Just The Tonic, Series 2, Episode 6: Music is for Celebrations, with Kit de Waal

Introduction (0:00)

[Music]

0:00 Katie: Hello, and welcome to the last episode in this series of Just The Tonic, the podcast that highlights the benefits we get from being involved in the arts. We’ve heard from inspirational dancers, musicians, singers and poets, who’ve talked about the positive effects the arts have had on their lives – from increasing confidence and self-esteem, to developing social skills and building new friendships.

0:31 I’ve chatted to dance supremo Carlos Acosta from Birmingham Royal Ballet, fabulous singers Lesley Garrett and Nicky Spence, star of stage and screen Richard Stilgoe, and wonderful poet Ian McMillan. We’ve heard from Deaf dancers Billy Read and Sarah from Critical Mass, who performed at Birmingham International Dance Festival; saxophonist Alicia Hillman, who’s been helped by the fantastic charity Help Musicians; and we’ve heard how Music in Hospitals and Care provides a lifeline for people who otherwise wouldn’t get the chance to access live music. If you missed previous episodes of this series – or indeed series one, featuring arts champions like Nicola Benedetti, Charles Hazlewood and Chi-chi Nwanoku – you’ll find us wherever you get your podcasts. We are in all the usual places.

1:28 Regular listeners will know that throughout this series we’ve been following the fantastic community orchestra from the West Midlands and beyond, The People’s Orchestra, and in this episode we’ll be hearing from singers who’ve recently joined their fabulous show choirs.

1:40 “I absolutely love singing. When you’re feeling a little bit down, you get to choir – and you’re almost dancing when you come out, because it’s so uplifting.”

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1:53 Katie: Singer Laurie Stanton, from Port Talbot in Wales, will be telling us how joining the world-renowned Morriston Orpheus Choir has changed his life.

2:00 Laurie Stanton: We’ve travelled Europe, seen many places, wonderful places. I think that’s what’s keeping me young, to be honest – the activity of the choir. It really is.

2:10 Katie: And I’ll be chatting to author Kit de Waal, whose wonderful memoir, Without Warning and Only Sometimes, details her extraordinary life growing up in Birmingham in the 1960s.

2:20 Kit de Waal: A lot of people talk about it and think about it and don’t actually do it. So start, and have a go. Don’t be intimidated. Don’t be ashamed of your writing. Just have a go.

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New members of The People's Show Choirs (2:40)

2:40 Katie: I look forward to bringing you more from Kit later. But first, let’s hear from singers from The People’s Orchestra show choirs. They got together to perform at the Birmingham 2022 Festival during the Commonwealth Games, and we caught up with some of their newest choir members to find out what singing together means to them. Here’s Harriet, from the new show choir in Shrewsbury.

3:00 Harriet: I enjoy singing. I heard there was a newly formed choir in Shrewsbury, and it was doing musical songs, and it was just a way of getting out, having fun, singing with lots of like-minded people. We’ve got about 25 in our choir, and it sounded good – but when we got 80 or 100 people together yesterday, it was absolutely amazing.

3:25 Carol Walker: I’m Carol Walker, I’m from Halesowen. Yesterday was my first concert – that I’m doing this weekend – and I went home really on a high. It’s just wonderful when you’re on your own, and you meet other people – it’s just uplifting, and everybody’s so friendly.

3:52 Marion: I’m Marion, I’m from Sutton Coldfield. Well, every week our choir built up and built up, so it was fantastic that it grew so quickly, because it’s quite a new choir, so we’ve all grown together, and grown as friends together. Not one person really knew each other to start with. And when it comes to the huge show choir, it’s just brilliant, because choirs come together from all over the country, and suddenly you’re a part of this great big enterprise, and we all become friends together. We’re beginning to recognise people from Cheltenham, or from Brackley, or from Shrewsbury, and it’s like a meeting of great singing friends.

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4:30 Philip Field: My name is Philip Field, and I’m from the Halesowen choir. I was in two minds when I very first started singing – but it’s the best thing I’ve ever done, without a shadow of a doubt. The health benefits, the social benefits – it’s just incredible. It makes you feel so good inside. So I would say definitely, definitely give it a go. What’s the worst that can happen?

