Hope in a Jam Jar – Words and Music by Richard Trethewey
Lyrics and Chords
Intro
D D/C# D/B D/A G A/C# D
D D/B G D
To clay country people I’ll sing of a night.
D D/B G A/C#
Breath hung in the air, lit up by moonlight.
F#m G F#m G A/C#
Wrapped up from cold, in the hills of white gold
D D/B G D
They ran through the village like a secret just told
Each carried a jam jar, a flickering light
They placed them around to keep off the night.
Truscotts and Bests, Whitford and French.
They all went together and took to the ice.
No longer a claypit but an ice rink, a stage.
A moment of magic at a time laced with pain.
For one frozen night their worries took flight
The boys of the village, timeless tonight.
Hold on to these moments, keep the memories clear
They’ll talk of it still in one hundred years.
Spread light in the dark, just a flicker, a spark
There’s hope in a jam jar or in the light of the stars.
Notes
I wrote this in 2021 for a project put together by Kneehigh Theatre called Random Acts of Art. Because of limitations on people being able to access art and for artists to perform, they contacted many artists with connections to the clay country to see if they could come up with an act of art that would happen in their community without prior notice to those who lived there. My granny was born in Nanpean in 1924 and will turn 98 in May 2022! One of the many stories she has told me quickly emerged as the inspiration for my own act of art.
My act of art was based on her memory of the Winter of 1933. Granny was nine years
Mona Whitford (Trethewey) in 1933
old and from her bedroom window witnessed an original act of art – the curate of Nanpean Church, Reverend Ralph Perry-Gore collecting candles in jam jars and ice skating on the frozen clay pit behind her house. This happened against the backdrop of the great depression. Granny recalls queues of men outside the Methodist Sunday School who were queuing to go onto the dole, and miners from ‘down west’ coming up at Christmas to sing carols to collect anything they could to ease their situation. I worked with Kneehigh Theatre and in particular Anna Murphy who linked me up with automata-maker Tony Crosby to create a moving model of Reverend Perry-Gore which I would be able to take through the village singing a song I wrote for the project. As you can see from the photo, he did a fantastic job – the level of detail is fantastic and it was exactly what I pictured in my head when we first talked about the idea.
The most moving moment of the night and one I will never forget was reaching the
Mona Trethewey – aged 97
millennium memorial in the village and being able to sing the story to my Granny 88 years after she witnessed the original moment of magic. Her story now lives in the minds of many other children of the village who perhaps will tell their grandchildren of this night one day.
After the event I had an article published in The British Virgin Islands newspaper ‘The BVI’ as Reverend Perry-Gore went out there after leaving Nanpean. I was fortunate enough to have some correspondence with people with connections to him there, and then received a photograph of Perry-Gore which is the only one I have managed to find, which was amazing!
Richard Trethewey