Gill writes:

It could be suggested that tonight kickstarts a summer of sport, although cricket fans amongst you would say it’s already started (which is more than could be said for the meteorological summer!). Whatever your starting point, we have T20 World Cups for men and women, the Tour de France, Wimbledon, the British F1 Grand Prix, the men and women’s golf ‘Open’, the Olympics, Paralympics and kicking off tonight – the Euros 2024.

I’m not much of a football fan (unlike my Toon Army son who is currently blasting out ‘Local Hero’ as I write!), but I do quite enjoy tournaments like the World Cup and Euros. Apart from the penalty shoot-outs obviously.

It seems to me, as a bit of an outsider, that football has its positives and negatives. Having grown up in the 70’s, the image of hooliganism is etched on my memory. I’ve always found the strong team allegiances to the point of divisiveness extremely disconcerting. And I am fully aware that there will be a sharp increase of domestic abuse if our teams don’t do well.

On the other hand, football brings people from all sorts of backgrounds and countries together. It enables a sense of community and a feeling of being part of something bigger. I think that when you peel it all back, you’ll find that right at the heart of being a football fan is having a sense of belonging. Not dissimilar to being involved in politics or religion then.

For once, I’m focusing not on the lyrics of a song particularly, but the feelings that it conjures up. This song was written for the 1990 England World Cup team by the members of New Order with Keith Allen (actor and producer) and was their only Number One (despite some real classics like Blue Monday and True Faith). It broke the mould of national football team songs – previous examples being Scotland’s ‘We Have a Dream’ and England’s ‘This Time’ for the 1982 World Cup.

This was the first England football song that didn’t sound too out of place in pubs and nightclubs and prompted a little arm-pumping dance that fans in the stadiums would do. It seemed to tap into the changing culture of football which was beginning to embrace a more tolerant and peaceful approach, moving away from football fan troubles of the previous decades.

It exuded positivity and self-expression – express yourself. It encouraged determination and staying power – let everyone see you never give up. It reminded us that love beats hate every time – love’s got the world in motion and I know what we can do. And, in my opinion, it is also a banging song that friends and strangers happily belted out together (though I do recognise that this probably excludes friends from other countries – sorry).

So here’s to a summer of sport. Good luck to Scotland tonight; and England on Sunday.

See what New Order are up to at the moment at https://www.neworder.com/

We’re running low on Friday Fix reflections again, so if you have one to share with us please do!

You can send it to fridayfixmail@gmail.com.

Gill writes:

What can I do to make light of this dull dull day
What switch can I pull to illuminate the way?

For the first time in my 50-something years gracing this planet, I am finding the prospect of a General Election thoroughly depressing.  On past occasions, I’ve often felt hopeful, or bemused, or bewildered, and every so often, very angry.  This time around I hardly feel anything – I can only say that I feel despondent if anything.  The issues close to my heart don’t seem to be high enough up the agenda for most political parties.  It’s all very dull and I fear that those who could radically light and lead the way won’t get much of a look in.

Most disheartening of all seems to be the lack of compassion for our planet and those living on it, both near and far.  I find myself hoping for an inspirational leader to guide the way to a better world for us all.

Show me one direction
I will not question again
For a warm injection
Is all I need to calm the pain

Of course, being a God Botherer (as one friend calls me), that leader already exists. We just need to take better notice of what Jesus said – to listen up and take some action.  As Alison Moyet so rightly sings:

We all need a love (resurrection, just a little divine intervention)

I’ve never been a believer that politics and religion don’t mix.  I feel strongly that my faith informs my political beliefs.  And although I have this cloak of despondency, I think it’s more important than ever to pay attention and get involved.  The Joint Public Issues Team (JPIT) says that ‘The UK is navigating complex political terrain, with deepening economic inequality, climate change, and the treatment of the most vulnerable at the forefront of public discourse. Globally, geopolitical tensions, economic instability, and environmental crises add layers of complexity to our decision-making processes.’  

Now is the time more than ever to love, pray and vote.  One of the phrases that we explore in one of our courses at Place for Hope when considering the abuse of power is ‘the acquiescence of onlookers’.  Our passivity or lack of engagement colludes and doesn’t challenge the status quo.  So the question for me (and hopefully for you) are you letting the apathy and despondency get to you to the point that you are acquiescing?

Whatever your politics, be guided by love, contemplate deeply and vote for those who walk humbly and seek justice.  Sow some seeds.

