A Day by the Ocean
To mark 30 years since my dad Peter left us, I have written ‘A Day by the Ocean’ an instrumental piece of music. The piece was recorded as part a performance last year in Peter Street Bandstand Wexford Town. This piece was performed with Musici Ireland and conducted by Liam Bates. Listen for the motif of morse code ‘Peter Quigley 30’.
The entire performance of ‘The Purlieus of Peter Street’ was screened in the National Opera House in March 2022.
Peter Quigley was among many things, a very well travelled man. As he was a radio officer in the British merchant navy, he travelled to such diverse places as South America and the Artic. So many great adventures were all part and parcel of a very varied life at sea.
Recalling his time in the Artic, he once asked me what my definition of silence was. He then recalled a time when changing ship in the Artic, he spent a night on his own. The following day he heard someone walking towards him and all he could hear was their footsteps in the snow from a mile away.
He was an avid reader and introduced me to serious tomes from great writers such as Gore Vidal, Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, of which The Gulag Archipelago was his favourite and of course Hemmingway’s (The Old Man and the Sea) as I recall.
Of course he had a great sense of humour and loved Dave Allen, Woody Allen and the Pythons. Unfortunately cancer took him from us at only 58, but he remains a great influence on me to this day.
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