When routine bites hard (26/6/14)

Time travel? Yeah, I can do that. And if you'll give me a few minutes then I'll demonstrate exactly how you can go from 2014 to 1980 in the space of seconds. Obviously music's involved.

Tom's shirt needed changing. We'd bought him a suit (tres Beatles-esque) shirt and shoes last week for the leavers prom that he's going to tonight. 18. Drinking legally. The people that he's out with tonight are people that he's known for the last two years of college and the five years of senior school and some from reception onwards. Think back to being 18, think back to the people that you knew then, the people that you last saw on the last day of sixth form and then never again. There are quite possibly people he'll see tonight who he's known his entire life and possibly never see again.

As concepts go, that's quite momentous really, isn't it? And not in a negative way, not in a 'oh God, everything ends' way, just in a 'things move on, people move on, life changes, that's how it is, keep your memories with you and you never truly lose your old friends but be prepared to treasure the new ones that you'll make' kind of way.

So the shirt was too small. 15" collar when it should really have been a 15.5" (having to combine metric and imperial as there's no 'half' button on this keyboard. I said I'd take it back to Next to change it. Next by ours. In Aintree. Obviously the journey involved Forbidden Planet in town for this month's 'Saga' (see blogs passim - always wanted to say that, sounds authoritative) and the yet another, honest to God this one will work, take on Superman (it IS possible to write good Superman stories, it just doesn't happen very often) and then on to Pretty Green who have a very nice sale on. (Lovely boating blazer down from £160 to £45 thank you very much)

As Tom was trying on the first iteration of the shirt, 6Music was playing in the background. The Kingsmen, 'Louie, Louie'. Majestic. Garage. Proper Garage, not that dance tat that stole the name. And, as it played, I mused on Joy Division's live take on Sister Ray followed by Ian Curtis' announcement that 'you should hear our version of 'Louie, Louie'. I didn't mention it. Should have. Would have verified the following synchronicity.

Took the car. Needed music. Had the iPod ready. Springsteen live in Melbourne. The gig that starts with him covering 'Staying Alive' and includes all of 'The Wild, The Innocent and The E-Street Shuffle'. Incredible gig. But I didn't play it. The end of Live and Let Die was playing, so I listened. And it was followed immediately by 'Love Will Tear Us Apart'.

I was 16 when I first heard Joy Division. When I first heard 'Love Will Tear Us Apart'. Summer. Newquay. Holiday. Ian Curtis was already dead. I didn't know this. I knew nothing about Joy Division.

As I remember it, Top of The Pops was off air. Musicians' strike if I recall correctly, back in the days when a Musicians' strike was an actual thing. NME and Melody Maker (I'm fairly sure) also suffering from a journalist' or printers' strike.  Memory is an odd thing though - both those could be correct, both could be my imagination but this is my telling and this is how it feels to me.

[Remember strikes? The inalienable right of the working man to withdraw his labour in the struggle for better pay, better conditions? Back before Thatcher decided that all out war on the working class was a political ideal?]

So I didn't know if Joy Division were 'fashionable' or 'credible' or 'alternative' or any of those things that are important when you're 16 (and remain important when you're approaching 51 if you never quite grow up) I didn't know if I was 'supposed' to like it; the drums seemed a bit disco-y, the synths a bit too high above the guitars, the vocals odd. I had no idea that it could virtually stand as Ian Curtis' last confession.

I knew that I liked it though. I knew it meant something, knew that it mattered in some way. So I bought it. And I cherished the 7' single as an icon (I still cherish 7" singles as icons, still love the feel of vinyl but still prefer CD, want the crackles removed, want the surface noise gone, want the purity of the music above everything else)

And it lead me to 'Unknown Pleasures' - already a year old - and 'Closer' and 'Atmosphere' (still the most heartbreaking piece of music on the planet) and to New Order and 'Ceremony and 'Everything's Gone Green' and 'Temptation' and 'Regret' and on and on and on and always onwards and life moves on and there's always the new but the old always stays and doesn't date and the beginning of 'Love Will Tear Us Apart' is as exciting as it was when I was 16 and the bells that chime on 'Atmosphere' are as thrilling.

And I'm in a car in Liverpool in 2014 but I'm also in a street in Cornwall in 1980. Everything's ahead and everything's already happened and it's still happening.

And that's how you time travel.