Dying with dignity and loved by many

I HAVE known musician Maart Allcock, in a roundabout way, for many years (we were students together in Huddersfield) and followed his career since then via Jethro Tull, Fairport Convention and other more recent ventures with Kieran Halpin, Beth Nielsen Chapman and Yusuf Islam (Cat Stevens).

He has always been a larger than life character, full of charm and warmth and beer!

The knot became tighter when 10 years ago I discovered that his wife Jan was childhood friends with my long-time friend Judith. Anyway, I wondered why he had disappeared from my Facebook friends, then suddenly on Sunday read this on his website.

In my humble opinion, it is both heart-breaking and beautiful.

No more introduction from me, just stay strong Maart, and know you are loved by so many people.

These are his words:

“Hello everyone.

People were saying after my appearances at Cropredy last year that I was unwell. I was not. I’d lost weight because I had discovered the joy of exercise and was working out regularly. I was actually very fit and any illness was far beyond the horizon.

This year was meant to be my travel gap year. I was going to revisit friends and favourite places around the world before slowing down to enjoy the evening of my years. I made it as far as Madeira in January for some heat, a place I’d never considered before, but I loved it. Such a beautiful fragrant isle, truly a paradise.

A week after my return, I developed jaundice, and had to go to hospital. Scans and tests revealed that there were more sinister things happening inside me. Now the race is run and the final chapter has begun, and my liver cancer is terminal. I am in absolutely no pain or discomfort at this time. For the time being, to look at, you wouldn’t think there was much wrong with me. I am fully mobile, with energy, eating and sleeping well, and totally at peace with what the future holds. How long that future lasts is anyone’s guess, but I probably won’t make it to next summer.

I shall play my final live performance at the Fairport Cropredy Convention this August, but I shall continue to make music while I draw breath.

My main priority now is to finish the autobiography I began in January, and which now has an additional final chapter. I had no idea the deadline was so strict then. I will go with dignity, good humour and good grace. I just have to wait now for transport back to my own planet. I only came for the curry anyway.

So, do not be sad. I achieved everything I ever wanted to do from daydreaming in a council house in north Manchester to travelling the world with my heroes, playing to thousands and thousands of people, and getting paid for it.

I have lived a lot, laughed a lot and loved a lot, and I shall leave this planet with eternal love and gratitude for my wife Jan, my three children Madeleine, Jered and Jane, and their mum Gill, and all of you who took any interest in this mad northerner. Thank you all so much. Be happy and shower the people you love with love.

Maart

Still here for now…  Harlech, Cymru, June 2018”

Pardon Monsieur… Am I hearing You Right #5

MY Pardon Monsieur moment with American Emmy award-winning actress Kirstie Alley was random in the extreme.

It was 1991, and Kirstie was at the height of her TV fame playing Rebecca in the US sitcom Cheers. It was also a weird time for music and movie celebs buying pieces of Scottish real estate.

Paul and Linda McCartney had long been established at their farm on the Kintyre peninsula, while former Jethro Tull frontman Ian Anderson had bought a Scottish fish farm and comedy star Billy Connolly was eying up a Highland castle.

So when the small island of Gigha (pronounced Geeya) was put up for sale in the summer of 1991 it did not come as much surprise to hear that both Mick Jagger and Kirstie Alley had expressed interest.

At the time I was in my first editor’s chair at the small weekly newspaper The Argyllshire Advertiser while also covering the adjoining Campbeltown Courier.

I decided to try and harden up the rumours of the celeb interest in our wee west coast island of Gigha – population 140 – and telephone both Mick Jagger and Kirstie Alley.

I was given short-shrift by Jaggers’ agent, but surprisingly had much more luck from Miss Alley’s who promised me an interview.

I was gobsmacked some few hours later to receive a personal call from the sitcom star. And as it was about 2pm our time, she must have been ringing very early morning from the States.

In either case, her Kansas drawl totally flummoxed an English editor still coming to terms with the Argyll lilt of the Scottish West Highlands.

“Hi, am I talking to Nic?”… I could just make out, as I answered my phone.

I could barely translate the next line, but am sure she said: “I gather you want to talk about Giga.”

Or she may have said she was ‘buying a cider’!

I was already confused.

She then went on to tell me how she loved the Scots, how ‘wonderful’ she thought Scotland was and how it was her spiritual home.

Or she could have said: “I love a Scotch, I think Scottish bands are wonderful and I am thinking of becoming a spiritualist.”

To be frank she could have told me anything. And to be fair to Kirstie I am sure it was just a communication breakdown between two diverse accents that meant that after a 10 minute interview I had nothing written down in my notebook.

Nothing at all!

And I still do not know, some 22 years later, whether she wanted to buy Gigha.