Day 69. Winter of '79. (10/3/19)

(Soundtrack: Tom Robinson Band 'Power In The Darkness' album. Right this very second: 'Up Against The Wall'. As in. "Whitehall up against the wall" it's very 1979. There's a reason for this, I'll get to it in a second.)

I had very little idea where I was going with this today.

I'd thought, once I'd woken from the second afternoon nap of the weekend (the one where I missed Chelsea equalising against Wolves), that I might write about the weirdness of noon kick offs, how they destroy your body clock because you leave Anfield thinking that it's about five o'clock and it's only just turned two.

Could have talked about how this means that the rest of the afternoon is just an odd interlude between the match and the evening, that you can't really achieve anything because the day feels like it should already be drawing to a close.

That all of this was only exacerbated by the bizarre weather patterns above the L4 area. Perhaps the fact we've gone from high summer to a depth of winter that would have people wandering round claiming 'the North remembers' and 'winter is coming' -

(J doesn't watch Game of Thrones, she won't get that reference. I say she doesn't watch it, she's seen it, she doesn't like it, she sits and does dragon impressions throughout, they sound exactly the same as the zombie impressions she used to make during Walking Dead)

- might convince even those as stupid as the president of the United States that climate change has happened and we're all buggered.

We had hurricane winds blowing for the walk across Stanley park. Sat in the main stand with the sun beating down on us, convinced I may have overdressed. Until the torrential rain started to fall from a clear blue sky. The hailstones followed and we had the floodlights on. At quarter to one.

Thought I might talk about The Beatles. I'm on a Beatles kick again. Trying to figure out the exact structure of their early songs, how the rhythm and lead guitar sound for that first album, how they change by the time they hit Hard Day's Night. It's for a thing. I have a reason. And I'm not telling you what that thing is. Yet.

(Honest to god, stuck this on twitter yesterday: listen to I Saw Her Standing There forensically, pull the thing apart. You only think you know how good The Beatles were. They're a million times better than you've ever realised.)

Then I went upstairs. Putting the ironing away. J had done the ironing, I was putting it away. And the radio was on. 6 Music, as it always is. Playing Lene Lovich's 'Lucky Number'. Must have been the second time this week as J was singing it the other day. I'd put that down to coincidence but there's no such thing.

Lucky Number is 1978/79. It's Keith Melville's front room. Me, Keith, his brother Pete and Ste Beb playing Dungeons and Dragons for hours on end. For so long one afternoon that I got sacked from my paper round for being late. And we're playing music. Jean Michel Jarre's Oxygene, Lene Lovich's first album, Sham 69's 'If The Kids Are United', Buzzcocks' 'Ever Fallen In Love', The Pistols' 'Great Rock'n'Roll Swindle' and Tom Robinson Band's 'Power In The Darkness'.

They had a dog. Lovely dog. Old, as I recall. On medication. Which caused the most noxious passing of wind you've ever come across. But still a lovely dog.

Any or all of that last sentence may be completely inaccurate. It's 40 years ago. I was still in school. I remember almost nothing with any degree of certainty. The names of about half my classmates, the fact that we had time and that we were geeks.

And the music.

I remember the music. Always remember the music.