4:55 Pat Turner: My name’s Pat Turner, I’m from Northfield in Birmingham. Music is very uplifting, and the opportunity to meet others with like-minded interests is fabulous. It really opens doors for you. And if ever you’re at a loss for what to do, and you’re feeling a little bit down, you get to choir – and you’re almost dancing when you come out, because it’s so uplifting. The concert today is going to be fabulous, and the music is brilliant. It really is uplifting, and to hear all those voices together – it’s just a magical experience.

5:35 Ula Weber: Hi, my name is Ula, and I’m the choral programme manager for The People’s Show Choirs.

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5:42 So everybody sings in their own separate choir, whether it’s in Cheltenham, or in Halesowen, or wherever they might be. They all learn the same music, as well as finding their own individual voice with their choirs. But on top of that, we all sing together three times a year. We come together, everybody makes friends, and it doesn’t matter where everybody’s come from – it unites everybody.

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6:10 So we’re coming together to celebrate the Commonwealth Games in Birmingham. All of the choirs are performing together alongside The People’s Orchestra, and we’re singing songs which are uplifting and rousing and inspiring – bringing people together to enjoy the unity of singing.

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6:32 If you’re on the fence, and you’re not entirely sure about joining a choir, I would say: come along for three rehearsals. One rehearsal is never enough – come along to three. If you still don’t like it, you know what, that’s fine, you tried. But I bet you’ll stay.

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Laurie Stanton and the Morriston Orpheus Choir (6:50)

6:50 Katie: Many thanks to Ula and all the new singers from The People’s Orchestra show choirs. And now we’re going to move across the country, from the West Midlands to Wales.

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7:10 There is nothing quite like the close harmonies of a Welsh male voice choir, and the Morriston Orpheus Choir is one of the very best. Formed in Morriston, in the Swansea Valley, in 1935, and widely known as the “Ambassadors of Song”, the choir has performed all over the world, from Taiwan to Abu Dhabi. They’ve sung in front of the Queen, and even at CERN in Switzerland, the home of the Large Hadron Collider. Joining the choir was a life-changer for 86-year-old Laurie Stanton, and here he is to tell us more.

7:40 Laurie Stanton: I worked in the steel industry for 40 years. I retired in 1991. Unfortunately, my wife of 57 years passed away in 2013, and as you can imagine, I wasn’t in a very good place.

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8:05 But then, after a couple of weeks, I bumped into an old work mate of mine, and he said, “Laurie, I know you’ve always liked music. I’m in a choir – why don’t you join the choir and see how you feel?” And so I did – that was the Port Talbot Cymric Male Voice Choir. And I have to say, it gave me a new life. It really did. And then after four years, I was lucky enough to be accepted by the Morriston Orpheus Choir, which is a world-renowned choir that has been all over the world, singing a variety of music – classics, gospel, West End musicals, songs from the shows and so forth. Quite honestly, it really made my life.

9:01 We go to rehearsals twice a week.

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9:10 We’ve travelled Europe, seen many places, wonderful places in Europe, and we’ve visited great halls, theatres, cathedrals. We’ve seen all these places, and certainly enjoyed them.

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9:45 And then after each concert, of course, you go to a cafeteria or a public house, and you enjoy the music. We usually start singing, then people around us will gather, and we have a wonderful time. So yes, it’s given me a busy life, but I’m certainly enjoying it.

10:05 Katie: Although he joined the choir later in life, Laurie has been singing since he was very young.

10:15 Laurie: I was a boy soprano, and I used to be taken around the chapels and churches when I was young. A little bit frustrating, really, because I wanted to be out with my mates [unclear]. I’ve loved music ever since, and I’ve always enjoyed singing, but I never did anything as a soloist as such, other than if we went out for an evening in a pub or whatever. Never had any musical training.

[Music]

11:00 I remember one particular instance where I was at a holiday camp, and I thought we were just entertaining each other in this concert, and when I went to the back room, a lady said to me, “where did you have your voice trained?” Well, I’ve never had it trained – so there must be something there that pleases people.

