Before autumn arrived, I returned to The
Temple at Cleve and invited Mum to come and stay in the cottage
there. She had drinking
problems of her own, and had isolated herself in the
villa in Menorca I’d bought for her and Dad many years before. I thought we might help each other. I suppose this attempt at solidarity
in alcoholism was as mad as Mum thinking that sending me off to live with
her crazy mother Denny might help me – but I found The Temple a
peaceful and restorative place, and I imagined it might
help Mum too.
It did help us both for a few days, but I
quickly became impatient with Mum’s self-obsession.
I went to the local bookshop in Wallingford and bought Remembrance of Things Past by Proust. I took long walks while Mum
cooked food I couldn’t eat – usually strange Spanish fish
dishes – and did endless crosswords in the puzzle
magazine she bought in the village when I wasn’t reading.
In September 1981 Chris Thomas and Bill Price started on my solo
album Chinese Eyes at
Oceanic. We only worked for a week or so before we got stuck. The problem was that the
songs I had written were incredibly hard to perform. Chris had to start work on an album in Paris
with Elton, so I was forced to face the fact that I wouldn’t make the
revised November delivery date Atlantic was hoping for.
Text: Pete Townshend,
Who I Am, New York, Harper Collins, 2012
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