What seed must I sow to replenish this barren land
Teach me to harvest, I want you to grow in my hand
Let’s be optimistic, let’s say that we won’t toil in vain
If we pull together we’ll never fall apart again
We all need a love (resurrection, just a little divine intervention)
We all need a love (resurrection, just a little divine intervention)

We need love


Find out more about Alison Moyet at https://www.alisonmoyetmusic.com/

Jane writes:

In recent days the new Blue Rose Code album Bright Circumstance has been released. On it, a track so politically and emotionally charged it stopped me in my tracks. When my daughter was small we had a rule that if we bought a new CD we could play it in the car BUT the first hearing had to be all the way through from start to finish and no repeat tracks allowed until the second time round. With the advent of Spotify, I try hard to do this with any new album I listen to still, but on this occasion I failed miserably and it was about this track.

The constant refrain – Is this the world we want to be? provokes us to consider what kind of state have we become. What kind of society we’re willing to accept.

We have money for kings and queens but we can’t feed our wee ones
We have money for guns and bombs but we can’t feed our daughters and sons

I think it’s the very simply stated incredulity at what is happening around him, around us, that makes this track powerful

Well there are nurses on the picket lines. I never thought I’d see it in my life.

I am certain that it was not God’s intention that anyone, child or adult, should have to choose between eating or heating in this abundant world. I am also certain that the power grab by countries and individuals was also not at the
top of God’s list.

As disciples, we are trapped in a world that has been in a dark place for years. Many folk chipping away best they can at the injustices we see. True for generations but not making much of a dent. Trying hard to tip upside down the way it is to the way it should be.

It is an excellent question to ask ourselves but maybe more a question to ask anyone you come into contact with. Use this simple tool and tout it around. Dear MP…………… Dear business owner…………… Dear church leader…………… Dear local council………………. Dear ………………

Is this the world we want, Is this the world we wanna be?

We might only manage a marginal gain through our outrage but it’s a start

You can find the album version here https://bluerosecode.bandcamp.com/track/thirteen-years-2
And more about Blue Rose Code here https://bluerosecode.com/
They happen to be great live too if you can catch them

Lizzy writes:

Music has always helped me process my emotions and it has always been a deep bond I share with my dad, so naturally when he died suddenly and unexpectedly at the start of the year music quickly turned into one of my coping mechanisms to make sense of my crushing grief. One of the songs I have turned to a lot is the beautiful ‘Love Lives On’ by Mallary Hope.

While the narrative in the song is slightly different to my own (in the song she tells the story from the perspective of a young windowed mother), there are some universals in there that I think many of us who struggle with making sense of our emotions and indeed our faith after losing someone can relate too.

There is the understanding in the lyrics that it is the mundane things you miss that suddenly hit you when someone you love suddenly isn’t there. In the song it is things such as making them a cup of coffee, reaching for them in your sleep, or the t-shirt you always hated when they were alive. For my siblings and I it is things such as seeing his half-eaten jar of jam, his Brazil nuts in the cupboard, or even making a cup of tea (one of my dad’s jobs in our house growing up). For my mum, it is the box of his memories we discovered after his death.

On a deeper level, the song also discusses the juxtaposed feelings that often surface when you lose someone you love, particularly when faith is also involved. For instance, in the chorus Hope sings:

‘Even though I cry like crazy
even though it hurts so bad
I’m thankful for the time God gave me
Even though we couldn’t make it last’

I am very aware that I had almost 36 wonderful years with my dad, a man who always put us first and once told my sister’s partner his proudest achievement in life was his kids. For that I thank God every single day, as it is truly a blessing and a privilege to have had him as our dad.

As quoted during my dad’s funeral, in Matthew 5:4, Jesus says, ‘Blessed are those who mourn for they shall be comforted’. To add a little more to that, I would say I am blessed in my mourning because my grief stems from the fact I loved my dad so fully and vice versa (I recognise not everyone who grieves has this, some grieve words left unsaid, arguments never mended, or relationships that weren’t what they should have been).

To steal a line from Les Mis, ‘to love another person is to see the face of God’. One of the passages we chose for Dad’s funeral was 1 Corinthians 13:1-13, because it captures that exact sentiment and reminds us that godliness can be found through the act of loving fiercely.

