The Soundtrack of Our Lives
A Double Album in Prose
by Annie Christie
Genre: Drama
Swearwords: None.
Description: For anyone who has ever got lost in music!
Swearwords: None.
Description: For anyone who has ever got lost in music!
Disc Two
Side One
Things Can Only Get Better
There are many things
that I would like to say to you
But I don’t know how (Oasis)
Side One
Things Can Only Get Better
There are many things
that I would like to say to you
But I don’t know how (Oasis)
Track Two
Come on boy, come on girl
Succumb to the beat surrender (The Jam)
~ 1982 ~
Come on boy, come on girl
Succumb to the beat surrender (The Jam)
~ 1982 ~
So Billy was in the Navy. And in February 1982, The Jam went straight into number one from nowhere with the double header A Town Called Malice/Precious. The year had started on a really bum note with the Human League’s Don’t You Want Me hanging around like the bad smell it was. A waitress in a cocktail bar, I ask you. We were in Edinburgh and in 1982 we ‘bright young things’ certainly didn’t hang out in cocktail bars. The pubs we went to were considerably more down at heel than that. Even my work colleagues didn’t hang out in wine bars, never mind cocktail bars. Not in 1982.
The pure driven anger of A Town Called Malice might just have been written for Billy. Not that we saw much of him. Christmas 1981 was a tough time all round. I stayed home, and I never went to my works Christmas party. You know why.
Billy’s anger was simmering. If he knew something was up with Rachel, he wasn’t telling us. But from where I stood, it felt like the music of the time was just being written for him. Though on reflection, I suspect that the B side, Precious, was more resonant of his plight. Perhaps we should more often look at the B side of life?
The lyrics I don't mean to bleed you dry, Or take you over for the rest of your life It's just that I need something solid in mine could have been written for how he felt about Rachel at that time. How do I know? Because it’s how I was feeling about him at the same time. And I could see, I more than anyone, that she’d left him behind.
At the time I reckoned it was just wishful thinking, I had nothing concrete to base it on after all, but something in both of us knew. We never talked about it of course. I never ‘talked’ to Billy. I was, as the song said: ‘Lonely as the moors on a winter's morning, Quiet as the sea on a good calm night, In your tranquil shadow, I try and follow.’ Okay there was precious little tranquillity around at the time, but you get what I mean.
Anyway, true to form Billy bought Rachel The Jam single for her birthday, but in case she thought he was being arsey, he also bought See You by Depeche Mode… It was a cry to get back together like you’ve never heard.
Having been away on training since he joined up, Billy was stationed in Rosyth at the beginning of 1982 and when he could get leave, which wasn’t often, he headed up to St Andrews. So I took to driving with Grant up to St Andrews on weekends on the off-chance that we might get the gang back together. It rarely happened.
Rachel was busy studying for finals so she never joined us on the beach – which was a hellish cold place in the winter. Mostly Grant, me and Laura just hung out in Kate’s bar, where I seemed to buy more than my share of rounds and never got drunk because I was the driver.
Having a car in those days was like being the owner of a drum kit. You got invited everywhere and people put up with you, but you felt like you were being used most of the time. Still, I stood my rounds, put my money in the juke box and didn’t complain that I was getting to hang out with the old crowd. The one thing we all had in common, it seemed, was the hope that Billy might walk in. At the time I thought even Rachel really wanted it – she was just playing hard to get – it was her ‘style.’ She was just being a Stevie Nicks diva. How could she ever think she’d find better than Billy?
I didn’t notice that rather too often Grant left us girls in the lounge bar and went to ‘play pool’ for hours on end. I didn’t want him round me and I walked a constant tight-rope not to ‘define’ our relationship. He was mercurial in the extreme. Most of the time he’d ignore me, but he could turn on the charm to get what he wanted. Luckily for me, mostly he just wanted me to drive him around, and apart from the odd drunken grope, I got away mostly unscathed.
When we were all in the bar together I noticed of course that Rachel would be all over flirty with Grant (which pleased me at the time, I have to say, as it kept him occupied away from me) and very frosty with Billy. But if she was sending him a message he certainly wasn’t picking up on it.
At the time, I asked Laura if Rachel was trying to make Billy jealous, and Laura said, no, she was just pissed off that he wouldn’t leave her alone. Wouldn’t take the hint that we weren’t at school any more. I thought she was just being cruel really, but like a whipped puppy, he kept coming back for more. It was hard to watch.
Every weekend I told myself I wasn’t going to St Andrews. Just about every weekend one of them talked me into it. I grew to hate the place, though the jukebox in Kate’s was even better than the Italian Café of old. But student life is for students and it really wasn’t ‘my scene’. Not that I had a scene.
