Anton's Ideas

Living in the part of England that I do, what used to be northern Cheshire on the estuary of the river Dee by Hoylake golf links on the Wirral peninsula, I am only a twenty five minute drive from the old Roman fortress city of Chester, first settled by the Romans in 79AD. Now Chester is best known for its wonderful Roman walls which are largely complete and certainly the best Roman ‘ruin’ in England. It was manned to stop the Welsh invading England and even after the ancient world disappeared it remained one of the most strategically important towns in Britain. Not surprising then that following the Christian revival in the seventh century that the beautiful Benedictine monastery of St. Werburg’s was built there around the late 670s. Like so many very early Benedictine houses, the Abbey had naturally perfect acoustics, but for an instrument that was not to come into its own in Churches for more than 900 years. The organ. After the reformation and the dissolution of the monasteries in England St.Werburg’s became an Anglican cathedral and the Bishop of Chester was one of the most influential prelates in the north west of England.

But just as the Benedictine tradition had always insisted on producing the most beautiful church music in the western world for 700 years so the tradition continued at Chester. The acoustics were almost perfect for both choral and organ music so the city soon became renowned for its music. So much so that every Thursday of the year at lunchtime leading organists from all over Britain. and now many other parts of the world , give 45 minute recitals for the the city’s music lovers. In all the time I have lived near Chester my wife and I have made a point of getting to recitals as often as we can because they are genuinely of the highest international standard. 

But even though we have heard leading virtuosi from many places playing all the main works in the classical organ repertoire, yesterday we got a real shock. The recital was given by the extraordinary Italian organist, Marco Lo Muscio, who specialises in arranging and transcribing music of all genres, composed for a wide variety of instruments, and performing them on the organ. You can imagine our amazement yesterday when we heard  an instrument, on which we normally listened to Bach, Widor, Buxtehude ,Vierne and the like, being used to produce an incredible mixture of variations of music by Rick Wakeman, Erik Satie and Paganini, or variations on his most famous caprice, being literally hammered out with all the force and gusto of a jazz pianist or keyboard maestro of the progressive rock era. But the wonderful thing was that Marco made it sound as though that was where the music truly belonged. On an organ, in a Cathedral! The shock to ears not accustomed to this combination was both a revelation and a short period of exquisite enjoyment  the like of which I had never heard  before. But here is the irony. When the first Roman general subdued the locals and settled there one thousand nine hundred thirty four years ago the locals disliked both him and everything he stood for.  Yesterday The city of Chester could celebrate three things for which it will always be grateful to Rome. By settling where they did all that time ago the Romans left behind one of the best natural archaeological sites in England and Chester University, in consequence, can boast one of the world’s finest faculties of archaeology. Then, thanks to their love of equestrian sports, the Romans left Chester a centre of horse racing, a sport for which it is still famous in England and allows it to stage several of the leading flat season races. And yesterday a third Roman arrived to show, on the Cathedral’s magnificent organ, just how much enjoyment he and his countrymen can still bring to one of England’s oldest and most beautiful cities.              

Ode to my Wife

To thee, my wife, my love my life
I own all pleasure I have known
My guardian through all harm and strife
Whose heart beats always with my own.
I offer you everything that is mine
And pray each day in gratitude
To God who made you so divine, 
Adopting no hypocritical attitude
When praising your eyes, your hair your face
Without which I’ll die each morn and night
When thou art taken to a higher place
To dwell forever in God’s loving sight.

But, my darling, I well can see
T’is better mourning fall to me
Than thou remain, thy tears to shed,
Each night without me in thy bed.

It seems almost incredible that it is twelve months since I began putting up posts here and on the writing consultancy site. Last October I was suddenly faced with three separate serious medical diagnoses which both frightened me and took away, at first, my will to share my thoughts and writing with others. One may say that being told one has has an untreatable illness for which there is no known cure, but is not by any means terminal, just painful and incredibly tiring, is not all that serious. But when I tell you that added to this the cancer from which I was already suffering suddenly got worse and a secondary tumour was suspected and investigated for several months, and then a follow up to four cerebral strokes, which involved a weird sequence of memory loss and confusion, and you can start to imagine what I was going through. It is a wonderful thing to have a caring wife and family, I would not have managed as well as I did without them and the large number of people on five continents who daily kept me in their prayers. Anyway, if you are wondering where I have been that about sums it up. But during a year such as this what does one do? Well this is what I did.

After four months of regular hospital appointments taking up most of my time I had to resume writing somehow. Having never earned a penny in my life doing anything else I started to amuse myself by writing what I wanted to write and not what breaking news or literary criticism dictated. First I found a wonderful site, FanStory, which I would recommend to anyone who is bored and has no other way of diverting themselves except by writing and chatting to other putative Nobel Literature Prize winners. This super site lets you post anything you like and gives you the chance constructively to review works posted by any other site members. There is also the option to chat to writers from all over the world who are often far more interesting in themselves than their writing. Add to this the daily prose and poetry competitions available to all and the site really can draw you back from the abyss of never believing in yourself again. While enjoying myself with this diversion I also wrote a series of poems , flash fiction and short stories that I found a lot of fun. On the advice of my family and friends I gathered a selection of these and they are being published under the title ‘ Day Dreams’ by Anton Wills-Eve at the end of next month. I like to think that either the paperback book or e-book edition would make an ideal stocking filler for Christmas for that friend or relative for whom you just can’t think of a small gift. The collection covers every genre of prose and verse there is from humour to tragedy, mystery to romance and several heartfelt works inspired by my own life.

By the middle of the summer my health was picking up, or at least getting no worse, the cancer for instance had NOT spread. This type of encouragement prompted me to write a novel and I must admit this was pure enjoyment. A romance between two neurotically crippled youngsters with quite different approaches to the raw deal life has dealt them, and the way they rescue their affection for each other, seemed a cheerful way to venture into fiction, although of course a lot of it is true! So I finally finished my first novel ‘James and Jacqueline’ which I hope will be available in all formats and on line by January.

One of the most extraordinary aspects of my health problems, certainly the most incomprehensible to me, has been the memory confusion. I have watched a whole series of excellent television dramas and comedies in the past year and enjoyed them as though I was watching them for the first time. The odd thing is that I had seen all of them before but had absolutely no recollection when viewing them again. This really was a blessing with detective mysteries because although they had been seen before they were quite new and the plots had to be followed and worked out all over again. It is indeed very strange how illnesses have their own compensation in so many cases in life. For instance, had I not broken my left wrist before a school rugby match when I was twelve I would never have taken up tennis for the next four months. I was quite good and have always thanked God for that injury. What a strange prayer I must have said!

But to return to the last year. Ever since I was forced to give up being a war correspondent in 1982 and switched to translating, lecturing and reviewing until retiring from full time work, I have always kept up with breaking news everywhere in the world. I am a third generation news journalist and even while at University in Paris I earned my (considerable) pocket money as a sports and war reporter for an American News Agency. I cannot imagine life without writing so I shall try to continue to post something, however brief or boring, every day for as long as I can. So until tomorrow’s offering, whatever it may turn out to be, I bid you all goodbye and for those of you who do not live in England think how lucky you are with the storms we have going on at the moment.

All of you take care of yourselves