Bring me sunshine...

Family gatherings have a habit of throwing up odd confessions, odder relations and rattling the deep-set bones of cupboard-dwelling skeletons. But I have to admit that my mother's revelation that she liked the music of grunge-rock gods Nirvana was more unexpected than finding a Methodist minister playing poker and drinking moonshine in an all night strip club.

The three of us - mum, Roo and me - were munching our way through delightful homemade organic burgers in the Wibbly Wobbly cafe on campus late on Friday night when the first melancholic minor harmonics of Come As You Are rolled over us like aural surf. She stopped, Luscious Lamb Burger poised in hand, cocked her head to one side and listened intently.
"I like this song. Who's it by?" she asked Roo.

And so was set in motion the little tableau that followed on Saturday morning, the three of us - in Roo's student halls of residence room this time - listening to The Best of Nirvana on CD for a full hour or more, Roo and I lounging at either end of her single bed and mum in the armless armchair drinking tea. Eventually prising ourselves away from the sounds and stories of Kurt Cobain, we trundled off campus and drove the few miles into Lancaster itself.

The city is set on a hill and radiates with a subtle golden glow from the soft yellow sandstone of the houses, shops and offices. We parked at the bottom and walked slowly up through the stalls of the open market that runs up and down the spine of the high street: breads, cheeses, game, sausages, curries, doughnuts, fresh English strawberries and a hundred and one other delights to choose and buy direct from the producers. We had no mission in mind other to look, buy and enjoy, and - in my case - to visit a bookshop.

Lancaster is well provided with bookshops and I had, late the previous evening, stood and lingered outside the university branch of Waterstones willing it to open especially for me as Roo took us on a tour of the campus. A couple of hours and a few shops later we staggered out of the high street with our purchases into the beery embrace of a local pub serving food and football played out on a range of giant screens. None of us being football fans, we had no clue what the big game of the day was except it ended in a huge trophy and much swapping of stripy shirts.

Striped shirts, as it turned out, might have been rather more appropriate attire than we realised for our next stop at Lancaster Castle. Picking up the brown visitor attraction signs as we left the car park, we circled and dipped around the city's compact one-way system in search of the fortifications that we could see up on top of the hill. For a while it seemed that whichever way we took we just couldn't get any closer. Along the river bank we went, past beautiful waterfront apartments and a recently engineered harmonic arching bridge painted the palest sky blue. Down a country lane next to the canal full of ducks and coots and reeds. Through twined streets, up precipitous slopes, across cobbles until we began to think we'd imagined it. And then, suddenly, the castle was in front of us. Curiously quiet and deserted of visitors, we pulled up on the steep forecourt and peered at the huge wooden door studded with square headed bolts. Her Majesty's Prison, Lancaster Castle, read the stern navy blue sign. Lancaster Castle is a prison, as it turned out, not a tourist attraction. Now that would explain the lack of directions.

Still laughing at ourselves and our castle gaffe, Roo suggested we drive the few miles out to the seaside town of Morcambe. Like many British seaside resorts, its grandeur and glamour has perhaps faded a little in recent years in the luring headlamps of package holidays abroad. But if tourists don't flock here in quite the numbers they once did, the town is making a huge and visible effort to tempt them back again with refurbishments and street artworks. The beach is gentle and sandy and curves against the promenade in a welcoming crescent of soft-breaking waves and thousands of seabirds. The horizon is made up of a stunning vista of the hills of the Lake District.

But perhaps the town's most dazzling possession is its glorious tribute to its favourite son, Eric Morcambe, born here and one half of the much loved comedy duo Morcambe and Wise. The life-size bronze statue of Eric, complete with signature glasses, captures him in his heyday doing the steps to their classic show-closing number, Bring Me Sunshine. The nation mourned when he died at a premature 58 years of age in 1984. The memorial to this national treasure, built in 1999 and 15 years after his death, was unveiled by The Queen. A memorial too to gentle comedy for gentler days perhaps.

Bring Me Sunshine - the theme tune of Morcambe and Wise

Bring me Sunshine, in your smile
Bring me Laughter, all the while
In this world where we live, there should be more happiness
So much joy you can give, to each brand new bright tomorrow

Make me happy, through the years
Never bring me, any tears
Let your arms be as warm as the sun from up above
Bring me fun, bring me sunshine, bring me love.

Bring me Sunshine, in your eyes
Bring me rainbows, from the skies
Life's too short to be spent having anything but fun
We can be so content, if we gather little sunbeams

Be light-hearted, all day long
Keep me singing, happy songs
Let your arms be as warm as the sun from up above
Bring me fun, bring me sunshine, bring me love.


Words - Sylvia Dee, Music - Arthur Kent


Photographs: At the top - mum, Eric Morcambe and Roo. In the middle - bronze seagull from Eric's memorial garden. At the bottom - Roo