The music of the time was all about the angst of broken relationships, or at least the music we were listening to was. You had it the ‘cool’ way with Roxy Music’s More than This, the ‘new’ electronic way with Say Hello, Wave Goodbye, the Rod Stewart nostalgia way with Some Guys have all the Luck and the ‘haunting lyricism’ (as they used to say ) of Elkie Brookes Fool if you think it’s over.
It was quite a ride from the raw angry young men of The Jam to the sophisticated (or to us, sophisticated) world of Elkie Brookes. It kind of showed how far apart Billy and Rachel were.
Then, one Sunday in March, something happened. We were having an afternoon session in Kate’s Bar, and Billy turned up. He was different. Really shaken, and if I’m honest, he looked like he was going to cry. Grant tried his usual banter and got the brush off.
‘Can I talk to Rachel alone?’ Billy said.
This was big. We all responded in total silence. Grant, Laura and I headed from the public bar to the lounge – despite the fact we’d just stacked the jukebox – and waited to see what would happen. There were looks going back and forward between Grant and Laura, but I was completely clueless.
In the time it would take to drink a pint, he came through, on his own.
‘No Rachel?’ Grant asked.
‘You’d best go see her,’ Billy said. ‘She’ll tell you.’
We got up to go. Grant and Laura headed off and I hung behind. Billy just stood there, shell-shocked.
‘Can I do anything?’ I asked.
He looked right through me.
‘I’ve got to go,’ he said.
‘Go?’
‘Called up,’ he said.
I had no idea what he was talking about.
‘Can I give you a lift somewhere?’ I asked.
He shook his head. Then changed his mind.
‘Helensburgh,’ he said.
We stopped off at Rosyth and he picked up his kitbag and then I drove him to Helensburgh. I had no thought or idea how Grant and Laura would get back to Edinburgh, I just drove. On the way he told me about the Falklands and swore me to secrecy. It was a surreal experience, the moment I realised I was driving him to war. I didn’t want to do it. It was just too real and too surreal all at the same time. All the way there I wanted to ask him what he’d said to Rachel. I didn’t dare. I wanted to tell him I loved him and he was wasting his time on her, but I didn’t dare do that either. So I just drove.
‘Thanks, Janie,’ he said as he got out.
‘Take care,’ I said.
I was half way back to Edinburgh before I realised I’d left Grant in the lurch. I thought about going back for him. But I didn’t. He would just have to make his own way home. I had work in the morning. I went home and cried all night.
~ 2013 ~
‘So was it then?’ I asked Laura.
‘What you want to know is, are you responsible?’ she asked.
‘Well, yes, I suppose so,’ I said.
‘It was long before then,’ she said.
‘But Grant…’
‘Come on. Jane,’ she said, ‘you of all people must know what Grant’s like. What he’s always been like.’
And if I think about it, she’s right. I did always know. I just didn’t want to face it. Which is stupid really, because if I had, things might have turned out very differently for me, and Billy.
~ 1982 ~
April came and we started to hear about the Falklands on the television. For the first time in my life I was glued to the news. We all were. And I knew that Billy was there, somewhere, under the water, preparing for war.
On May 2nd his submarine sunk the Belgrano. I was shocked. It was too hard to imagine that while I was sitting in my dull, comfortable insurance job, calculating unreal risk, Billy was risking his life and was responsible for taking other lives. I couldn’t get my head round it. And May 4th was his 21st birthday. No party for Billy. What an introduction to adulthood.
Looking back that whole time must have affected all of us more than we let on. We all started making ‘sensible’ choices. We all became that little bit more risk averse. In a surprise move all round, Rachel went to teacher training college. There had been talk of her trying a modelling career, but suddenly she seemed to find such frivolity tasteless. She wanted to do something ‘real’ with her life.
~ 2013 ~
‘Rachel, real?’ Laura said ‘She’s the most unreal person I’ve ever met.’
‘That’s unfair,’ I replied.
‘And what do you even mean by it?’
‘She’s always acted like she’s Stevie Nicks,’ Laura said.
‘That’s not very fair,’ I said, though I hadn’t an idea why I would be sticking up for Rachel.
‘No, I mean it,’ said Laura, ‘You know Robert Redford in that film … where life has all been too easy for him…’
The Way We Were? I asked.
‘Yes, that’s it.’
I waited.
‘Well, that’s her to a tee isn’t it? She’s never had any real struggle in her life and if she’s wanted something she just went right in there and took it. Never thought about other people’s feelings.’
This was a bit rich coming from Laura.
‘I thought you were her friend?’ I said.
‘Friends should be able to see each other for what they really are,’ Laura replied.
