Gilmore & Roberts

3 days ago

Gilmore & Roberts shared a link.

(On tour next week in Rothbury, Northumberland: www.gilmoreroberts.co.uk/live)

BEHIND THE SONG - Travelling In Time (2008)

Katriona says "Going all the way back to our very first album, Travelling in Time is a song I wrote for my granddad. In the few years before, he’d suffered several strokes that affected his sight and his short-term memory, although he kept his intellect and his sense of humour. My mum would visit my grandparents most weekends and found my granddad increasingly confused and bewildered – he knew her, but he seemed stuck in the past and would ask questions which related to previous decades rather than the present. He’d often wonder why he hadn’t heard from his mother in a while – she’d died in the mid-80s before I was born. Doctors and care workers advised us not to shatter his world by giving straight honest answers, but to tactfully avoid it or change the subject.
It was a difficult time, particularly for my grandma and my mum. I’d just read a great book called The Time Traveller’s Wife (by Audrey Niffenegger) which I passed on to my mum, and she called me when she was halfway through reading it to say “I understand now what’s happening to him – he’s literally time travelling, but only in his mind.”
The book had really made sense of his experience for her. I can’t remember whether it was my idea or hers to have a go at turning his experience into a song, but once I started, it flowed very easily. Every little thing in the song is something he said or did – he was convinced he’d been back to the house where they’d lived in the 60s, he’d often ask for the lights to be switched on (often when they were already on) because he didn’t realise his sight was affected. He was surprised when my mum came into the room once because he thought he was in the army, posted somewhere, and he was always amazed to discover he had grandchildren...and that they were no longer children! One of the things that struck me most was how often he would say “Well, we must be going. We’ve got to get home” when in fact he WAS at home – he just didn’t recognise it. This would always, after it was explained to him, be followed by him calling out to my grandma “Christine! Christine! Did you know that we live here? In this house?”
The song was recorded and the album was released a few months before his death – the rest of the family found it quite emotional to listen to, and I found it difficult to sing at first, but it has become one of our most requested songs. Sadly, that’s because so many people now are affected by this kind of situation with a family member – dementia, Alzheimer’s, strokes – but an emotional connection is always what you hope to achieve with a song, and I feel this has been one of the most successful examples of that for me."
open.spotify.com/track/0Bwc5QWYig3fmy3t6XpFlT?si=zxr0Zyc-QVaQqhMCyHyAYA ... See MoreSee Less

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I week buckets every time I listen to it...still!!!!!

1 day ago   ·  1

1 Reply

A very moving song Katriona - up there with Reg Meuross' " Counting my footsteps to you", also about dementia.I always find that difficult to sing, but people respond- because so many of us are touched by having relatives, some elderly and some not so old, who succumb to mind-altering conditions

3 days ago   ·  3

Always loved this song since I first heard it. My mum had dementia and often wondered who I or my sister were.

2 days ago   ·  1

my sister is going through this now ,she is 66 so not that old ..same she asks about our mother ,she died 20 years ago ...i just tell her she has moved far away

3 days ago   ·  1

one of my all time favourite songs , it says it all about dementia

3 days ago   ·  1

One of my favourites. Mum had Alzheimers.

22 hours ago   ·  1

Great song. One of my favourites.

3 days ago   ·  1

Beautiful song Katriona!

3 days ago   ·  1

Luci Smith

3 days ago

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