to sort it out. And I went over there because they said they hadn’t got a place for him. I said ‘You’re telling me you haven’t got a place in that recorder group, when my son is teaching his self to play.’ But they took him in it then and he couldn’t get over all these books at the school, all written on, because he never wrote on his at all you see. I mean, that was the only thing they used to do at school was the recorder, nothing else but now at schools they are doing…

Jenny: All sorts.

Rosina: I mean my daughter, my granddaughter obviously, she goes up to senior school in September, but I mean she’s been it learning it at the junior school now, the flute.

Interviewer: So, they’re able to learn to play sort of jazz and rock and pop or…?

Rosina: Well my grandson is yeah because I mean he’s in the jazz group at the school playing there.

Jenny: I have a granddaughter who’s learning clarinet, but I don’t know what she plays. I’ve never actually heard her because [play in public]

Rosina: My daughter used to play at her dad’s festivals. Cos they had a festival every year, male voice festival singing, and she used to be one of the best artists there I mean a very young age to play her flute. She’s even played for the school, she had a lovely music teacher at the school, and when they lost a teacher at the school she even got her to play at Crowstone, where the funeral was at Crowstone Church at the teacher’s funeral service. I mean she was good. I know you’re biased she’s my daughter but even the Salvation Army man, sat behind him at the Westcliff School his granddaughter was there and he said about her and of course being a mum, what do you do? I said ‘that’s my daughter.’ Oh he said, she’s excellent, he said ‘some can play, but there’s a difference between playing and playing’ he said [that?] she’s excellent. Unfortunately, she does play, last flute cost us an awful lot of money because it’s got a solid silver head cos as you went up in grades you had to [get] a better flute but unfortunately, she has a very disabled little son who goes into the hospice, and she says ‘mum, if he’s ill I can’t say to the pupils you can’t come.’ Otherwise she would have still carried on playing. She’ll play at home for her own pleasure now, which is good cos of course, it’s a lot of money.

Jenny: Yes

Rosina: Even to do with these, but she used to sing in a choir as well, you know. But I do like music but I don’t like the trash that comes on now.

Jenny: It’s not music.

Rosina: It’s not music is it?

Jenny: No, I don’t think so.

Rosina: I don’t think these youngsters have got anything to remember.

Jenny: But then my mother said exactly the same thing about the records that I listened to.

Rosina: Yes, but I liked Val Doonican I did, I think he’s lovely and I like…

Interviewer: You’re able to get as far as the Pink Floyd presumably [laughter]

Rosina: And I like Daniel O’Donnell, yeah.

Interviewer: So, when was your cut off point, was it?

Jenny: My marriage was my cut off point.

Interviewer: Oh ok.

Jenny: About twenty-two I got married and Don was in the Air Force and we went abroad and the whole thing, changed you… we didn’t have access to the same kind of things.

Rosina: My daughter got married at nineteen but she still carried on you see, playing and teaching

Jenny: Purely anecdotal story, sorry about this, [an] anecdotal story about children, the last year or the year before we went on holiday to Kirkby Lonsdale. And on the Sunday in the market square they had a brass band competition.

Rosina: Oh, I love listening to them.

Rosina: And that was absolutely amazing. It was little ones up to full-grown men and women. And that was lovely. But behind us was where the musicians were sitting and when they’d finished, one of the male bands had finished, a family of three, two girls and a little boy, dad put his trumpet down. And each child picked that trumpet up and blew a tune out of it. Even the toddler virtually, he couldn’t have been more than four. He could actually get three notes out of that trumpet. And obviously the music was there and it was carried through from… down the generations. The music was there so they just absorbed it.

Rosina: It’s like my young daughter. She always had a recorder right from the age of about three, stuck in her mouth.

Jenny: Well there you are.

Rosina: I feel sorry for children though, cos I work and they come in and they say ‘oh my mother can’t stand the recorder, she can’t stand this and everything else.’ [laughter] And it really annoys me; I put up with drums and of course when I came out of hospital with my young daughter, my son brought home this great big instrument from school I forget what it was, not a trumpet, one those big ones.

Jenny: Euphonium?

Rosina: I put her inside it. [Laughter] He didn’t play though, he didn’t play. But then he went on to the trombone. But we’ve always had music in the family.

Interviewer: I’d kind of assumed actually and it’s a shame we haven’t got some of the youngsters here with us to confirm this but I kind of assumed that live music and the playing of instruments was something that was sort of dying out with the internet but I’m beginning to question that now.

Jenny: No, I would be surprised if that was the case.

Interviewer: Seems to be going the other way form what you’re saying.

Rosina: In Leamington Spa my son’s band, they have children form this age, cos when we went up, my husband went up there they were doing a special thing for Remembrance Sunday three years ago in a church and they got these youngsters even to play, I mean they were just being taught. So, I do honestly think that… it’s like everything, it’s swings and roundabouts I think.

Jenny: I think too for the people that can do it I bet it’s the joy of actually producing something yourself.

Rosina: It is isn’t it?

Jenny: It doesn’t mean just music. If you have a talent for anything to do it for yourself and to produce something that you like is incredibly rewarding.

Rosina: It is isn’t it? I mean I do lots of knitting you know.

Jenny: But knitting, but you’ve made something.

Rosina: You have. I love it I made six shawls last year. But not for people outside the family all for in the family because people won’t pay you. They think you’re going to do it for next to nothing.

Jenny: No, they won’t will they.

Rosina: They won’t.

Jenny: But it doesn’t matter if you do it for yourself and you’re getting enjoyment out of it, then it’s what it’s worth

Rosina: You are. That is the thing isn’t it. It’s like my daughter with the flute, I mean she’s a gifted girl. She’s very gifted and the cakes she can make... I mean for my birthday last year she made a beautiful cake with a [sic] knitting needles you know, out of all this stuff on it and [a] bit of knitting coming down the side, and balls of wool you know. But I mean she’s made…

Jenny: Did you actually never eat it?

Rosina: Yeah. She’s made campervan cakes and everything. But some of these cupcakes I see, I think they’re not a patch on hers. She’s even made them for teachers. I think if you enjoy doing it, it’s good.

Jenny: It’s the joy of creation.

Rosina: It is, but then the parents don’t encourage them though. This is the other trouble. Parents haven’t got the time this is what people say ‘I haven’t got the time’ and sometimes I think they wish they hadn’t said that to me these young mothers.

Jenny: Of course, sometimes they don’t have the money. They can’t afford it.

Rosina: No because I say ‘but you have got the time’ I say, because you’ve got more time than I’ve got. I say I didn’t have automatic washing machines, I didn’t have dishwashers, I didn’t have all these modern cons that they’ve all got. So, I get cross with mothers, they think I wish they hadn’t said that to me.

Interviewer: I think there’s also this thing about technology and music when it was a real effort to go out and buy records as I used to do as a youngster and you know sort of saving up all your pocket money and all that kind of stuff.

Rosina: I never had any saved up

Interviewer: Now you can just sort of press an iPad or whatever it is they do and it’s there.

Rosina: It’s there isn’t it? It’s a shame really. It is a shame.

Interviewer: Maybe there isn’t the sort of the sense of value.

Jenny: Possibly not. It’s so available isn’t it?

Rosina: I feel that myself. I mean of course my grandchildren annoy me, always on these blinking phone things. [laughter] Tapping all the time. I tell them to put them away. I say ‘put it by’. You see you don’t see nanny on hers.

Interviewer: Well thank you both for that.