Day 285. The unguarded moment. (12/10/13)

Is it too early to pull the year's subplots together?

Surely that should come at the denouement? Surely I should reveal the moment that everything has been leading to on my birthday?

I'm going for it now. Everything else may well be postscript, in the way that the last episode of each season of Game of Thrones is an easing out of the events of the preceding episode's true climax.

I've spoken before about the first time that I knew that J really 'got' me; our first Christmas as a couple when, after finding out fairly early that I was a comic geek but swearing blind that she would never go into a comic shop to buy a stupid comic for me, gave me a Dan Dare annual.

A friend pointed out a while ago that what she loved about my blog was that no matter what I was writing about, what I was actually generally writing about, what came over most clearly, was how much I loved my wife.

Another friend pointed out on a night out that what she liked was the way that I gave out little slices of my life when I seemed to be writing about something else.

Yet another told me that he liked the way that each day's blog was fairly consistently roughly the same length. I'll put money on proving him right with this one as well.

What follows didn't come out of the blue although I may portray it as having done so; there had been conversations over the last couple of days, a little bit of my visiting stores and a fair degree of Internet based obsession.

If you had asked me I'd have said it was 1983 but I've just checked Wikipedia, it was 1981. I was 17, going on 18. The Church, Australian psychedelic popsters, released their first album 'Of Skin and Heart' and its attendant, utterly glorious 'Ticket To Ride' referencing single, 'The Unguarded Moment'. The sound was everything; chiming guitars, riffing and jangling away.

I was prime for this sound, I already loved every piece of psych that I'd been exposed to and in Liverpool in the early 80s you were exposed to a lot of psych. The Bunnymen referenced the sound in places, The Teardrop Explodes in many more. The Church made it explicit, skinny jeans, paisley shirts, 60s fringes and from the pictures that I saw and the articles that I read they had one other prime ingredient.

Their guitarist, Marty Wilson-Piper (brilliantly, for an Australian band, he was from Birkenhead) played a 12 string Rickenbacker. I was instantly captured. I barely even played at the time but this was what I wanted.

Now bear in mind that this was before we all had instant access to anything and everything, before you could trace down the influences of your favourite bands at a whim, before you could find out what made them sound the way that they sounded. I came to the true birth of the Rickenbacker influence the wrong way round. The Church used the 12 string Ric because The Byrds did, because The Beatles did. That incredible sound at the beginning of 'Hard Day's Night'? George on a 12 string Ric, only the third in existence by some accounts. And George based his 12 string work on The Searchers' magnificent 'Needles and Pins'

And the Rickenbacker was the sound of The Jam, the sound of The Long Ryders' incredible 'I had A Dream', the sound of any 60s referencing band, the sound of Mr Tambourine Man, the sound of The Smiths.

If it jangled it was a Rickenbacker. Luckily the sound of the guitar was matched by the beauty of its appearance. If a guitarist wants to look effortlessly cool then a 12 string Ric is going to do no harm whatsoever. Johnny Marr knows this,

So, from 1981 onwards, the one thing that I wanted more than anything else was a 12 string Rickenbacker. There were near misses; a shop at the bottom of our road had a 6 string in once in the mid 80s, I played it briefly but I couldn't afford it and it was only a 6 string.

When we lived in Hull, in the year before we married, there was a guitar shop that we passed every day on our way home. I was told at the time that it had previously been a wedding shop called 'Everything But The Girl' and was the source of Tracey Thorn and Ben Watt's band's name. For a while there was a 12 string Ric in the window. I could afford it but it would mean not having any food at the wedding. Not really an option.

In 2006 I completed twenty years with HMV. This brought a gift worth £1,000. There was only one thing that I wanted; 12 strings, natural maple finish. Dawson's in Liverpool had exactly the model. I tried it out. It sounded terrible. No variance between the sound of the pick ups, no jangle, a dull thrum. I was heartbroken. (I've realised in the last few days that the model I was trying has two inputs for your lead and I was quite probably using the wrong one) 

I bought a Stratocaster and a 12 string acoustic instead. Which gave me an opportunity to learn how to play a 12 string and more importantly a second life in a band; a chance to play both The Zanzibar and The Cavern that I wouldn't have had otherwise.

I was on a late shift today. Matty needed a new coat. Wanted one from North Face in town. J said that they were going in first thing. I went in with them. We bought the coat and by 9.30 we were in Dawson's. One of the staff asked if I needed any help. J said 'can you help him make up his mind?'

He asked what I needed help with. I gestured at the items hanging on the wall in front of me and said 'Maple or black? Black or Maple?' and he helped me make up my mind.

And at the end of the conversation after sitting for a while and carrying out a little bit of 'road testing', J bought me my 50th birthday present.

To mark the fact that I'm turning 50 in 11 days' time my wife bought me a Rickenbacker 330/12 in a Mapleglo finish. It's a thing of beauty, it's the exact thing that I've wanted for the last 32 years of my life and it's everything that I thought and hoped it would be.

Have you ever had your life's ambition fulfilled? Ever had something mean so much to you for so long and then receive it? It's an incredible feeling, almost indescribable and J gave me that feeling today.

J knows exactly how I feel about what she's done for me today, about what this gift means to me, about everything that this represents; this is a lifetime's dream made true.

My wife is an incredible woman, I love her beyond words but hopefully these words will give some idea.

This is way more than a guitar.