I had no answer to that one. So we got on with planning the reunion. I hadn’t seen Rachel in a decade, I wondered how she’d fared. I wondered what she’d done to rub Laura up the wrong way. Of course, when it came down to it, I knew. Rachel was Abba’s girl with the golden hair and we all know the lyrics: The Winner Takes it all.
~ 1982 ~
It was months before we heard from Billy. Now we knew to expect that. On subs you have to maintain radio silence and even if you’re married to a submariner you can’t get messages across to them. But in September I watched them return to Portsmouth. I couldn’t make out Billy, but I knew he was back. We got together in Edinburgh for a drink before Rachel started at teacher training and Laura went back to St Andrews and we talked about what to do. Grant had tried to phone but he couldn’t get through. He suggested a woman might have more chance. Especially a girlfriend. Rachel point blank refused. Laura and I tossed a coin. I won. Or lost. I phoned. Repeatedly. They said he was out. They said he was busy. They said he wasn’t there any more. They wouldn’t tell me if he’d gone back to Rosyth.
We didn’t all get together again until Christmas. Grant had no need for me to ferry him around any more. Rachel was in Edinburgh but ‘busy’ with her course. Laura was rather left in the lurch at St Andrews but she didn’t try to contact me any more than I tried to contact her. Until Christmas came. I remember it was Saturday 11th. I’d gone to pick Laura up from St Andrews for the Christmas holidays because her exams had finished and she couldn’t be bothered to stay there for the last week. I dropped her off around fourish and she invited me out to the pub that night. We went to the pub close to school which used to be known as the ‘teachers’ pub. Because I wasn’t driving, I drank. And perhaps drank a bit too much. Enough to get the courage up to ask about Billy.
Rachel said she hadn’t heard from him. Laura said the same. Grant said he’d seen him one day, a month or so ago but that it was his last day of leave and he was off again for another six months on subs.
I put a song on the jukebox. It wasn’t the one I meant, but it became our anthem. It was Jack and Diane.
Someone was going round the bar selling charity Christmas cards. We bought some and each wrote Billy a silly message, using quotes from songs playing on the jukebox. At the end of the night, I was left with the card to post. When I got home, still drunk, it seemed like an even better idea to make up a full mixed tape.
Looking back it was one of the more stupid things I did – and you’ll have realised by now there was a lot of them to choose from. After our wee messages: The tape ran: Jack and Diane, Every Breath you take, They don’t know about us, Modern Love, Speak like a child, Zoom, Come on Eileen, Only You, Town Called Malice, Beat Surrender, Hard to Say I’m sorry, Centrefold, Layla, I’ll find my way home, More than This, Some Guys Have all the Luck, Arthur’s Theme.
What was I thinking about?
The Christmas card read:
I know when to go out, I know when to stay in (Grant)
Every single day, every word you say, I’ll be watching you (Jane) I didn’t want to write this but Laura thought it was hilarious.
After all that we've been through, I will make it up to you (Rachel)
She was really drunk and didn’t really want to do it, but we talked her into it.
Why should it matter to us if they don’t approve
We should just take our chances while we’ve got nothing to lose (Laura)
By that time we’d all had far too much to drink to work out the subtext on that one.
I never sent it. In the morning I thought better of the whole thing. It backfired of course, because we never got any response and the others blamed me. How could I tell them I’d never sent it. Instead I sent a card on my own behalf and it simply read:
All I want to do is see you again Is that too much to ask for?
And if I’d only signed it… But I didn’t have the nerve. Instead I stayed home over Christmas, playing Billy’s tape and wishing I had the nerve to live up to the words stop apologizing for the things you've never done 'Cause time is short and life is cruel but it's up to us to change This town called malice.
Little did I know.
The pure driven anger of A Town Called Malice might just have been written for Billy. Not that we saw much of him. Christmas 1981 was a tough time all round. I stayed home, and I never went to my works Christmas party. You know why.
Billy’s anger was simmering. If he knew something was up with Rachel, he wasn’t telling us. But from where I stood, it felt like the music of the time was just being written for him. Though on reflection, I suspect that the B side, Precious, was more resonant of his plight. Perhaps we should more often look at the B side of life?
The lyrics I don't mean to bleed you dry, Or take you over for the rest of your life It's just that I need something solid in mine could have been written for how he felt about Rachel at that time. How do I know? Because it’s how I was feeling about him at the same time. And I could see, I more than anyone, that she’d left him behind.
