We Never Had It So Good. The 1960s promised us much and delivered on a good deal of it: it flew us to the moon, it let us play among the stars; it gave us James Bond films, the bossa nova, hallucinogenic drugs, free love, colour television and, if you were English, the one and only world cup championship win so far. Most of what I craved as a ten year old I couldn’t afford and probably wouldn’t have known what to do with but it made King’s Road, Music, air travel, and beautiful girls in kinky boots all the more seductive. It did, however, give me a Mediterranean schooling and the bluest skies I’ve ever seen. It gave me The Beatles, Gerry Anderson TV puppets, Spirograph, a school trip to Paris, The Prisoner and a firm grounding in the acoustic guitar. Whilst I was too young for the drugs I was making tentative in-roads towards the free-love but what was most intoxicating of all for me in that psychedelic, l’age d’or of wonder and opportunity, was the flagrant abundance of inspiration and longing; or, as I called it, Dreamfood. I have always been amazed at the way an ordinary observer lends so much more credence and attaches so much more importance to waking events than to those occurring in dreams. Man is above all the plaything of his memory. (Andre Breton) Dreams have always held a fascination for me ... give me two hours a day of activity and I’ll take the other twenty two in dreams ... provided I can remember them. (Luis Buñuel) You got to have a dream; if you don’t have a dream, how you gonna have a dream come true? [South Pacific] The Music on Dreamfood 1: Vallauris: Badly sunburnt, I left my wife on the beach at Cannes and took a taxi up into the shaded hills to see the church at Vallauris whose interior Picasso decorated with two famous murals, La Paix and La Guerre. the hilly village of Vallauris was enchanting but I was hard put to find a taxi to take me back to Cannes until a local barman told me that for a mere Euro, a bus would arrive at the church to take me pretty much back to the door of my hotel...... the bus ride was the most spectacular I have ever taken, winding down the hills from Vallauris through several other picture-book villages depositing and collecting some of the most tranquil and pleasant looking people on the way. It was easily the best Euro I have ever spent. 2: Tertulia: ... is a Spanish word for a regular gathering of local men at a café or bar who meet to debate the affairs of the day, smoke, drink, play backgammon and often thump the table to get their point across. In exile, Picasso missed his Barcelona tertulia dearly and set about recreating a french equivalent at Le Dôme and La Rotonde in Paris with Francis Picabia, Juan Gris, Cocteau, Max Jacob, Man Ray, La Pacquerette and Kiki de Montparnasse. 3: Larbi’s Dance: ... is for Larbi Dida and the excellent French North African band, L’Orchestre National de Barbès whose energetic blend of rai, rock and reggae music is pure unadulterated joy and whose Arabic version of Sympathy for the Devil had my wife and I dancing in the aisles. Salaam Alaikum, Larbi et les Gars! 4: Café Life: Contented solitude in the silent company of like-minded strangers 5: Her Kiss: All kisses are special. This was hers and I’ll never forget it. 6: Bree’s Bikini: The saying goes that statistics are like bikinis: what they reveal is interesting but what they conceal is vital. Does this mean that Brazilian beaches are the best spots for market research? Let me run those figures past you once again ... 7: Saudade: ...is a Portugese word meaning ‘helpless longing’ and is, I understand a favourite bon mot of the author and broadcaster Clive James. 8: Compañero: I was going to call this Amigo [for Vicente Amigo] but the Gipsy Kings beat me to it. Compañero is a Latin American expression for ‘friend in the struggle’ which I came across while rehearsing a play called Trial By Fire by the Uraguayan writer Ugo Ulive. 9: Waketh Not The King: Originally written for the Royal Shakespeare Company’s touring production of Henry IV part two when Hal chances upon his sleeping father and sneakily tries the crown on for size. But is the king really asleep? 10: Dreamfood: An assortment of ephemeral delights from my childhood memories of the Dreamfood dispensers, television and radio. Caressed by the capricious whispers of sleep, I often heard the grown-up programmes drifting up to me from downstairs. 11: Transylvania Two-Step Whoopsie Toodle-oo: ... with apologies to the Grateful Dead. As a midnight storm illuminates the count’s hilltop castle in eerie relief, the vampire bats emerge from a coffin to perform some creepy turpsichorean manoeuvres. 12: La Valse d'Enfance Perdue: A waltz for lost childhood. Never let go... 13: Bright Blue Skies Don’t Cry: The evidence for this can be found hovering above the Mediterranean. We’ve seen them, haven’t we? 14: Valedictory: A stirring and emotional goodbye to the wonderful friends I made from the cast of My Fair Lady at the National Theatre and a heartfelt well-wish as we all progress to pastures new. 15: The Moon You Flew Me To: As a child I went there every night, and now one trip will cost the earth. 16: You Were Dancing in Your Sleep: Oh, yes you were!