‘BEFORE I FORGET’
By Melissa Hill

I have always enjoyed Melissa Hill’s books and I looked forward to reading this book with anticipation and enthusiasm. However, I believe ‘Before I Forget’ was cast into my hands for a reason.

Abby is a thirty-something woman who has the world at her feet. She’s feeling a little shaken-up after breaking up with her partner of five years Kieran and has lost a little of her self-confidence.

She’s finding it a bit hard to get back on her feet but has the full support of her best friend Erin and her sisters Caroline and Claire and her widowed mother Teresa.

But Abby’s life changes forever the day she rushes to work and has a terrible accident. She collides with a falling slate and is rushed to hospital, where she suffers a serious head injury.

When she eventually comes to some time later, she is concussed and suffers confusion and headaches and is told that she has suffered some damage to her brain. She has some testing times ahead, particularly with regard to her memory.

Her brain, her neurologist tells her, may not be able to retain images and events as they happen. She may lose them just as soon as they occur. Abby is devastated. How can she live like this?

A trip to New York to see her newly-born niece and a suggestion by her brother-in-law Zach offers some hope when he suggests keeping a memory chest for the baby and Abby decides to do just that, record everything as it happens, take a photograph every day, videotape everything, secure every moment in case it’s lost forever– “before I forget.”

Feeling the need to record all life’s little treasures, Abby makes a list of all the things she wants to do before her brain gives up on her, ‘Visit the South Pole… Kiss a Stranger… Christmas in New York’.

Abby, just like in a movie, bumps in to an Irishman, of all people! Finn is just passing through and they get talking and she takes a chance, Finn is warm and friendly and offers to show her round New York and taking the bull by the horns she does just that.

She has the time of her life, eating chestnuts in the cold, sharing life stories with mugs of hot chocolate. On the face of it, it sounds so romantic but when fate brings them together back on Irish soil in the New Year to her Finn is but a stranger and Abby realises the extent of this cruel illness.

As time goes by Abby faces some challenging times. Will her psychologist Hannah be able to help her allay her fears? Will she and Finn be able to build a lasting relationship?

Is it fair to ask him to take her on if she is having memory problems when she could forget today before they even begin tomorrow? Can she ever lay the ghost of ex-boyfriend Kieran to rest? And what big secret are her family hiding?

The reason I found this book so emotional to read is because Abby is diagnosed with epilepsy which I have had for the past twenty three years. Generally, it has been quite controlled with medication but not in the past two years. Since then it has been out of control and in my opinion it is not an illness that is talked about as openly as diabetes or asthma.

Melissa Hill tackles a brave and sensitive subject in this, her latest book and I, for one, found myself devouring it.

‘Before I Forget’ is published by Hodder.

‘HEADS’
Reviewed by Gerry Anderson

One thing I know about my friend well-known BBC Broadcaster and Author Gerry Anderson is that he’s always funny, always entertaining and always unpredictable– and only he could push the boundaries and write the book that no one else dared to write– the truth about life in the showbands.

Not for him the rose-tinted spectacled memories, not for him the limos, the fancy hotels and the big pay cheques and the groupies– rather the nameless, faceless women, (the ‘woodtops’) the broken-down clattered vans, the gigs in tents with holes in them where no one turned up, the embarrassing shiny suits, the pathetic tomato sandwiches, the rows, the cat and mouse drama of ‘the slow dance’ in damp rural dance halls, the hilarious and desperate attempts to score with women of all ages, backgrounds and marital status.

I promise you you’ll laugh out loud at Anderson’s account of his years in ‘Brown and O’Brien’ back in the early seventies. (Long before I was born Gerry… just thought I’d sneak that in– I know you’ll be reading this!)
Gerry dares to tell it like it really was in the showband era in his newly-published memoirs ‘Heads’, released recently by Gill and Macmillan. The words sex, drugs and rock ‘n’ roll spring to mind in this humorous and nostalgic look back at life on the road in a haze of women, dance halls, late nights and incoherent days.

From his early days in a bed-sit in Dublin, he says it didn’t occur to him that he ought to eat, having been fed and pampered by his loving mother prior to discovering his independence. Two collapses followed and an unfriendly encounter with Gaybo.

In 1972, Gerry was the bass guitarist with a band called ‘Brown and O’Brien’, a fairly dispirited bunch of musicians making a half-hearted stab at recapturing the glory and popularity previously enjoyed by showband singers Billy Brown and Mike O’Brien.

In a period when the decade-long wave of inexplicably popular showbands was receding rapidly, the group trudged their way to a gig in Donegal, pausing only for spinal column crushing concoctions of Benzedrine and whiskey, and recollections of dingy Dublin bed-sits and Clockwork Orange-induced hotel room break-ins…

Says Gerry, “People look back on the showband business as you know, ‘what a wonderful time it was, a unique time and everybody was happy,’ but that’s not true at all and that’s the reason why I decided to write this book.

“I called the book ‘Heads’ because ever since I was about ten years old our house was full of musicians because my brother was a trombone player and the first thing I noticed was that that they called each other heads– ‘How are ya head!’ A head was someone who was particularly good musically. I decided to write it because I thought nobody else would– I’m not saying that this book is the quintessential book on showbands because it’s not but it’s the kind of book I’d have liked to read.”

Gerry reflects on his past life and the current downward trajectory of his career. He recalls incidents of which he is not proud, and offers solutions to important issues that need not have concerned him.

This is no ordinary good-time showband memoir filled with warm stories and wholesome craic. This is the way it was, with harsh behaviour, singing dwarves, whip-wielding landladies, psychotic saxophonists and chemically-enhanced drummers.

Gerry started off as an apprentice toolmaker and was sacked immediately because of bad attitude. Retiring in a huff to his bedroom carrying a guitar, he emerged three years later as a rock and roll guitar player. He played in bands and lived in England, Dublin, Canada and America until he got too old to stay up three days in a row, dropped out of rock and roll and went to university to study Sociology, Social Anthropology and Continuing Education.

He joined the BBC in 1985 on Radio Ulster’s breakfast show, which he presented until 1994. During this period he also presented programmes on BBC Radio 2, and an innovative daily programme on BBC Radio 4 called ‘Anderson Country’ as a result of which he was hounded out of England. In 1995 he returned to the BBC Radio Ulster morning show which he continues to present.

‘Heads’ is available in all good bookshops now, priced €14.99. Buy it. I promise you it’s a hoot!