My dad may be gone, but our love for each other will endure always. While that love is the cause of indescribable hurt right now, I know I am blessed even while experiencing this crushing pain. As long as that love lives on, he’ll never truly be gone, as Hope beautifully finishes off in the chorus to her song:

‘I’m learning how to live without you
even though I don’t want to
Even with you gone, love lives on’

Find out more about Mallary Hope at http://www.mallaryhopemusic.com

Tom writes:

One of my Christmas presents this year will likely surprise a good number of people – the Britney Spears autobiography, The Woman in Me. I’ll be honest, Ms. Spears’ music is not generally my style, even taking into account my self-proclaimed eclectic tastes. But the reality is that she can’t be denied as a cultural icon of the era I grew up in, as well as a woman of the Deep South – a place I have deep affection for and connection with given my time studying at the University of Mississippi.

As it happens, while it’s not my usual style or content of reading material, I nonetheless found the book deeply affecting. Unsurprisingly, given how public much of her life has been, including the legal fight to end her conservatorship, Britney’s life has not been the comfortable and enjoyable ride many of us might have once assumed. Even as someone familiar with how untrustworthy our celebrity media can be, it came as a jolt to realise how manipulated my own thoughts about her and her behaviour might have been previously – including the way in which a male point of view has dominated over giving a young woman her own voice. Some of the stories of how she was treated, both as a young “starlet” and as adult woman, by those she should have been able to trust, including both family and close friends, were heart-breaking.

“Piece of Me”, from her album, Blackout, is one of the seemingly few tracks from her time as a young mother struggling with life in the media glare while her private life fell apart where she was able to properly express herself. It seems a starkly honest reflection on how the world seemed to view her (an easy target for tabloid scandal), and how it contrasted with how she was feeling about life. To listen to it alongside her own account of her life story is, if one has any empathy, a challenging experience and a reminder that how we treat others can have deep impacts that we may well not be aware of.

This is particularly noteworthy this week as we journey through Mental Health Awareness Week. If I’m honest, this was another reason I wanted to read her biography – as someone who struggles with their mental health at times, I was interested in the story of someone who is famous for her own mental health challenges. She is, as it happens, honest about those struggles, while also being
clear that a large part of that struggle was deeply impacted by the way in which those around her related to her in negative ways. For sure, mental health can be impacted by internal struggles, chemical imbalances, and general environmental matters, but it can also be deeply affected by how others treat us – and that also means that how we treat other people can significantly affect their mental health. Like every other part of our life, the golden rule applies – do not treat others how you would not wish to be treated, or, to put it a different way, love your neighbour as you love yourself.

I’m left wondering how different Britney Spears’ autobiography would have been had more people in her life had lived by that rule. I wonder whether “Piece of Me” would even have been produced. And I’m left wondering how many others out there, who don’t have the public voice that Ms. Spears has, would benefit if we all held better that rule.

Ultimately, this isn’t about whether we like pop, rock, jazz or classical. It’s not about whether we have an interest in the lives and styles of celebrities or not. It’s about recognising that the health and wellbeing of others is as dependent on our behaviour as we are on theirs – famous or not. That’s a message it’s worth being reminded of, whoever happens to remind us of it!

You can find out more about Britney Spears at britneyspears.com

Well, can you believe it? The Friday Fix is 5 years old today!

Yep, 5 years ago on 14th May 2019, we dropped our first Friday Fix reflection when Jane had a ponder about Megan Henwood’s ‘Hope on the Horizon’ (here it is if you want to read it – https://thefridayfix.home.blog/2019/05/14/megan-henwood-hope-on-the-horizon/).

In this time, 34 people have written Friday Fixes – all of them have provoked thought and many of them have introduced us to a new artist or group. We are so thankful for all of you who have sent us a Friday Fix, especially the little band of regular writers who enable us to release a Friday Fix every week. You are all amazing!

To keep us going for another 5 years, it would be fantastic if we could increase the number of contributors. Might that be you? Might you have a song that makes you think about faith, spirituality and/or being human? If you do, we’d love to receive your thoughts at fridayfixmail@gmail.com. Go on – you know you want to really…

Gill writes:

This is one of my favourite songs at the moment. If you know The K’s (they’re from the same neck of the woods as Rick Astley), you’ll know that much of their music is a little more energetic and indie than this track, which is probably why it stands out so much to me.

