FORMER national poet of Scotland, Liz Lochhead, takes aim at “the failures of the Tory government” in a new song written in honour of care home workers, the Sunday National can reveal.
Lochhead, one of the country’s best-known poets and playwrights, teamed up with “old friend”, singer-songwriter Carol Laula, to create The Carer’s Song, which is released on YouTube today. Written and produced in lockdown, it uses one of Lochhead’s favourite songs, Angel from Montgomery by late US artist John Prine, along with new lyrics from the perspective of a care home worker during the pandemic.
Urging “respect me, protect me, mibbe pey a bit mair”, the song has been made available for free along with a rainbow-hued video created by schoolboy Sonny Piyasena, the 13-year-old grandson of one of Lochhead’s oldest friends and who calls the writer “Auntie Liz”. She told the Sunday National: “There is a span of sixty years between the artists involved in making this. What we have in common is absolute disgust at the Tory Government’s treatment of all care-workers.”
Lanarkshire-born Lochhead was motivated to write “by anger at the failures of the Tory government, its lack of respect for and disgraceful treatment of these workers” who she says “at great risk to their own health and that of their families, look after the elderly and most vulnerable with compassion and skill”.
She went on: “Boris Johnson actually blamed the scandalous care home death toll of Spring 2020 on their ‘sometimes not following procedures’, then refused to apologise.”
That July row came when Johnson was asked to account for the high number of Covid deaths in care home settings – after the head of NHS England called for the “proper” funding of the sector.
Lochhead believes she may have contracted Covid while flying to Australia in February – before the full gamut of symptoms had been established. She experienced a cough, fatigue and lost her sense of taste. She said: “All I wanted to do was lie down and sleep.”
At home in Glasgow, she’s formed a bubble with her sister and has struggled with loneliness during lockdown restrictions: “It’s difficult for everybody. We all cancelled everything in our diaries we were doing for the year. There was a lightning in August, then this second wave came.
“This song has been a wee light at the end of the tunnel.”
Featuring Marco Rea on guitar and bouzouki, Steve Kettley on saxophone and many other musicians, The Carer’s Song was produced at The Barne Studio in Clydebank. Lochhead said: “I can’t sing a note but it’s lovely to work with musicians, it gives me such a buzz. When I got the lyrics written, I knew it should be Carol’s voice.
“We have all done it for nothing, for the feeling we could contribute. These people have busted a gut. When I saw the finished article, I was crying because it’s just been so lovely.”
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