27.1.22 Like heaven above me

 I stopped caring about the views. I can see the stats, I can see the difference between days and there is neither rhyme nor reason for the swings. Though it seems clear that putting up a second photo of Matt Monro wasn't massively popular.

Here you go then, here's some Radiohead. Let's see how that goes down:

Okay, you could argue that it's not really Radiohead; it's Radiohead doing a cover. But it's Radiohead back when there was a definite sense of playfulness to them. I could be wrong but I couldn't see them doing this as a laugh on live TV now, they seem to have become far too serious.

There's a reason to this one. We'll come to it.

I've just been over to the square. Which makes Netherton sound far more gentrified than it actually is. I think I may have written about this before so I won't go into detail again. (There are times when I feel then urge to tell people from outside Liverpool that I was born in a small fishing village on the banks of a river, called Seaforth. There's a lot in that sentence that's true but context is everything.)

I'd got up late, gone for a run (back up to 8k but it's not easy, it's laboured, desperate to get back to 10 on a regular basis, think I'm getting closer), had breakfast, pulled out the book I'm reading and, for the fifth day running, not read a single word, scrolled through twitter instead, seeking any visibility of the Sue Gray report that we were possibly receiving yesterday. Let's not kid ourselves, money makes things go away doesn't it? Decided I need a small swing bin, so headed to the square.

Obviously a visit to what we still insist on calling The Home And Bargain despite the evidence of the store's own signs couldn't be enough, there had to be a detour to the Marie Curie Hospice shop. For vinyl. The money goes to an excellent cause so I can tell myself I'm doing good while buying records.

Five quid - Transvision Vamp's Velveteen (which I'm currently listening to), Supertramp's Crisis? What Crisis? (never listened to it but the title seemed apposite once again), Motown Chartbusters Vol 7 (looks a cracker, includes Floy Joy) and, with wonderful timing after speaking of him the other day, two David Essex albums - Rock On and Imperial Wizard (full album also on blue vinyl, obviously a big thing for Dave that week) - might be awful but who cares?

And getting back in the car (yes, I can walk there but choose not to, I know it's bad but Liz Truss spent £500,000 on a private plane to Australia so my 80 seconds of engine use is a drop in the ocean. I know that's not the point, I know I'm being glib, I know I need to be better. I'm well aware that global warming is a massive issue; it's like a spring day out there, I didn't need the hat, gloves and running jacket I had on my run, it was too warm. This shouldn't be the case) I turned the radio on.

This is where the time travel of music comes in. This is where location becomes important. I don't think this happens with literature; it doesn't matter where I first read the las lines of Gatsby because those lines put me elsewhere, doesn't matter where I read Catch 22, I was on that island. That's how literature transports, not music. Music puts you back there.

And Greatest Hits Radio (because I'm too old for Radio One, permanently too young for Radio Two and Six isn't grabbing me like it used to) was playing Nobody Does It Better. Not the Radiohead cover. Obviously. The original Carly Simon version. the theme to The Spy Who Loved Me (even at 13 I realised that "Like heaven above me, the spy who loved me is keeping all my secrets safe tonight" was crowbarred into another song that had very little to do with it. Brilliant though.)

And that's where transportation and the variables of memory come in.

The Spy Who Loved Me is the first time I went to the pictures 'on my own'. Not a family trip, a different enterprise.

And I went alone. Or with Chris Silker and Stuart Derby. And I/we went to the Odeon on London Road. Or to the cinema in Maghull next to The Alt, which might have been called The Astra, though that's what the internet says and I don't feel it's right.

Here's the point: I'm still in touch with Chris. Forty-five years on. We went for a pint (I say pint, I have a feeling double figures were involved) before Christmas. Me, him, Andy and Geoff, all of whom I'v known for the best part of fifty years now. Not sure where time goes. We were the first band I was ever in, we rehearsed in Chris's dad's garage. We were genuinely a garage band. A good thing to be.

I lost touch with Stuart Derby (Stu) in about 1980. He got a job, didn't go into sixth form with us. I saw him sometime in the late 80s, in Revolver/HMV on Lord Street, he was in shopping, recognised me. Seemed like we hadn't seen each other for decades. That's thirty five years ago. I think he was doing something in the navy, something scientific if I remember rightly. Could be making all of that up.

I don't know where he is, don't know how life has treated him. I tried finding him on Facebook once. No sign. It's only just occurred to me that I could be mis-spelling his first name.

There are people who stay, there are people who fade away from your life, you from theirs, your shared moments done, and there are the people who come back. You never know who's stepping back into your life on any given day. That's the joy of then eternal unknowing.

And that's where the theme to The Spy Who Loved Me took me.