It’s these words that I home in on:

And I was hoping maybe
You might know how to save me
And I know we’ve never met but tell me where you’ve been just lately
‘Cause I’ve missed you all my life
I just never realised it till tonight

These lyrics capture, so well, the seeking for more; the yearning to be seen; the realisation that they are looking for someone to save them; the wanting to be free and the needing to be themselves. And underpinning it is this recognition that they’ve been missing something that might have been there all along if only they’d looked harder.

It probably hasn’t passed you by that Russell Brand was baptised recently. You may have your own thoughts about his behaviour over the years, I know that I do. But then I think about all those people over the centuries whose lifestyle has been damaging to themselves and others, who persecuted and violated the lives of others and then plummeted to hit rock bottom. I think about how these people then found love, who were saved and turned their lives around quite drastically. I think about how some of them went on to be big witnesses for Jesus (looking at you St Paul).

Christians are meant to be driven by love and grace. They know that God loves and seeks the lost. Loving each other, no matter how hard that can be, is what they’re supposed to be about. Showing the face of God to others can be all it takes for another human to see.

This last week has seen the fifth anniversary of the untimely death of Rachel Held Evans. She was someone who knew about, wrote about and spoke about the sort of searching that this song conjures up for me. She sought a church community where she felt truly loved and embraced for who she was – something she struggled to find as you’ll discover in her book ‘Searching for Sunday’. I was moved by how hard she searched for that community and how she captured her thoughts in the following words:

“This is what God’s kingdom is like: a bunch of outcasts and oddballs gathered at a table, not because they are rich or worthy or good, but because they are hungry, because they said yes. And there’s always room for more.”

I’m hoping maybe that we seek and continue to create such communities like this. I wonder who I might meet today who is searching and whether I can help them.

Find out more about The K’s at https://theks.band/

Tom writes:

Songs are poetry set to music. I don’t know if this is a precise quote, but it’s certainly the way I’ve known many people describe the nature of the things we sing and listen to others sing. While I’m not entirely sure the concept always stands – there are many songs, including some by bona fide geniuses, that I think work brilliantly when heard in the context of the accompanying music that would never stand alone if released as text alone – I do acknowledge that there are certain songs that do stand alone just in terms of their text, and certain artists who produce more such songs than others.

I’d argue one of those artists who could stand alone as a poet even if they weren’t also a brilliant musician is Paul Simon. His poetic skills are certainly to be seen in “Wristband”, the lead single from his 2016 album, Stranger to Stranger. It’s a wonderful lyrical track, full of both the mundane and the imaginative as it begins by telling the story of a rehearsal that goes awry as he steps outside only to hear the door close and lock behind him. As the story continues, it becomes clear that the wristband of the title is that piece of plastic, nylon, or cloth familiar to gig and festival goers the world over – the clothing accessory that points to the fact that you are entitled to be in a place that the majority are not.

As the story continues, Simon eloquently and evocatively describes his own fears, despite being a global star who is recognisable to anyone working a music venue, as he approaches the bouncer on the main venue door – who is insistent entry is based on the ownership of a wristband and is behaving like “St Peter at the pearly gates”. Even Simon’s descent into wordless scat as he attempts to persuade the doorman that he is the star of the show is somehow more poetic than many songs I’ve heard.

Yet his true poetic lyricism comes as the song progresses on. The song shifts in the light of that wordlessness from the simple narrative of an artist locked out of his own gig to something much larger and more significant. It becomes clear that all of that is just setting up the larger metaphor and truer meaning of the song:

The riots started slowly,
with the homeless and the lowly,
then they spread into the heartland:
towns that never get a wristband,
kids that can’t afford the cool brand,
whose anger is a short-hand
for you’ll never get a wristband,
and if you don’t have a wristband
then you can’t get through the door.
No, you can’t get through the door…

So it turns out that a catchy little ditty about a musician and his unfortunate need for a cigarette is actually a prophetic pronouncement on the ways in which so many in our communities, our nations, and our global village are denied access to so many things – including the very basics of life. That, it seems to me, is genuine poetry that just happens to be set to music. It’s also poetry, and music, worth listening to – you may not find them on subway walls, or tenement halls, and they’re certainly not silent, but they are prophetic.

Those of us who wear wristbands of many kinds need to be aware of our deep privileges and consider the consequences of a world in which so many are blocked from even getting in the door, let alone get to perform on the stage.

You can find out more about Paul Simon at paulsimon.com