[Music]

11:30 We weren’t a rich family – we were just getting along. Couldn’t afford to have it trained [unclear]. My mum was always on to me about getting my voice trained, and I just didn’t want to live out of a suitcase anyway. I thought, that’s not for a married man. My marriage was more important to me than anything – that was it.

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12:10 Katie: Why is there this strong tradition of choral singing in Wales?

12:14 Laurie: Possibly because of the way we speak – the pitch of our voices. It seems to blend when we sing. It’s a unique sound.

[Music]

12:30 It’s a wonderful tradition – so pleasant to listen to, the voices blending, making that wonderful song.

[Music: Morriston Orpheus Choir]

13:05 There are many people who find themselves in the same position that I was in, where they’ve lost their partners. They’re lonely, they’re sitting at home, they’re not happy with themselves, and it starts to become a bit of a psychological problem. If anyone likes music, I would say go and join a choir – a male voice choir or a mixed choir – and you’ll find friends there who will help you along the way.

[Music]

13:51 Just don’t sit in the house and be miserable by yourself. I remember one occasion when I was feeling really down, I said to myself: “well, no one can think for me. I’m making myself miserable – so what am I doing that for? Get out of the seat and go and do something” – even if it’s only going for a walk down the road and talking to people, or going in the garden and doing something.

[Music]

14:25 If you’re in that position, go and join a choir. You will never, ever regret it.

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14:50 I think that’s what’s keeping me young, to be honest – the activity of the choir. It really is.

[Music: Morriston Orpheus Choir]

15:03 Katie: That is what I call a rousing finish! Many thanks to Laurie, and long may he continue to enjoy his singing and his social life with the wonderful Morriston Orpheus Choir. If you’d like to find out more about the choir, just head over to their website at morristonorpheus.com.

Kit de Waal (15:15)

15:15 Katie: Now, my next guest, the writer Kit de Waal, was born in Birmingham and grew up in the suburb of Moseley. Her mother was from Ireland, her father from St Kitts in the Caribbean. Kit says she grew up in a household of opposites and extremes, and her latest book, Without Warning and Only Sometimes, which was recently Radio 4’s Book of the Week, is a very moving and honest memoir of her childhood. Kit’s a champion of inclusivity in the arts, and presented Where Are All the Working-Class Writers? for Radio 4. She’s an ambassador for Listening Books, the audiobook lending charity. I caught up with Kit over Zoom and asked her if there were lots of books at home when she was growing up.

15:55 Kit de Waal: There was the Bible in my house. There was whatever book my sister Kim got from the library. But there were no books. There were the Jehovah’s Witness books, there was the Bible – that’s it. My father read the News of the World – the great work of fiction! – and that was it. That was the reading material. And I certainly didn’t miss books. Didn’t want to read; hated reading. It just reminded me of school, which I didn’t like. It reminded me of going to church – or “the meetings”, as we called them – which I didn’t like. So: not interested in books, not in the slightest.

16:30 When I was at school, we used to read the way we did in the 60s: round the class, three pages each. Oh my God, that was torture to me.

16:40 Katie: Honestly – how to kill the love of a great book, eh? It’s just not the way to do it.

16:45 Kit: No, it’s ruinous. Very, very occasionally I would run ahead, because I was just interested in what was going to happen. But then it was even worse, because you knew what was going to happen, and you had to wait for Malcolm Bumford or Tony Quinn (names unconfirmed) to get there in their terrible drone-y voices, and I’d be like, “oh my God, are we ever going to get to Miss Havisham dying? Are we ever going to get there?” So yes, it was ghastly. Hated it.

17:25 Katie: So what made things change? What happened?

17:29 Kit: I left home at 16, and – sex, drugs and rock and roll. It was absolutely great, till it wasn’t. And then when it wasn’t, and I had to stop that lifestyle, I found it very, very difficult to sleep. I was extremely anxious. I’d had some bad trips, I’d had some bad times, and I couldn’t sleep for months. And eventually someone I worked with suggested books to me, and I just thought, “you know, nothing to lose here”. Even though I don’t like reading, I’ll do it, because it’s excruciating being awake at four in the morning. So I just went and bought these 10 classic novels, took them home, read them, and I was like, “I like this”. And it did stop me being so anxious. I would say I swapped one drug for another – I definitely found reading addictive, and raced through hundreds of the classics.

