Grandma Butterly

Hi everyone. I hope you're well. The last song on the album is an old one - Grandma Butterfly. It had to go on the album as she's my strongest connection to Guyana. A slightly different story here - not exactly the background of how I wrote the song, but something connected. I'm working on a memoir, and this is one of the chapters. During the heatwave in France I wrote for a week. It's all very rough. The memoir centres on different gifts I've received in my life. It seems that I've received a lot. I wonder if that's the payoff for living a very free life. Anyway. Hope you enjoy the story.

The Butterfly

The first song I wrote in Malawi was called Grandma Butterfly. As usual, it was my brother that came up with the nickname. He gave nicknames to everyone, because he’s just that affectionate, playful kind of person. The nicknames often stick. Mine is Deebs. My mum’s is now Nana biscuit - but pronounced biscuut. My dad decided to visit me in my second month in Malawi, and we ended up at the lake in Nkhata Bay, at a lodge, coincidentally enough called Butterfly Space. One day, overlooking the mighty blue expanse that is Lake Malawi, a melody came out, which would later become another crowd favourite.

‘It’s gonna be alright

It’s gonna be okay’

When my grandma said these words

The darkness flew away

I grew up with my grandma. Her favourite thing to say was, ‘me was born in nineteen-nineteen’, before launching into stories of all her nine children, or how she met her husband, or their ‘rich and famous’ life back in Guyana, where there were ‘just two seasons, sunshine and rainfall’. She had so many stories, and if I’d known what I know now, I’d have so many more questions for her!

In my household when I was born, in Sidcup, Kent, there was my older brother, older cousin who I thought was my sister, mum, dad, and gran. This is my grandmother on my mother’s side of the family, just to be clear. So I grew up eating what I thought was just Indian food, but in fact was really Indo-Guyanese food. There’s still daal, curry, roti, and all those things, but not cooked in a way you could ever find in an Indian restaurant - unless that Indian restaurant happens to be in Guyana, or maybe Trinidad.

Even though I was living a good enough life in Malawi with my three weekly gigs, and it was enough to pay my rent, eat and go for a few beers here and there, it wasn’t enough to save up for a flight. I spent the first eighteen months without leaving the country at all, but some very close friends were getting married in the summer of twenty-fourteen, and my mum missed me, so she paid for me to fly home for the wedding, and to spend a month with her. A year later, in the summer of twenty-fifteen, I got a phone call from my mum to say that I should get on a flight as soon as possible, as my grandma wasn’t doing so well.

Two days later I was on a flight, and one day after that I was by her bedside, at a nursing home in West London. My whole family was in the room. My mum’s three sisters, my brother, four of my cousins. It was very clear that this was the last moment for our dear and glorious Grandma Butterfly. My mum told me that I should tell her the big news. She was right, so I did. Even though she wasn’t responsive by then, I leaned in beside her ear and whispered. ‘You’re now going to be a great grandma!’

I don’t know if I imagined it, but I thought I saw her smile.

After the funeral, we had a little reception at a quaint town hall with tea and scones, just as she’d have loved it. My brother, being a filmmaker, had filmed her often during these last years, and had put together a beautiful ten minute video celebrating her charm. To end the video, my Grandma Butterfly song rolled in. It was emotional for everyone. This was as good a moment to break the news to the family that I was going to become a dad. ‘As someone leaves this world, it often seems to be that someone else arrives,’ I began. There were a lot of questions.

Since it was rare for me to be in the UK these days, I wanted to do some catching up with old friends, and one of the things I’d missed was Thai food. I met up with an old University buddy called Danny at a restaurant in Soho and told him the whole story. No, I wasn’t sure if I was ready to be a dad, and no, it definitely wasn’t planned. I had taken an English teaching job in London, and decided to stay for three months, so I could at least have a little bit of a cushion for when this baby arrived. That’s as far as I had gotten with it. Danny paid for the food.

As we left the restaurant, we noticed there was a casino opposite, and he suggested we go in. He gave me twenty pounds and just said, ‘have a bit of fun on me.’ So we walked in, and if being back in the UK after Malawi isn’t enough of a shock, being in the casino took it to another level. I had to check with him that I’d heard correctly when we passed a table where someone had just put a fifty thousand pound bet on a blackjack hand. From the accent he sounded Russian.

I very quickly lost eight of my precious twenty pounds on four lousy games of blackjack and we went outside for a spliff. When I’d met Danny at university, I was a big weed smoker, but these days I barely touched it. It was a hash spliff and I just took a few puffs but it was enough to mellow me all the way down. When we walked back into the casino it was like a different place.

