MALMSBURY, 2026

MALMSBURY JUNE 21, 2026 JUST alighted onto the train at Malmsbury minutes ago… it is cold and is getting dark. We know one of the singers in the folk group duo ‘Valley Road’. I know A from school days. She introduced me to M (from the band) years ago. They live on a farm with their young boys near Kyneton. M plays with Rebecca and they have released one album and have another in the pipeline. They both play guitar and on record they have a little more backing. But live, they don’t sound too dissimilar from their first record. Last year, or was it the year before, I played this CD to and from work for several months. Several songs struck me as being lovely. And in those poignant moments of uncertainty on the way to work they brought me some kind of tender comfort. One of them is called The Briny Blue. On the way on the train this morning J read The Age online and I continued Ted Hughes’ Birthday Letters. The poems are so dark, and confronting, and sad and I enjoy going back to them because there is a ‘fierce kind of intelligence’ at work here (a phrase I have picked up somewhere), and although it offers only one side of the Hughes-Plath marriage, it is a fascinating and revealing and raw side. It offers a kind of riposte to Plath, who of course had her confronting say in the rawness of Ariel. Birthday Letters seems more autobiographical though, in way the poems begin with their first meeting at Cambridge, into marriage, transatlantic travel, the vicissitudes of their existence together, birth, tragedy, psychological battles, hostilities, the move to the Devon countryside, split. Above all, though, SP’s personality, her brittleness, insecurities, personal conflict. As I said it is good to get Hughes’ perspective because Plath’s is so prominent, a slant towards her in so many biographies, and so few of Hughes- one called ‘Bitter Fame’ on Plath the main exception. So Birthday Letters took me to Malmsbury on the V-Line, as The Age did for J. The standouts that reward reading after reading: ‘Stubbing Wharfe’- inside a grubby English pub, Plath homesick, both looking for somewhere to live, Hughes trying to sell his childhood territory to a sceptical Plath- ‘These side-valleys…full of the most fantastic houses’, Plath unconvinced, dreaming of ‘the thunderous beaches’ of the Atlantic, her own English idyll of valleys of D H Lawrence’s ‘brimming gentians’, and otherwise the sour mood brought on by Plath’s sense of ‘blackness’. I might write about these poems elsewhere. They are moving. The venue was the Malmsbury pub. Valley Duo were about to begin. We found ourselves on the back table- a good one. A’s table, with the next singer and the main act- Katrina Olsen-, M’s father. Valley Duo sang beautifully and the set included The Briony Blue. When they finished, a chance to catch up with both M and A, hearing about their farm which we visited a few years ago, the music business, books and films. I also spoke to Rebecca (Bec) about The Briony Blue and learnt it was about her father leaving when she was a child, feeling a pull, needing to get away. A song, therefore, about her relationship with her father, from his point of view: ‘My God, I miss you/ I didn’t plan it this way/ I never thought I’d need to stay/ But now I look out on the briny blue/ And think of you.’ Immediately- I think of the other songs I love about relationships with fathers- ‘Everything I Own’ (Bread)- ‘ I would give everything I own/ Just to have you back again- and Justin Hayward’s ‘New Horizons’- ‘But I’m never gonna’ lose your precious gift/ It will always be this way/ And I know I’m gonna’ find/ My own peace of mind/ Someday/ Someway…’ And then I think about my father…… Katrina Olsen came on- American/ Canadian with a strong voice and many a story to tell, and quite adept on the guitar. We left before her set finished, but we could see she was good and much practised. ………………………………………………………………………………………………………………… So, we are warm on the train, not far now from Woodend then Macedon. It is Sunday night and I find myself thinking about work the next day and how busy it will be. And how it holds some minor anxieties- I have done this many times- because a performance of any kind, whether it be singing, or acting, or nursing, or teaching- holds its uncertainties. I would love to swap quarters with M and A one day. But they have a thousand animals on their farm to look after. What a scary proposition for such an inexperienced person like me. If we did swap, they, on their part, would have to navigate the noise and the traffic. Perhaps this would be difficult for them- or, at least, their young children. So I enjoyed my day revisiting Birthday Letters on the train, but much more profoundly the warmth of genuine, warm interaction from authentic friends we seldom see. It felt easy and comfortable and reassuring in Malmsbury. It was fleeting but restorative. We had a good day. Let it be longer next time.