Day 43. I'm in great shape (12/2/19)

(Soundtrack: The Beach Boys 'SMiLE' album - yes, it does have to be typed like that - specifically 'Heroes and Villains'. The reasons for this? We're going to talk about those once we drop back out of italics.)

I have the SMiLE box set. The whole thing. That might not mean much to most of you, and J has probably already switched off as talking about SMiLE is up there with talking about Television's Marquee Moon as far as she's concerned - an obsession I've carried for years that she's not entirely sure has any purpose.

She indulges me my obsessions. Always put up with the inconvenience that any unlabelled cassette she found in the car while we were living in Leeds would invariably turn out to be Marquee Moon. Once sent a friend of ours to a record fair to buy me a bootleg copy of SMiLE when that was the only way you could obtain Brian Wilson's long lauded never released masterwork. The album, for those who aren't aware but are still reading, was abandoned during the recording process when Wilson decided that a piece of music he had composed was starting fires all over Los Angeles. Yes, there was LSD involved in this decision.

So, bootlegs. Until the rehabilitated, revitalised Wilson started touring the previous (and very definitely released) Pet Sounds album in the nineties. I caught the show at the Manchester Apollo. He started with a couple of classics then a couple of lesser numbers. You could feel the rumble go round the room - he's playing his own bootlegs.

The touring band followed up this initial tour by playing the entire lost masterpiece from start to finish. And then recording it. I saw this at the Liverpool Empire. We'll come back to this. This is kind of the point.

They then recorded the album. But the original was still a mythic, incomplete, work.

Until it wasn't any longer. The original tapes were pulled together and the album existed. And was as glorious as expected. But there were two versions. The single CD that I could afford and the box set that I coveted but definitely could not. Stupid price. Stupid price but basically every second of music recorded for the album. The sessions, or most of them. Instrumental tracks, incomplete snippets, unused moments, you can hear everything building. One CD is nothing but bits of Good Vibrations. J is rolling her eyes at this point. 'You'll never play those CDs' 'I know, but I need them'.

We had a couple of copies in work. One sold. One didn't. And then we were in administration. And administration, when you're closing down, means sales. The price of the copy still in store dropped. And dropped. And dropped. The advantage of being on the inside of losing your job? You know when this stuff is going down. A song. Got it for an absolute song. Being jobless has to have its advantages. In fairness, losing the job transformed my life forever and for good, the box set was just a bonus.

The full box sits on my desk. The vinyl is being played now. It sits as a reminder of what I did for a long time. That reminds me and the dog and trumpet statuette that I was presented with for completing 25 years of service  which sits on top of the speaker next to me; both of these remind me of a previous life, a life that served me well but I don't miss. A life that sits in a younger man's life.

And now, we're kind of getting round to the point.

Returning from this morning's run I bumped into one of our neighbours. A neighbour who was here when we moved in, their house being about six months older than ours, us moving in while J was heavily pregnant with Tom.

We've been here 23 years. Our neighbour is now 83 and still active. I'm approaching the age he was when we moved in. When we were young. I still think I'm young. My knees don't always agree with me and my hair is putting up a hell of an argument for my true age but I'm convinced that I'm still who I always was. My passions are the same, my obsessions, my tastes, They're still, I believe, the tastes of the young man I was when I moved in. Not the tastes of 'a young man' obviously. I've heard the music you young people listen to now. It's wretched. My generation had the best time.

Except it didn't did it?

Here's some of the point. That night that Brian Wilson played the myth laden album at the Empire, I bumped into our Matt's reception teacher. Who we knew while Matt was at reception age. So... 16 years ago? Something like that.

I didn't expect to see her there. Because she was in her sixties. As was the bloke on stage. She didn't expect to see me there as this music was her youth not mine.

So we chatted. And she spoke about the first time she saw The Beach Boys. And the first time she saw Hendrix. And I realised she was far, far cooler than me.

Last week I bumped into a twitter/facebook friend at a gig. And in the interval we chatted. He told me about his first gig. Seeing The Pink Floyd live. That's how long ago this was. Not 'the Floyd la' or simply 'Pink Floyd', 'The Pink Floyd'. The 'the' is very important in this; it denotes early, it denotes first album, it denotes Syd. His second gig? The New Yardbirds the week before they changed their name to Led Zeppelin. And I realised that he was far cooler than me.

This is the miracle of our age. Those in their mid to late sixties and early seventies? They're the children who came of age during the sixties. Speaking for music, they invented our culture. We built everything on the things they saw. Their present became our influences. The things they lived through became the things we cherish as iconic.

And there's every possibility that the things my generation saw as commonplace (U2 and REM in smaller rooms) are iconic to others.

I think about that sometimes and it just adds to my belief that none of us ever grow old because our youth is always a part of everything we do.

I've got to be honest, there's a point in there somewhere but I'm not entirely sure where or what it is. Feel free to make up your own minds. Answers on a postcard and all that.

Swear blind I'm getting round to the subjective nature of time eventually.