9.1.22 All caught up in reverie

 So I was going to tell you about Paris, wasn't I? It was one of the things that linked to Reward.

It was a sixth form trip. February 81. very close to the release of Reward. I know this. Or remember this. Because I had it own a mix tape for the coach. 

The tape is the point. The various tapes are the point. We'll get to that point, those tapes. And one tape in particular: Debbie Lee's tape. 

It was the holiday that saw a bunch of us drinking in a small bar with the teachers, possibly not all the teachers but certainly some, getting absolutely destroyed in Paris knowing that we had to take a coach to the Loire valley the next morning. It wasn't a comfortable coach journey. Green cords. I remember I was wearing green cords. Not entirely sure why, must have been a 1981 thing. Perhaps I hadn't yet discovered taste or judgement.

We were playing Defender on a machine in the corner. In French. No idea what instructions we were supposed to be following. Months before The Chaser had a Defender machine of their own. Or Asteroids. One of the two. No, definitely Defender. Probably.

It was the week that the first space shuttle was due to launch. Delayed by weather. This is where I think we saw the launch happen. Possibly the last time the space race was actually an event.

It was the night that I saw Bill Doyle fall from a stool in a straight line. Taking the stool with him. In a perfectly straight line. As drunken mishaps go, it was a thing of beauty.

It may have been the same night that the occupants of our room were shouting across to American girls in a hotel room opposite, convincing them that it was a good idea that they come over to us, that we were from Liverpool and therefore obviously related to The Beatles in some way.

They didn't come over. Obviously. 

The first thing we saw on arrival in Paris was a man urinating into a canal. Or was it the Seine? Does Paris have canals? I've been back several times and never thought to check. It was a body of water, he was definitely adding to the body of water. Nice area we've come to.

There'd been a storm on the... whatever the French equivalent of a motorway is. All the way from Fazakerley to Paris by coach. The storm was glorious. Forked lightning in pitch black skies. Middle of the night. One of the most primal moments I've ever witnessed.

But it's the tapes. The tapes are the soundtrack.

We knew the length of the journey, knew we'd need to be occupied. The teachers had agreed that we could make tapes for the coach. That they would be played. In turn. One side of a C90 each. NO arguing over the contents.

So we made tapes. I've no idea what else was on mine - if, indeed, it actually *was* mine; I may be thinking of somebody else's. But Reward by The Teardrop Explodes was definitely in there. 

And then there was Debbie's tape.

The first track started. 'Sailing' by Christopher Cross:

The song faded to its end. In memory it's a fade, it might be a sudden stop, I'm not feeling the need to actually listen to the thing again, for reasons that will become obvious in the next sentence.

The next tune started: 'Sailing' by Christopher Cross.

The third: Sailing.

The fourth. The fifth. The sixth.

I remember it as playing forever. I remember the whole side of the tape playing. Christopher Cross all the way. 

I think we went from annoyance to respect quite quickly. For Debbie that is, not Christopher Cross; he had no idea this was happening.

The older I get, the more I admire the sheer nerve of that cassette and the wonderful planning that went into it.

45 minutes of our lives, 41 years ago.