This is one of those difficult posts which has a viewership of maybe two or three, inc. me, it being of fleeting interest to others, a relic of “back in the day”.

Three reasons for running it at all … one for the song itself which kicked off a short period in my life which was fairly bizarre … two is looking at interesting reactions to that song and three is how this timeframe from one September, through the following year, into the January following that, ended in collapse and loss … talk about highs and lows early in life. There’ve been other intense periods since then, as with you no doubt, but this was the first sustained time period of constant highs and lows over 16 months.

Imagining this as a short film … scene one opens with me with a gf at a distance, gal of the same age in Sutton Coldfield, Brummyland, while I spent my spare time on this lake, sailing:

She and I became as close as anyone separated by thousands of miles could get, I’ll use initials only … hers were TN … I had my dinghy which I actually won a few races in, it being superlight, built by my dad who’d once been a carpenter. She was right into the local music scene and Sutton Coldfield had a revered, if shortlived band, almost as shortlived as this mini-saga. That song coming up in scene three.

Scene two saw my parents driving me for I think our regular September hols but this time the car broke down, had to be garaged as it was a German make, Goliath, no parts out in the sticks. Anyway, we boarded the national express equivalent in the late evening, just our bags with us and my parents promptly grabbed the first two seats at the front … passengers having alighted.

Oh wonderful, thought I, so I’m stuck all night alone, blow that. So I went looking for someone to talk to and lo and behold, rear bench seat on their own … two girls five years older than me … one was distinctly not interested but the nearer was … MB … long story short, I ended up sleeping with her in a manner of speaking. I’m still wondering if females put out pheromones or it’s just perfume.

Scene three was the release of the Sutton Coldfield song below in October … TN and friends were right into it, I loved it too and thought the message was a nice one between us, she did too. Playing a reaction vid version of it because it’s good commentary around 2:46, plus it’s a black couple and I’m going to be racist here … these guys felt the music immediately, whereas the white reactors only wanted to analyse it, technically … sorry … b-o-r-i-n-g.

And so into the following year, difficult scholastically but the high points were two school dances … scenes three and four … our type of music from that year and I imagine this song would certainly have been played those evenings. One was a girl I met newly, if that’s a word … the other had been my first gf at age 4, walking her to kinder, then mates again at 8, now once more together … that took us into the end of year holidays, and that’s when I met my first “full on” so to speak, JH, now JF, in January … no need to go into details.

Reason for no details is that I’ve just recently ‘met’ her again and she’s possibly going to be reading this.

Our paths geographically, then romantically parted, new academic year started … I’m preparing to ask her again about that time. End of story.

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First afterthought about those two reactors above … how old would you say? Mid to late 20s? I’d say Gen Zee … listening to Boomer music. Hmmmmm.

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Second afterthought … this was also a nice reaction to the song without interrupting and analysing halfway. Responsive people are nice too.

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Last afterthought is more universal. As young people of that age, living in the present, we could never have thought it would all become turgid, complicated, pretentious, even develop a nasty edge as it did in the 70s with punk. Plus we grew up, studied, joined the workforce, got down to the serious biz of families.

Those almost carefree beach days … sigh … well, I’ve written on those before. If we were blessed to have those … well we can just say thank you. There were plenty of highs and lows in the following decades … not sure we should even try to recapture past glories … just be thankful for what we had, while we had it.