Sometimes I find music with my computer, even though I would not describe myself as the sort of person who likes any sort of soundtrack while I’m working.
Some people don’t seem able to do much without the noise on. We have teenagers next door, who are fond of the outdoor life, with the radio.
The OH is unable to drive anywhere without the car radio. My father used to finish his work for the night and then put on the radiogram and conduct classical music.
I have frequently been described as a misery because I hate background music. It stops the words in my head. I don’t even like rubbing down porcelain to music; if it’s not done gently in its own time, it breaks.
So, lovely lovely silence for me, it takes half an hour of it for my brain to begin working properly and then the words arrive and will stay unless interrupted. The man from Porlock is my nemesis and the OH with shopping lists, remembered phone messages and idiotic entertainment snippits from the smart phone (if it was that smart it would know how much I dislike it and keep its skateboarding terriers to itself).
Even now as I type in my room I am interrupted by noise from the OH’s giant TV in the room below, it’s his friend Marion the cowboy again.
Yes, I am a misery and, without a shadow of a doubt, the day will come when there is only me left in the house and I will regret the absence of interruptions and it will serve me right, I should be careful what I wish for.
However.
Every now and then I find old music with a search engine. The sounds of my salad days, the late sixties and early seventies.
My goodness we had music in the Sixties and we ain’t seen nothing yet, there are those who reckon the Sixties didn’t happen till the Seventies and the music whisks me right back.
In your head you were leather-clad, faster than light, about to conquer the world. In reality you were dancing round your handbags in a heap on the floor of a seedy disco, where the toilets were awash, the drinks were overpriced, the men were spotty boys and the sophisticated décor of the hip room was Formica tables and plastic banquettes when they turned the lights on.
My friend Ann liked Eric of the Animals and was determined to elope with him because she was a pragmatist and he was a Geordie too, therefore she was more likely to run into him in the street than I was to marry Paul of the Beatles. We all had fantasies about guitar heroes. The reality for the girls who actually hung out with the groups was that of trying to civilise musicians, always an arduous undertaking. They were the girls with the look, straight yellow hair, five tons of mascara and endless legs.
If I’d known I was at my tallest then, I’d have enjoyed that more too.
Nothing will match the excitement of arriving on the first bus into town on Saturday to get to the record shop to scoop the single of the week. I played them on my Dansette record player until knew where the scratches were, backwards
The energy I had, was extraordinary. I remember the leapy feeling inside that is youth, coursing through uncluttered arteries. Listening to that music again can help you find the shadow of the feeling, even if you are some old codger tapping a slipper.
And I will still get up and dance, on my own if I find the right music and really no one is watching.
The music of your youth provides the soundtrack of your life.
Who takes you there?
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