18:34 I’ve read so much for the rest of my life – perhaps not with the intensity that I read at first. And obviously I’ve never done an English degree. I still couldn’t tell you what postmodernism is, or who knew what they were trying to say in 1740, or all that stuff. I don’t know, and I don’t care either! I read indiscriminately. I literally went for the picture on the front: “do I like that picture? Yeah, I like that picture – I’ll buy that”. And some books I hated – North and South, Jesus Christ, that was terrible! And a few others I can think of – The Mill on the Floss, oh, so bad! But most of them, even if I didn’t love them, I was engrossed in them. And so I got through that hard time.

19:25 Katie: How did that then shift into thinking, “well, maybe I could do this too”?

19:30 Kit: I started reading like that when I was 21 or 22, and I read continuously until I was about 42, when I adopted a little boy who was very ill, and for the first time in my life I was not working. I wasn’t doing anything – I wasn’t even doing a lot of reading. And I just thought, “all right – a book. How hard can it be?” The answer is: very hard! I thought, I’ve read so many books, I’ll just write one, it’ll get published, it’ll be in Waterstones about six weeks after I send it in. I never knew you had to have an agent; I didn’t even know what an editor was. I’d only ever heard of Penguin, so to me Penguin was publishing – I didn’t know about the other publishers.

20:20 So I wrote some short stories, and some of them got published. I wrote a novel – it wasn’t very good; I couldn’t get it published. I wrote another novel – couldn’t get it published. And I was shocked to find the gap between the vision, or the scene that was in my head, and how difficult it was to get that on the page – the actual nuts and bolts of sentence construction.

20:45 Katie: Was there anybody helping you at this point? You said it wasn’t very good and it didn’t happen, but you went back. Was anybody advising you? Did you have friends or fellow writers who said, “try doing it this way, or take a different approach”?

21:00 Kit: I went to a couple of writers’ groups that were absolutely appalling, in that they were monopolised by people… Most people who’ve ever been in a writing group will know this: there’s somebody who runs it – whether they run it or not, in air quotes – they are in charge, and will set the flavour of the writing group. So I didn’t have a good time with that. But I did do an MA in creative writing when I was 52. That wasn’t very good either! But by then I’d met a cohort of writers that had also done the MA, and we hadn’t finished talking about writing, we hadn’t finished learning, so we formed our own little group, which is still going – it’s called Oxford Narrative Group. And I joined, or set up, another writers’ group, called Leather Lane Writers, that’s also still going. So the fellowship, and the friendship, and the learning from other writers is absolutely invaluable.

21:50 Katie: It’s really interesting, picking up what you were saying about your lack of knowledge of the way publishing worked, and the fact that, like most of us, let’s be honest, you were seduced by either a recommendation or the way the book looks on the shelf. Publishers have unbelievable power to influence what we read, don’t they?

22:15 Kit: What I know about publishing is that they do an enormous amount of work to find out who buys what and who reads what. There are departments at Penguin Random House that will tell you “this sort of person reads this sort of book, and if someone reads that book, they’re likely to read that book”. Publishing is an industry, so publishing is there to make money. If you’ve bought this type of book before, they will target you with that kind of book. But it is run by people that care about readers, I would say.

22:49 But there is a disconnect between the people they target to read books, and new readers – people that don’t read books. Sometimes people don’t read books because they haven’t got the time. Sometimes people don’t read books because they say, “well, it’s nothing to do with me. I’m not going to read a story about someone else – I want to read a story about someone that speaks to me about my life, where I come from, set in my town, that talks like the people I know, about the things I care about”. Not everyone wants to read that – lots of us want to read about someone else’s life – but there are some readers who are turned off from reading because it doesn’t represent them, or it doesn’t speak to them, or just because of the way the industry presents itself: white, middle-class, very, very female – except at the top, like most professions, where it’s the men right at the top. Anyway, that’s a digression.

