Jimi, Shoreham, and the Parakeets

 

(Jimi Hendrix - died 18 September, 1970 - 50 years)

JIMI, SHOREHAM AND THE PARAKEETS

She knew he wasn’t to blame for the birds. At least, not in the other areas of Britain, but here, in Shoreham Village, maybe – just maybe.

She’d met him through, Peter, a road manager for the group Pink Floyd who had lived in the village. His daughter, Naomi, born in

Shoreham went on to be a famous actress, but it was her dad who had brought the guitarist down to Shoreham to see what an English country village looked like.

Peter and the man had been sitting outside the George pub, in what she could overhear as arguments about music. The man that

Peter referred to as, Jimi was very exotic for this part of Kent, even in the 1960s.

She lived across the street from the pub, in Church Cottages, and would sometimes lie in her room with the window open listening to the lives of folks relaxing at the bar. She knew Peter well and so had followed the two men up to the Cross (at a distance). When they got to the top of the hill, Jimi brought out a cigarette that smelled strange and began to smoke it. Peter told him he didn’t smoke.

Jimi must have said something funny because she remembers laughing – although she hadn’t intended to.

“Who’s there?” Shouted Jimi.

She popped her head over the hedge and smiled.

“Come sit,” he said in his American accent.

Peter smiled too and said the three of us should sit and look at the beautiful village below. Jimi asked if I played the guitar or any musical instrument and I told him I didn’t.

“What do you do then, kid?”

That’s what he called me, ‘kid’.

I told him I was saving up to buy a budgie.

“You like birds?”.

I nodded. I spent another hour with them. Then I told Jimi and Peter I had to be back to eat with my family. Jimi said he enjoyed our talk and I’ve got to be honest so did I.

A week or so later, a delivery was made to my house by Peter, it was two parakeets in a beautiful cage. The card said: ‘They ain’t budgies, but they’re just as pretty – Jimi’.

I saw a photo of him in the News of the World, and I realised his name was Jimi Hendrix.

On the 18th of September, 1970 – they announced on the news that Jimi had died in Notting Hill, London.

I let the parakeets go that day. I released them to be with Jimi.

The birds are still here. They are still flying around the village – scores of them.

And as I watch them squawking in the sky, I’ll always remember my friend, Jimi Hendrix.

bobby stevenson 2020

Shoreham, Kent

Most of her 94 years had been spent in this beautiful little corner of the world. The rear of her property looked up to the Cross on the hill above, and now that most of her days were spent with resting in bed – she found this a favourable view. In the Spring and the Summer months, she watched the little birds and then the wild geese as they came to visit in her back yard and the fields beyond.

It hadn’t always been this way. In her younger, vibrant days she had worked on the farm, and later in the Cooperative shop on the village High Street.

She had been born into a place that had meant the most happiness and therefore, had never wanted to leave. She had been married for a short time, there had been no children, but she had accepted that fact and moved on with her life. Her husband had always wanted sons and daughters and had eventually found a family with his second wife, in Hastings.

In all her 94 years much of it had been spent looking from her window on to the passers-by and their changing tastes and fashions - and as the older residents had aged and passed on, so the village constantly invigorated itself with newer, younger dynamic families. Most of these folks now worked in the city, and as such spent much of their time commuting. She had been lucky. She had found everything she needed within reach. Not many had had that chance.

But the main thing that preoccupied her thoughts was the magic in this little haven. Her great grandmother, a woman who had been there at the opening of the Co-op shop - in the same year that Queen Victoria had died – had always told her the same sentence over and over again, ‘Shoreham finds you, you don’t find Shoreham’.

She had always wondered what that had meant – but it wasn’t about the likes of herself or her family, it was about the souls who thought they had discovered this hamlet by accident - a lucky accident – but an accident all the same.

Yet she knew the truth. They came here incomplete, or sad, or single, or unhappily married, or sick, or healthy, or hopeful, or lost – and they stayed long enough to put things right in their lives. To find that special person, or to lose the wrong one. To beat the depression or some disease or another. To raise a family, or find a new one. To see the end of loneliness in the company of new friends, or to find a confidence when it was lacking.

Whatever their needs, Shoreham grabbed them as they passed by, then dusted them down and didn’t let go until the time was right for them to move on.

She had seen it time and time again – enough to know that it wasn’t a fluke but a certainty - a miracle.

It was a truth that not everyone came to the village searching for something, but most of them did. They just didn’t know it.

And from her little window on the High Street, she had watched them find it and had taken comfort in their happiness, and their newfound lives.

Now from her bedroom window, she watched as the geese came to the field beyond the trees.

Those beautiful birds waited on her to close her eyes for the very last time, and then they carried her soul, to that far country where she could rest.

bobby stevenson 2020

To all those who found it. x