Day 242. To all the girls... (30/8/13)

So I was thinking that I hadn't really talked about the connections that music makes to past events for a while and that got me to thinking that there are certain songs that more readily recall people that I used to know rather than actual moments.

So;

'Sometimes When We Touch' by Dan Hill is Debbie Hastings. Upper sixth when we were lower sixth, a night in the Farmer's Arms (yes I was barely 17 and in a public house, I'm sorry okay) when everybody round the table discussed their favourite songs. This was Debbie's. Nowadays that would be a guilty pleasure, then it was just an 'are you kidding?' She defended it brilliantly.

Elaine Pinder was Debbie's best mate. Into New Romantic before it became New Romantic, when it was just Roxy & Bowie nights put on midweek by town centre clubs. She's Quiet Life by Japan and Kick in The Eye by Bauhaus for a night when we bumped into her upstairs at Rotters.

Elaine's younger sister Cathy and her best mate Joanne McKay are Golden Years by Bowie. They were both walking through the common room singing this when they were lower sixth and we were upper. I'd started getting into Bowie but had done the early period and the current (Scary Monsters) and hadn't managed to alight on Station to Station yet. They were the way into that mid-period 'funky' Bowie. Cathy used to eat dried Marvel (the powder that became milk when mixed with water?) straight from the jar and was the girl that I was out with (but not 'with') when Craig Charles decided he should try and 'cop' for her. Can't remember the last time I saw either Cathy or Joanne, don't know where they are now.

Heyday by The Sound. Brilliant single. Not the kind of thing that Karen McNally generally liked. I worked with her in Kwik Save. I was besotted. I may have mentioned this before. She didn't feel the same way. I don't know if she knew that I did. She was into your 'Kool and The Gangs' and 'Heatwaves', that kind of early 80s bland soul pop but you could play your own tapes on the 'ghetto blaster' in the Kwiky staff room when you were on your break. I had a tape with this on. The Jam's 'Man in the Corner Shop' as well. It came on, she asked what it was, I told her, she said 'this is good' and I knew, just knew, that it was a sign.

It wasn't.

The Thompson Twins. Hold Me Now. Twiggy's favourite song ever. Her name wasn't really Twiggy. It was Irene (or Donna, long story) but she was given the nickname by her family as an earlyunderweight baby and it stuck. Nobody ever called her anything but Twiggy. We went out a couple of times, she ended it by phone at half time in a televised Liverpool/Newcastle FA cup tie which I hadnt gone to because I was supposed to be seeing her.

Oh well, you move on.

These all seem to be about girls don't they? I'm sure there are songs that remind me of blokes but I'm damned if I can be bothered remembering any of them.

No name mentioned on this one but if there's anything more pitifully embarrassing than a cider filled seventeen year old trying to pull during a slow dance at a friend's Boxing Day party I have yet to come across it. Roxy Music. Dance Away.

Haircut 100's Fantastic Shirt - talking to Sharon McDonald by the 'Defender' machine in The Chaser.

Any Prefab Sprout song (like the newly released and quite wonderful 'Best Jewel Thief In The World) brings to mind Pamela McAloon. McAloon's not that common a name, we'd lost touch with Pam before we ever heard of Prefab Sprout and their leader Paddy McAloon, often wondered if they're related in any way.

Songs from two years of my life. People I haven't seen since but always there, at the back of my mind just waiting for the right song to bring them forward again.

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