Opinion

Nuala McCann: Yes, Kate, we're still running up that hill

Nuala McCann

Nuala McCann

Nuala McCann is an Irish News columnist and writes a weekly radio review.

Singer Kate Bush has found a new audience thanks to the Netflix series 'Stranger Things'. Photo: William Conran/PA Wire.
Singer Kate Bush has found a new audience thanks to the Netflix series 'Stranger Things'. Photo: William Conran/PA Wire. Singer Kate Bush has found a new audience thanks to the Netflix series 'Stranger Things'. Photo: William Conran/PA Wire.

Kate Bush has finally broken America. She is apparently delighted.

It’s only nearly 50 years after Wuthering Heights stormed onto the stage – a 1978 hit - and blew us all away.

I heard that one teenager told her mum that there was this singer she thought she would really like… Kate Bush.

“I already did,” came the reply

In that long ago, Kate was a beautiful witch dancing wildly and wilfully across the stage – a dervish with amazing talent.

Her new audience is thanks to the power of the series, Stranger Things, on Netflix.

Running up that Hill is having a moment and is a rather lovely earworm even as I sit on the bed and type on a Sunday morning.

Outside the peal of bells summon worshippers to church; downstairs, my other half clatters away at the Sunday morning dishes.

There’s a joke in our house about our lack of machinery. We have human beings instead: he’s our dish washer, I’m our bread maker. Take that, Panasonic.

Next door, our son’s spoon clinks against his porridge bowl.

There is a smidgeon of Sunday morning blues in the air brought on by the discovery that we’ve run out of ground coffee.

Tis far from ground coffee I was rared.

It was tea at all hours in my childhood home – spoonfuls of dried leaves served in an old silvery pot with a willow pattern etched all around and a black plastic handle.

The only coffee came in a bottle and was Camp – with the Sikh soldier in full ceremonial on the label. My mother insisted it was coffee … she brokered no argument.

So many memorable afternoons were spent around in my best friend’s house where her mother heated coffee grounds in milk on the stove and strained it to produce the nectar of the gods long before baristas were invented.

It was a beautiful chemistry lesson. She was an even better witch than Kate Bush.

Which brings me to this morning.

“Where’s the Mayan Gold?” I hollered up the stairs.

“Have you tried hunting in the Andes?” came the reply.

Cue hollow laughter.

Coffee is my drug of choice.

They can take away the whiskey and gin, steal the 70% dark chocolate, but the day they wrench my hand from the cafetiere jug, is the day they plunder my soul.

Now the thud of my head – a coffee headache - is a baseline drumbeat too far.

It drives me around to the corner shop that does a reasonable Fairtrade French ground option and to wondering where I turned so middle class and so dependent on caffeine to get me through?

“I’m totally addicted,” I tell my friend.

She confesses she has a cardboard box load of packets of coffee – she started stockpiling you know when.

“I may have to burgle you,” I warn her.

The Kate Bush revival is doubly significant for those of us feeling like the rest of the world has forgotten ye olde pandemic but some of us can’t do so easily.

True to her lyrics, we’re running up that hill with the Hounds of Hell at our feet.

When Kate was all the rage, I was a student with a gold glittery headband and long black goth dresses before goth was a thing.

My concerns were whether my grant would stretch to a new top in Mirror Mirror and how I could ever write a 3,000 word essay on a ridiculously short poem about yellow chickens and a red wheelbarrow.

Where has all the time gone?

The years have flown by.

Once this time of year meant the intense suffering of exams …Now our children are suffering.

June summons memories of hot days at a desk in a line of precisely spaced desks in a large assembly hall.

The sun poured in through high windows and the papers lay unopened before us until the examiner announced: “You may begin!” and there was a collective scrabbling of paper being turned over, followed by intense silence.

Just the tick, tick, tick of the clock and the echo of the invigilators’ footsteps up and down the room.

As an unashamed swot, I liked exams – except for Physics, that was never ever fun although the book’s title tried to persuade you otherwise.

But back then, it seemed that if you worked hard and did well, then the rest of life would be plain sailing.

Was it ever that simple?

Quick, pass the Mayan Gold.