At the time I reckoned it was just wishful thinking, I had nothing concrete to base it on after all, but something in both of us knew. We never talked about it of course. I never ‘talked’ to Billy. I was, as the song said: ‘Lonely as the moors on a winter's morning, Quiet as the sea on a good calm night, In your tranquil shadow, I try and follow.’ Okay there was precious little tranquillity around at the time, but you get what I mean.
Anyway, true to form Billy bought Rachel The Jam single for her birthday, but in case she thought he was being arsey, he also bought See You by Depeche Mode… It was a cry to get back together like you’ve never heard.
Having been away on training since he joined up, Billy was stationed in Rosyth at the beginning of 1982 and when he could get leave, which wasn’t often, he headed up to St Andrews. So I took to driving with Grant up to St Andrews on weekends on the off-chance that we might get the gang back together. It rarely happened.
Rachel was busy studying for finals so she never joined us on the beach – which was a hellish cold place in the winter. Mostly Grant, me and Laura just hung out in Kate’s bar, where I seemed to buy more than my share of rounds and never got drunk because I was the driver.
Having a car in those days was like being the owner of a drum kit. You got invited everywhere and people put up with you, but you felt like you were being used most of the time. Still, I stood my rounds, put my money in the juke box and didn’t complain that I was getting to hang out with the old crowd. The one thing we all had in common, it seemed, was the hope that Billy might walk in. At the time I thought even Rachel really wanted it – she was just playing hard to get – it was her ‘style.’ She was just being a Stevie Nicks diva. How could she ever think she’d find better than Billy?
I didn’t notice that rather too often Grant left us girls in the lounge bar and went to ‘play pool’ for hours on end. I didn’t want him round me and I walked a constant tight-rope not to ‘define’ our relationship. He was mercurial in the extreme. Most of the time he’d ignore me, but he could turn on the charm to get what he wanted. Luckily for me, mostly he just wanted me to drive him around, and apart from the odd drunken grope, I got away mostly unscathed.
When we were all in the bar together I noticed of course that Rachel would be all over flirty with Grant (which pleased me at the time, I have to say, as it kept him occupied away from me) and very frosty with Billy. But if she was sending him a message he certainly wasn’t picking up on it.
At the time, I asked Laura if Rachel was trying to make Billy jealous, and Laura said, no, she was just pissed off that he wouldn’t leave her alone. Wouldn’t take the hint that we weren’t at school any more. I thought she was just being cruel really, but like a whipped puppy, he kept coming back for more. It was hard to watch.
Every weekend I told myself I wasn’t going to St Andrews. Just about every weekend one of them talked me into it. I grew to hate the place, though the jukebox in Kate’s was even better than the Italian Café of old. But student life is for students and it really wasn’t ‘my scene’. Not that I had a scene.
The music of the time was all about the angst of broken relationships, or at least the music we were listening to was. You had it the ‘cool’ way with Roxy Music’s More than This, the ‘new’ electronic way with Say Hello, Wave Goodbye, the Rod Stewart nostalgia way with Some Guys have all the Luck and the ‘haunting lyricism’ (as they used to say ) of Elkie Brookes Fool if you think it’s over.
It was quite a ride from the raw angry young men of The Jam to the sophisticated (or to us, sophisticated) world of Elkie Brookes. It kind of showed how far apart Billy and Rachel were.
Then, one Sunday in March, something happened. We were having an afternoon session in Kate’s Bar, and Billy turned up. He was different. Really shaken, and if I’m honest, he looked like he was going to cry. Grant tried his usual banter and got the brush off.
‘Can I talk to Rachel alone?’ Billy said.
This was big. We all responded in total silence. Grant, Laura and I headed from the public bar to the lounge – despite the fact we’d just stacked the jukebox – and waited to see what would happen. There were looks going back and forward between Grant and Laura, but I was completely clueless.
In the time it would take to drink a pint, he came through, on his own.
‘No Rachel?’ Grant asked.
‘You’d best go see her,’ Billy said. ‘She’ll tell you.’
We got up to go. Grant and Laura headed off and I hung behind. Billy just stood there, shell-shocked.
‘Can I do anything?’ I asked.
He looked right through me.
‘I’ve got to go,’ he said.
‘Go?’
‘Called up,’ he said.
I had no idea what he was talking about.
‘Can I give you a lift somewhere?’ I asked.
He shook his head. Then changed his mind.
‘Helensburgh,’ he said.
We stopped off at Rosyth and he picked up his kitbag and then I drove him to Helensburgh. I had no thought or idea how Grant and Laura would get back to Edinburgh, I just drove. On the way he told me about the Falklands and swore me to secrecy. It was a surreal experience, the moment I realised I was driving him to war. I didn’t want to do it. It was just too real and too surreal all at the same time. All the way there I wanted to ask him what he’d said to Rachel. I didn’t dare. I wanted to tell him I loved him and he was wasting his time on her, but I didn’t dare do that either. So I just drove.
