‘Unknown man with my step-grandfather’ Photograph Long Wittenham 1920s. Aubrey my step-grandfather is on the right.
This song goes way back. Probably mid 1980’s in first version . This 1995 rendition probably as good a take as I had of it. A lot of Leonard Cohen in it.
It is a difficult subject and one that explored more fully in the Coppard web page and in the poem there ‘The stone code.
http://www.shaunbelcher.com/coppard/
Everything you need to know there. My father never knew who his father was. He was abandoned along with his mother in 1932.
He was affected by it all his life and it transferred to me.
I will probably never get a conclusive answer but the evidence has mounted over the years.
But as the song says I remain a ‘Man with no name’
Man with no name
You kick at the tyre of the tractor
That hasn’t moved since the snow last came down
You pull at the chain-link fence blow a dandelion over the sow
And wonder whose hand on your arm could lead you now
Well it’s the middle of summer and clouds cover the sun, you feel cold
You run for shelter, find your father with a halter and he’s staring at the ground
Oh why can’t I tell you why can’t I say
I feel like a man with no name
In a dark pantry a dog panting, tired from running under this August sun
On the kitchen table a dripping pheasant shot down by a farmer’s gun
And you sat in your armchair reading news of a war that had hardly begun
Whilst all the berries your wife picked in summer turn blood red in the cup
And you told me I could break down all the fences put around me
And set my own pace
I feel like a man with no name
Well your stepfather fell in that kitchen and the dog sat and waited there all day
Whilst the silent river rolled on and on and the clouds blew over the hills and away
So father and son two years later we stand in this graveyard in the rain
If I could show you the answer written in stone I would
If I knew it I wouldn’t have to say
I feel like a man with no name
Oh why can’t I tell you, oh why can’t I say
I feel like a man with no name
In an unmarked grave
Here Aubrey Didcock and Daisy and son Albert Didcock in better days…
