10. FotheringayFotheringay

The albums that my mother shared with me are really special, my portals back to time with her. At a specific time of night in her art studio, after a specific amount of wine, the song ‘Fotheringay’ by Fairport Convention would come on. I’d somehow end up in her studio and she would ask me, for the sixtieth time, ‘Patrick, did you know this is a song about Mary Queen of Scots going to get beheaded?’ I do like a lot of Fairport Convention, but not in the emotionally invested way I have with Sandy Denny’s work on her own. Fotheringay was her solo project just after Fairport Convention, and my mother had this album in her collection and she never really played it, but because of the song ‘Fotheringay’, after she died I bought the Fotheringay album. I went on my first holiday in two years in February and I got bumped up on the car rental – I was driving around this Spanish island pumping out Fotheringay in this Essex muscle car.