“Sipping Through Their Fingers / Father and Sons“ - ABBA/Cat Stevens medley by the Marsh Family

We got ambitious for this one, and chose to parody and merge together two of our favourite parental lament songs: Cat Stevens/Yusuf Islam’s incredible “Father and Son“ from his Tea for the Tillerman and ABBA’s “Slipping Through My Fingers“ by Björn Ulvaeus and Benny Andersson from their 1981 The Visitors album (lately incorporated into productions of Mamma Mia!). Both originals are heartbreaking and bittersweet in their own way, and play with the way that children age and challenge boundaries - often faster than we care to realise. But we figured we’d invert the songs to keep them about a sense of regret, but to have the children being the ones giving the advice. So the most obvious subject matter was to address what happens when parents have had a few too many drinks. As pubs opened and COVID restrictions eased in the UK recently, there has been a real sense of release. And we’re sure we’re not the only ones to have braved very cold spring gardens, enjoyed long-lost company, reunited with a handful of fr