Late School, Early Life tracks

When I was at school, I LOVED the Cowboy Junkies, and then went to see them live in a small intimate little place when I was at University. They were great. These two tracks really bring back those years between 18 and 22, when I always seemed to by cycling somewhere, to lectures, to work at the local pub, to training. Just listening to these tracks puts me straight back on that bike, straight back into that time. It was fun, it was not as great as the time I always think the 18-22 year olds are having when I see them out and about now, but it was definitely some of my tracks for that time.

Teendom

One band will always remind me of my early teenage years, in all their ghastly teenaged angst and misery. Dire Straits are still great. I still love them. I can't hear any of their songs without thinking of my friends from that time, still with me, still laughing together. We made it through teenagedom, we'll make it through anything else life has to throw at us.

2 songs in particular, because they are great. Why Worry because it was a bit of a mantra and Walk of Life, because we spent quite a lot of time making up our own walk. What can I say? We were 13.

Time thieves

"There are 2 thieves of our time. Regret for the past and fear of the future. Don’t let them steal from you."


(and possibly blogging, but that's a whole different thing altogether)

The Weight

When Mum turned 50 we held an enormous party. 200 people, sit down dinner, the works. Now, both my brothers and Dad all play the guitar and quite like standing up in front of lots of people to sing songs. I'm not so keen myself, but when they suggested rewriting The Weight by The Band song to reflect Mum and what she has done for us and then singing it at her party, I couldn't say no. So we sang Take A Load off Judeeee. I was dreadful, really did get up there and proved that I can't sing to 200 of my nearest and dearest. To get the right key for the boys, it was totally the wrong range for me. But Mum didn't care. She loved it, and that was what mattered.

Moving on a decade or so, I have 2 small boys. A dear friend gave them a cd with grown up music on that she thought they would like. This song was one of them. The boys love it. Dave loves it. We are playing it a lot. So, in many ways it will also remind me of this time, driving the boys to nursery in the car, having them belt it out at the top of their voices. I still can't sing it but I still love it.

A courtship music

There are two albums that I was playing alot at the time when Dave and I first met. Ryan Adams's Heartbreaker and Jack Johnson's Brushfire Fairy Tales. It was a fun time for me, I'd left my city career and was back at University doing a Masters Degree. My days were filled with debates and I was engaging academically in a way I never quite managed during my first degree. I had the luxury of time to do whatever I wanted and I was newly in love. It was also late spring, early summer and the weather was playing ball. We filled every cliche in the book but didn't care. It was our time.

There are two favourite songs, one from each album to remind me of then.

Damn Sam, I Love a Woman That Rains: Ryan Adams

BrushFire FairyTales: Jack Johnson

adventures

"An inconvenience is only an adventure wrongly considered - an adventure is an inconvenience rightly considered."

GK Chesterton

A Croatian moment

Driving back from Bosnia with all our wordly belongings stuffed into the back of a little Renault Clio, Dave and I had a moment that will always be remembered. It was April, but still cold. We'd been camping all the way along the coast of Croatia, and had been rained on. We were broke too - the previous night in a campsite across the water from Korcula, we'd put the tent up in a howling gale and Dave had insisted upon cooking dinner on the campstove. I'd been up for a local pizza, but beans and sausages it was. The next morning everything was wet. Everything. Tent. Sleeping bags, clothes. The food was starting to smell damp. It was cold. It was chucking it down with rain.

About 10.30 I ventured that I would quite like a coffee please. Dave concurred and turned right. I was impressed. The man knew where a coffee place was. It wasn't looking promising, the Croatian inland was looking pretty bombed out and not like there would be a suitably marvellous coffee place, with sofas, fresh coffee, papers. You know the kind of place I was thinking of. But he had confidence so I believed.

Oh, foolish girl. We pulled over beside a wall and Dave leapt out with his trusty calor gas stove. He even had a windbreak out to ensure the flame didn't go out. The water boiled and a cup of instant coffee (with powdered milk for good measure) appeared, along with the sun. There was really only one song that could be the soundtrack for that moment, the maxwell house coffee advert from the 1980s sometime: I can see clearly now the rain has gone. We sang it the whole of the rest of the way from Croatia to Calais. I had to laugh, there was no other option. As Dave said, you'll remember this coffee for much longer than a capuccino in another Croatian cafe.

Married the man for a reason. His addiction to the windbreak for his calor gas stove.