23:47 So what publishing needs to do, for me, is find the new writers, and find the people that are turned off from reading because it’s not about them – it’s not written by people that come from where they come from. And I think publishing is less good at doing that. They’re very good at giving people what they want, over and over and over. If you like Jojo Moyes, you’re going to like Adele Parks, you’re going to like blah blah – they do that brilliantly. What they don’t put as much money and effort into is finding new readers – from marginalised groups, or not just marginalised people, people that just don’t connect with reading, for whatever reason. And that should be a whole department in all publishing houses, actually: who’s not reading, and why?

24:45 Katie: What was your breakthrough moment, then? When did it click for you as a writer, and with the publishing houses?

24:50 Kit: It clicked that I could be one when I had a 250-word story… No, I don’t think it did get published – it got an honourable mention. In a short story competition there’s the winner, there’s second, there’s third, there’s runners-up, and then there’s honourable mention. I got an honourable mention, and it was the best day of my life, I can honestly say. I was like, “oh, I can do it! I’m not bad! Someone’s recognised my work!” A 250-word story – that was everything. The competition, which is called the Fish Prize, in Ireland, said, “if you want, you can come and read it out at the festival”. I think it probably cost me £400 to get to Ireland, because I flew, I hired a car, I booked a hotel – and I read this 250-word story out. It took three minutes. To me, that was glory. That was like, “well, hey, I’ve done it”. And from that point onwards, I was always wanting to have that same feeling: you can do it, someone gets it, someone’s read your work, someone appreciates your work, someone understands what you’re trying to say. And for most writers it’s the same: you want that connection with your readers.

26:10 Katie: I’m just interested – we were saying earlier how you grew up in such a varied environment, with your different voices. What voice do you write with?

26:20 Kit: The voice I write with, certainly for my memoir, was me as a child. It was just me, completely unwise. There are some memoirs where you’ll have a sentence like, “my grandmother was horrible to me – she pinched me and locked me in a cupboard”, and then the next sentence will say, “I later found out that…”, or “when she died at 85, it was because of…” – they bring the wisdom of the adult into the child’s world. And that works really well sometimes – you know that you’re getting the author interposing in the child’s voice or the child’s interests. I never do that. I just go: that happened, that happened, that happened – because that’s how I experienced it. I want to just present you with the things that happened, and it’s for the reader to make those jumps, as to why, or to understand why. And I do love the voice of the child. I like writing in the voice of the child.

27:20 Katie: Do you think having had the experience of mixing with all these different elements of your family and your communities has given you a flexibility, if you like, as a writer – to put yourself into different worlds and different characters?

27:35 Kit: Yeah – and not just my childhood, in that you had to do this code-switching and be different people, but I was a watcher. One of my sisters was a reader; my brother was an absolute joker – the boy never stopped joking and laughing and performing; then I had a sister who was just very quiet; and I had another sister who was just pushing the envelope all the time. And I was the watcher. People would come and visit my mum, and I’d just watch their mannerisms, and you could tell if they were happy or sad, or if they were lying. I still do a lot of people-watching.

28:10 Katie: It strikes me, hearing you talk about your experience in your 20s, that discovering books really was a revelation, and a saviour, if you like – it helped you enormously. Do you think that being a successful writer – discovering the love of writing, and then, almost as a sideline, discovering that you’re extremely successful at it – has changed you as a person?

28:38 Kit: Oh God, I hope not. I know my family think I’m the same, and I’d like to think my friends think I haven’t changed one bit. But there are inevitable things that change about what you do with your time – I do more writing, I go to literary festivals – certain things change. But the core of me, I’d like to think, hasn’t changed since I was a child. I’d like to think that’s still intact. And the flip side of that is that I would always want to be changing my views on life – changing my views on what life’s about, who people are. If I had written a book when I was 21, I would still have had the stain of being a Jehovah’s Witness – extremely judgemental. I think I would have been very black-and-white. Because I didn’t start writing till my 40s, I think I was better placed to be kinder than perhaps I would have been with all the arrogance of youth.

29:38 Katie: Do you think it’s helped you as a person, though – being able to express yourself through your writing, and to be published? Has that been cathartic for you?

