Songs From Today - Day 1

Day 1 of our Creative Artist Residency at Cecil Sharp House with EFDSS. We drank coffee. Got some papers. Read some papers. Wrote a few songs. Recorded one of them. The video of that song is below, and the lyrics are a bit further down the page:

The first song from our EFDSS residency writing songs from the daily papers. A theme running through many of today's papers was that of child carers, often referred to as invisible carers because of the lack of support they receive.

According to Carer's Trust Charity, there are over 40,000 carers aged 8 or under in the UK. We read one article  a five-year-old carer.

My father’s chair
is mottled and skewbald
like an old chestnut mare
and he’s often there
sitting with tea and a half vacant stare.

He has milk and two
and I bring him his slippers
and pills for his brew and the morning news
before heading up to the little one’s room
to wake up Charlie.

So much to do,
so I clean her and change her
and tidy the room
and the bed’s wet through
so I turn on the washing and make a fresh brew.

The last few times
the washing I’ve brought in has barely been dry
but the sun now shines
so I know that today will be better
and I can take out little Charlie.

The hours are gone
another day’s over so he’ll not be long,
and the little one? I cradle her safely
and wrap her up warm.

And he’ll fall through
the door in the threshold will take off his shoe
and he’ll crawl back to the chair
where he came from and he quietly knew
not to wake little Charlie.

But I know you will eventually go to your room
and I can play with my trains.