Night night Kenny

Kenny Rogers died. I heard this morning and did the obligatory morning listening to some of my favourite Kenny tunes. My poor husband has patiently put up with my singing for much of the day....... made more painful by my need to imitate a Deep South accent..... Again obligatory I think! The music got me reminiscing.....

My dad has always liked holidays that involve a lot of driving. He likes to be behind the wheel and to be in charge of where we ended up and where we stopped along the way. As a kid he would pack up my sister, step sister, step mother and I and off we’d go. Usually back to Scotland. As we got older we ventured abroad more.

As a very young child living in Scotland I remember a boxy dark red Volvo that had broken back door handles..... the doors were held shut with bungee cords and you had to sit in the middle of the seat so you didn’t fall out if the doors managed to fly open! That was when there was just the three of us; before my dad remarried.

After we moved to Northern Ireland our road trips home to Scotland became an annual event. We were fortunate kids. Dad had good jobs and we got a holiday pretty much every year. The road trips involved the adults in the front and the three girls in the back of whatever ‘family friendly vehicle’ we had at that time.  The one I remember best was a midnight blue Granada Scorpio that was his pride and joy. it was a company car and he was rightly very proud of it. He had been made a Managing Director of a company and his Scorpio even had a car phone; a very grand thing to have in those days! Not that it was ever really used because it cost a small fortune to use it!! 

Anyway, with dad working such long hours and travelling so much too, the one time we all came together as a family was for the annual holiday. The three girls would get piled into the back seat, with me always squashed in the middle because I’m the youngest. I used to get horribly car sick........ I have thrown up at the side of many Scottish side roads. I distinctly remember a road trip to France that took forever because it involved so many roadside vomiting sessions. Not to mention me having to use anything we could find in the car when emergency struck - plastic bags, tissue boxes...... whatever was close at hand!!

I wasn’t a fun person to go on a car journey with. And don’t even start me about the ferry......!! Anything faster than a skateboard and I was green and looking like the doll in the Exorcist :(

But how does this have anything to do with Kenny Rogers?? Well, travelling with such a nightmare passenger often led to family rows....... rising stress levels........ increased spewing up!! There were a couple of preventative measures that helped.......open windows and music. Of course, a family of five will rarely agree on music choice so that often led to more rowing. Probably a fairly normal 1980s family holiday! 

There were, however, two albums the whole family agreed on...... Neil Diamond’s The Jazz Singer and Kenny Roger’s Greatest Hits. To this day listening to those albums takes me back to being a kid and I still know every word by heart. Even in my rebellious teenage rocker years, stick on The Gambler and I’d be singing along. It remains true to this day....... and I’ve spent this morning proving it....... stick on some Kenny and I lose all sense of cool!!! I won’t be able to stop myself from singing and dancing as if I was born and bred in Nashville. And I just won’t care. Or stop! 

So I’m sad to hear the world has lost one of the men who could cut through teenage angst and the need to be cool. 

If you’re feeling anxious in these scary COVID times, stand up, stick on some Kenny Rogers and sing and dance your way out of it!! Trust me ;) 

Keep safe xxx