A couple of days ago I found myself on a quite Sunday evening in a restaurant in Prato, Tuscany. I was the only customer. There was some lovely ambient music playing and along with the red wine, subdued lighting and lovely surroundings I became very relaxed and began to contemplate a new music project.
It would be a collection of very laid back and relaxing music and I would try to evoke “places” in each of the pieces. I’ll pull together photographs of places I’d like to evoke though some of them may be drawn from memory. The images will not be used in the final pieces which will be audio only but I may record actual sound in some of these places to include in the audio.
There are many places that have left a lasting impression on me and I hope these will provide strong inspiration for new musical pieces. I was contemplating this morning calling the collection “Places” but then I recalled a story I’d related recently here I decided to call it “Places In Time”.
Many who die for a cause are faceless, ordinary people who find themselves in extraordinary situations, not the famous, not great leaders but those that stand at the back, a face in the crowd, everyman. 
One of the worst Pit disasters in the north-east of England was on the afternoon of Thursday January 16th, 1862 at New Hartley Colliery, near Seaton Delaval, in Northumberland. The accident was caused by a beam, weighing forty-three tons, which fell into the pit shaft, trapping the majority of men who worked at the colliery. For six days and seven nights rescuers tried valiantly to save them and up until the Sunday they could hear the trapped miners but then silence reigned. Eventually, after ten days, on Sunday the 26th of January, the rescuers were able to bring out the 204 dead. 
During the Second World War many young girls from the north-east and many other parts of the U.K. met and fell in love with American servicemen and Steve Thompson’s auntie, Evelyn Haggan, became a GI Bride. She left her family behind and sailed on the Queen Elizabeth to begin a new life in America. Evelyn wrote a poem, which Steve has turned into the song, ëGI Bride’…
Jarrow man Tommy Kelly was a German Prisoner of War from April 1940 until the end of the war. He spoke little of his experiences but what he did say was that it was nothing like the 1950 British film, THE WOODEN HORSE which gave a very different picture to the harshness he experienced.
Jimmy McCauley and Johnny Kelly were two marchers on the historic Jarrow Crusade. Two hundred men from the town of Jarrow marched to London in 1936. The town’s shipyard, Palmers, had closed in 1933 resulting in mass unemployment. The aim of the march was to bring Jarrow’s plight to the government’s notice as life for Johnny and Jimmy and too many others was, ìAs thin as the soles of their shoesî.