I could notice all the purple and pink lighting beams, and the whir of excitement and mad energy of the place was hypnotic. We walked around to different tables and Danny placed bets here and there until he’d decided that he’d lost enough and that it was time to leave. I was actually thinking of just cashing in my twelve pounds and giving it back to him, but he told me to just bet it on something.

I don’t know what it was about that roulette table that attracted me, but I think I may have made eye contact with the guy spinning the wheel, and he looked nice. Whatever it was, I decided to stop. I’d never played roulette but thought, why not. I was allowed to buy twelve pounds worth of chips and when they arrived I saw that they were purple chips and the picture on them was of little butterflies. I knew exactly what number I wanted to place them on - ‘me was born in nineteen-nineteen!’

I decided though that it would be good to play it safe, so I decided to place them on the intersecting cross between 19,20,22 and 23. That way if any of those numbers came in I’d have a chance of winning, even if it was only nine to one instead of thirty-six to one. I was quite happy with my decision to play it safe, but the dealer looked at me and I felt this crazy connection. He said in a soft London accent, ‘where are you trying to put your chips?’

‘Well,’ I mumbled, ‘actually I was thinking of nineteen, but I just thought it would be good to put it there so it’s safer.’

‘If you want to put ‘em on nineteen, just put ‘em on nineteen,’ he said, making eye contact, and moving the chips to nineteen, which I just smiled at. I didn’t even bother to see where the roulette ball landed because I was pretty sure there was no way I could win. When I felt Danny looking at me, and then I saw the dealer and the whole table indeed smiling at me. I looked over and saw the roulette ball perched neatly and nicely right there in the black 19.

I felt something that’s hard to explain. I felt the spirit or the ghost maybe of my grandmother come and hug me kind of. Not really a hug but a feeling of them almost within you and surrounding you, just for a moment, and then she was gone. The dealer seemed to wink at me, as I walked off with my four-hundred-and-thirty-two pounds in butterfly chips which I cashed in immediately. In my mind I had no doubt what it was. A little gift from my grandma to help me get started on this new adventure in my life, as a father.

I love my brother. He and my gran had a special relationship too. I’d been with him when I took my first ever LSD trip. He’d done a Tarot reading for me which had helped me decide on a West Africa trip instead of a Japan trip. Now, however, he was a staunch atheist, and opposed to anything with a spiritual tinge to it.

We were driving to Hastings for a family outing, and it hadn’t been long since the funeral, so everyone was still emotional. I think I was driving the car, with my brother in the passenger seat, or maybe it was the other way around, and in the back was my mum and two of her sisters. I decided to tell the story about what had happened in the casino. As I was telling it, I felt the same warm cuddly, yet somehow ethereal feeling of being connected for a moment to someone from the spirit realm. Just as I was telling it, my brother broke the spell.

‘So you mean to say that you think that Gran thought the best way to support you on this new journey would be at a casino? She’s basically encouraging you to gamble? That’s the most ridiculous thing I’ve ever heard,’ he said.

Of course an argument ensued, as they do between siblings. As for me, I was indeed very emotional. I felt it. That’s all I can say. You can think whatever you want. The family at the back didn’t get involved at first, but when my brother refused to let it go, and just kept pushing on it, wanting me to relent and admit it was mambo jumbo, which of course, I in my own stubbornness would never do either, they chimed in.

‘Leave him alone,’ one of my Aunties said. ‘Neil had this experience and that’s his experience,’ another Auntie said. ‘I think it’s a lovely story,’ said my mum. ‘And I think that’s a lovely way to receive a gift from her.’

After that my brother conceded to let it go, though he did quietly make a remark about it here and there, but by now, I was kind of laughing at the whole situation too. We climbed up this kind of hill, until we reached the top of a cliff that overlooked the channel. It was a beautiful sunny day, and we sat down together on the grass, relieved that we’d passed through the tension and were now in good spirits. I had my guitar with me, as always, and my brother asked if I could play a song he and everyone enjoyed me playing - Cat Stevens’ The Boy with a Moon and Star on his Head.

I took my guitar out of the case, and felt like playing it lying down so I lay on my back, finger picking the opening riff, and was just about to start singing when I noticed that above my head was a giant inflatable kite. I told the family that they should look up. The giant kite happened to be in the shape of a butterfly, coloured in purples, pinks and yellows and floating above us like an angel. Everyone felt the spirit come that time. We all looked at my brother and it really felt like, for once, I’d won the argument.