TASHY HEARS

HOLD ON TO YOUR DREAM

I am dreamer. That’s a fact. By that I don’t mean someone who walks around as though in another world but someone who always has hopes for the future, an idea, a dream. This song puts into words exactly how I feel. Way back in the 1980’s, when I started my career in education, I was horrified at the hopes and dreams of the young people I was training. I asked them what job they would like to do if they could choose anything, forgetting qualifications, etc. The answers I got were, mainly, painter/decorator or hairdresser. Nothing wrong with those jobs, don’t get me wrong, but not what I had expected nor what, at their age, I would have answered.

Where were their dreams? The answer, I believe, was they were buried in Mrs Thatcher’s Britain. Their dream was to get a job, any job, because jobs were hard to find. Unlike others, I see no reason for such disgusting behaviour as to celebrate the death of the handbag queen. I will just repeat now what I said while she was alive, which is that she helped to destroy Britain as a manufacturing nation. I accept she believed she was right; I accept she took advice; I accept that people like Keith Joseph and Alan Waters were qualified to give advice but I believe they were wrong. End of rant.

Briefly returning to those young people who I had questioned, some ten years later I was walking through Colchester and a guy came up to me and said “hi, do you remember me”. The answer was no but he explained that he had been on one of the first courses I had run and he was now the deputy manager of a local hotel. “Without you telling me that I could do that course in communication skills and helping me through it, I wouldn’t be in this job now”, he said. I still didn’t really remember him but, after that comment, I remember that meeting today. It makes life worthwhile. “There is nothing you can’t do beneath the sun”.

This song was written, and is sung, by Judith Durham, who must have one of the purest voices ever. I first heard her sing in the sixties with the group called The Seekers. When I was in Perth in 2004 I was invited to a concert they were doing, having got back together as a group in 1994. In 2013, they did another tour of Australia to celebrate 50 years since they started. And, believe it or not, it’s the same four people. Listen to the song. Oh and the sound of a choir of kids singing is extra special.