29:45 Kit: I don’t think so. I think it’s more a creative outlet. I don’t think I’ve got something to get off my chest, or something that I want to understand. For me it is the absolute joy of creativity, and expressing that creative thing – as much as it would be if I was in a choir, or if I was a painter. Of course that is cathartic, in that you’re getting your art out there, but I don’t feel there are any psychodynamic explanations going on for me. I could be wrong – but I don’t think so.

30:25 Katie: I know you’re very involved with Listening Books, and clearly access to literature, access to reading, is very important to you. How vital do you think it is for people to be welcomed into the world of books?

30:35 Kit: Absolutely vital. There is so much about this world that excludes you if you are not a super-reader, or a confident reader – or because of your reading tastes. So let’s say I’m a woman of 35 and I like Mills & Boon – that will be looked down on by some people: “oh, well, you’re not a proper reader – that’s not a proper book; it’s not literary”. Or if you like crime thrillers, or if you like a book with a pink cover and a bit of gold on the front: “oh, well, it’s not Ian McEwan”. No, it isn’t Ian McEwan – it’s my taste; it’s what I like to do. And I think that sort of snobbery has absolutely no place. It has no place in the world, full stop, but it certainly has no place when you’re trying to invite people to come to reading – to explore different lives, to be understood, to learn something about how other people work, and obviously along the way to learn stuff about yourself – and to connect with the classics. A classic is a book that hasn’t finished saying what it’s got to say. Those classics have endured for a reason. They’re not all great – sometimes they’re hard going – but they have endured because they haven’t finished saying what they want to say, and I think it would be great for people to read them. It’s also great to read the pink cover with the gold on it that you leave on the lilo for the next person in Benidorm – nothing wrong with that. So I think we need to continue to be welcoming to anyone, with any kind of reading taste, at any level of reading – from “the cat sat on the mat” to Chaucer. Everything’s got its place.

32:24 Katie: And if people listening to this are inspired not just to read more widely, outside their comfort zone perhaps, but maybe to want to write as well – what advice would you give a budding writer?

32:35 Kit: Definitely to write. A lot of people talk about it and think about it and don’t actually do it – for a very good reason, often: they’re intimidated. They’ve read a fantastic book – very much like I did when I read Madame Bovary – and you think, “well, I can’t do that”. No, you’re not that person – but who you are, and what you’ve got to say, is valid. So have a go. And copy – that’s another good thing. If there is a writer that you like, copy the writer, just to get you going. Just say, “if I was Adele Parks, or Jojo Moyes, or Ian McEwan, how would I write about the car accident that I saw once?” – and just write about it in their voice. Copy their style, and you will learn from that how to create a good sentence. A good sentence becomes a good paragraph, a good paragraph becomes a good chapter, and so forth. So start, and have a go. Don’t be intimidated. Don’t be ashamed of your writing. Just have a go.

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Close (33:48)

33:48 Katie: Huge thanks to Kit de Waal. Without Warning and Only Sometimes is available now in bookshops, and you can listen to an abridged version at Book of the Week on the Radio 4 website. Thanks also to Laurie Stanton and the Morriston Orpheus Choir, and to the singers from The People’s Orchestra show choirs. Big thanks, as always, to all our friends at The People’s Orchestra, who do so much to create opportunities for musicians, singers and behind-the-scenes staff in the West Midlands and beyond.

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34:20 It’s been such a pleasure to bring you stories that highlight just how much we all benefit from the arts over the last two series of Just The Tonic. I hope we’ve inspired you to maybe join a choir, or get out your instrument that’s been sitting at the back of the cupboard – or maybe we’ve encouraged you to write a story or a poem that you’ve been thinking about for years. If you’re looking for inspiration or information about groups in your area, get in touch with Arts Council England, the Arts Council of Wales, the Arts Council of Northern Ireland or Creative Scotland.

34:50 You can catch up on any episodes you’ve missed in all the usual places you find your podcasts, and if you follow us on social media – we’re on Twitter and on Instagram – you’ll be the first to know about what’s coming up. Do let us know as well if there’s someone you think we should be featuring in the future. Thank you ever so much for listening.

35:12 Just The Tonic with Katie Derham was produced by Jill Davis. It’s a Peanut and Crumb production, supported by The People’s Orchestra and Arts Council England.

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