The Tracks Of My Years

I guess we can all break our lives down into segments:  years chunked together, shaping us as we develop and learn more with each passing day.   Music has always been massively important to my life.  Growing up in a pub the jukebox was ever-present.  Whilst school friends were busy playing hopscotch or discussing the antics from the latest episode of Black Beauty, I was more interested in what would be the number one song come Sunday evening with the chart rundown – tape recorder at the ready, naturally. 

My parents used to own a mobile disco – part and parcel of the pub lifestyle, I guess, and oh so very 1970’s it was too!  There were certain songs that would be played at every function and at the end of the night, or “chucking out time” when the disco was fired up in the public bar.  If I listen hard enough I can still hear the opening piano chords of the Moody Blues Go Now.  I can see my dad, larger than life, playing Mein Host, singing the chorus of Go Now to the regulars as he cleared the bar, turfing the punters out into the cold night air, leaving nothing but dozens of dirty glasses and ashtrays full to the brim.  I used to earn pocket money by cleaning out those ashtrays, and still get up for school in the morning.  

I had a happy childhood, if sometimes a lonely one, given my status as an only child.  So to be able to either take a friend on holiday or go away with a friend and their family was a real treat not enjoyed by many kids in the late 1970s/early 1980s.  The excitement of a week spent at Butlins Holiday Camp in Clacton on Sea in 1982 with my friend Gerry and her family was almost too much to bear (not least for the fact that I was mad keen on Gerry’s big brother Fran!)  An entire week spent milling around the funfair, entering dancing competitions in the clubhouse and finding out just what it takes to become a Red Coat.  It was on this holiday that I heard the album Dare, by The Human League – still one of my favourite albums of all time, some 28 years later.  The Things That Dreams Are Made Of sang Phil Oakey, as we danced our hearts out, trying to impress the lads with flick-head haircuts.

I suppose me teenage education began in July 1983, on the day my dad walked out on me and mum.  Growing up overnight doesn’t even come close!  The number one song in the charts on the day dad left was Paul Young’s Wherever I Lay My Hat (That’s my Home).  How apt!  All of a sudden we had to learn how to earn a living – studying for my O Levels in between office cleaning jobs and “homework” from the man in the white van who used to come to the house, leaving cartons of brochures in the hallway for us to stuff into envelopes.  Not bad for £3.50 a thousand – still, it put money in the meter! 

Despite the shock and hurt of dad turning his back on us, the summer of 1983 was one of the best summers of my life.  Long hot days spent in the park, ghetto blaster never far from earshot, taking turns to go to the little shop for the ice-poles – a bargain at 2p a time.  1983 was the summer I went to my first ever Radio 1 Roadshow – again, Clacton on Sea playing an integral part in my right of passage to adulthood.  Picture a gaggle of over-excited teenage girls, singing and dancing their way to Clacton on the train, the other passengers no doubt tiring of K C & The Sunshine Band’s Give It Up.  I should imagine David “Kid” Jenson is still recovering ……..!

And so to 6^th form.  The freedom!  Study periods!  A common room!  A hi-fi in the common room!!  It was just all too much.  So many new people to get to know, new subjects to study and a veritable feast of fun to be had.   You Spin Me Round (Like A Record) sang Dead Or Alive.   I think that that 12” single was actually glued to the turntable on the common room hi-fi, but I wasn’t complaining!

It was during my time at 6^th form that I began to have dark leanings.  It started with my clothes:  the pastels of the previous summer took on a darker hue until I only ever left the house wearing black.  Black hair soon followed, with black make-up not far behind.   Yes, welcome to Gothdom!  A can of hairspray would last 2 days and my hair crimpers were my best friend.  She Sells Sanctuary by The Cult is where it all began, and is one love affair throughout my life that has never ended.    Despite the onset of near middle-age respectability, my inner Goth is never far from the surface.

At the age of 20 I found myself working behind the bar at our local pub.  A truly local pub for local people.   Welcome once again to the jukebox  - that gizmo on the wall which, if the punters got it right, could increase bar takings and make or break a Friday night.  There was the cool crowd in the corner, the ones that everybody wanted to sit with but only the elite few were allowed into the inner circle of coolness.  Golden Earring’s Radar Love was an ever-present aural backdrop, courtesy of The Cool Crowd.  Imagine my immense embarrassment (and inner delight!) at being surrounded by The Cool Crowd at closing time, being serenaded to The Righteous Brother’s You’ve Lost That Living Feeling in a Tom Cruise/Top Gun kind of way.  Priceless!  

In 2008, the year I turned 40, I went to my first ever Arsenal match at The Emirates Stadium.   It was the run up to Christmas and the atmosphere was amazing.   Before every kick-off at The Emirates, The Wonder Of You by Elvis Presley is blasted through the PA system – and to be in the stadium, as the teams for the day were read out, and then to sing along to The Wonder Of You at the top of my voice as the Gunners ran out onto the hallowed turf was just the icing on the cake.  We won that day too.  Bonus!  

Fast forward 12 months to December 2009, when I met the love of my life.   It was very apparent, very quickly, that the love of my life wasn’t the same person I had been married to for the last 13 years.   After just 2 meetings we knew we had to be together and on New Year’s Day 2010 I left my husband and planned my new life in The Midlands – having spent all of my 41 years thus far in Essex and Suffolk.    As divorces go, mine was wonderfully amicable, and mercifully quick in its finalising. 

Now, with my wonderful man, my life feels alive again:  we go out, we laugh, we share.  And in August 2010, at the V Festival, we danced together in a field.   Apparently there were some 30,000 or so other people in the field, but as Paul Weller told us You Do Something To Me live on stage, we were alone in that field, looking into each other’s eyes, lost in the moment.

Yes. Life’s good, and I’m a lucky lady.