‘Thanks, Janie,’ he said as he got out.
‘Take care,’ I said.
I was half way back to Edinburgh before I realised I’d left Grant in the lurch. I thought about going back for him. But I didn’t. He would just have to make his own way home. I had work in the morning. I went home and cried all night.
~ 2013 ~
‘So was it then?’ I asked Laura.
‘What you want to know is, are you responsible?’ she asked.
‘Well, yes, I suppose so,’ I said.
‘It was long before then,’ she said.
‘But Grant…’
‘Come on. Jane,’ she said, ‘you of all people must know what Grant’s like. What he’s always been like.’
And if I think about it, she’s right. I did always know. I just didn’t want to face it. Which is stupid really, because if I had, things might have turned out very differently for me, and Billy.
~ 1982 ~
April came and we started to hear about the Falklands on the television. For the first time in my life I was glued to the news. We all were. And I knew that Billy was there, somewhere, under the water, preparing for war.
On May 2nd his submarine sunk the Belgrano. I was shocked. It was too hard to imagine that while I was sitting in my dull, comfortable insurance job, calculating unreal risk, Billy was risking his life and was responsible for taking other lives. I couldn’t get my head round it. And May 4th was his 21st birthday. No party for Billy. What an introduction to adulthood.
Looking back that whole time must have affected all of us more than we let on. We all started making ‘sensible’ choices. We all became that little bit more risk averse. In a surprise move all round, Rachel went to teacher training college. There had been talk of her trying a modelling career, but suddenly she seemed to find such frivolity tasteless. She wanted to do something ‘real’ with her life.
~ 2013 ~
‘Rachel, real?’ Laura said ‘She’s the most unreal person I’ve ever met.’
‘That’s unfair,’ I replied.
‘And what do you even mean by it?’
‘She’s always acted like she’s Stevie Nicks,’ Laura said.
‘That’s not very fair,’ I said, though I hadn’t an idea why I would be sticking up for Rachel.
‘No, I mean it,’ said Laura, ‘You know Robert Redford in that film … where life has all been too easy for him…’
The Way We Were? I asked.
‘Yes, that’s it.’
I waited.
‘Well, that’s her to a tee isn’t it? She’s never had any real struggle in her life and if she’s wanted something she just went right in there and took it. Never thought about other people’s feelings.’
This was a bit rich coming from Laura.
‘I thought you were her friend?’ I said.
‘Friends should be able to see each other for what they really are,’ Laura replied.
I had no answer to that one. So we got on with planning the reunion. I hadn’t seen Rachel in a decade, I wondered how she’d fared. I wondered what she’d done to rub Laura up the wrong way. Of course, when it came down to it, I knew. Rachel was Abba’s girl with the golden hair and we all know the lyrics: The Winner Takes it all.
~ 1982 ~
It was months before we heard from Billy. Now we knew to expect that. On subs you have to maintain radio silence and even if you’re married to a submariner you can’t get messages across to them. But in September I watched them return to Portsmouth. I couldn’t make out Billy, but I knew he was back. We got together in Edinburgh for a drink before Rachel started at teacher training and Laura went back to St Andrews and we talked about what to do. Grant had tried to phone but he couldn’t get through. He suggested a woman might have more chance. Especially a girlfriend. Rachel point blank refused. Laura and I tossed a coin. I won. Or lost. I phoned. Repeatedly. They said he was out. They said he was busy. They said he wasn’t there any more. They wouldn’t tell me if he’d gone back to Rosyth.
We didn’t all get together again until Christmas. Grant had no need for me to ferry him around any more. Rachel was in Edinburgh but ‘busy’ with her course. Laura was rather left in the lurch at St Andrews but she didn’t try to contact me any more than I tried to contact her. Until Christmas came. I remember it was Saturday 11th. I’d gone to pick Laura up from St Andrews for the Christmas holidays because her exams had finished and she couldn’t be bothered to stay there for the last week. I dropped her off around fourish and she invited me out to the pub that night. We went to the pub close to school which used to be known as the ‘teachers’ pub. Because I wasn’t driving, I drank. And perhaps drank a bit too much. Enough to get the courage up to ask about Billy.
Rachel said she hadn’t heard from him. Laura said the same. Grant said he’d seen him one day, a month or so ago but that it was his last day of leave and he was off again for another six months on subs.
I put a song on the jukebox. It wasn’t the one I meant, but it became our anthem. It was Jack and Diane.
Someone was going round the bar selling charity Christmas cards. We bought some and each wrote Billy a silly message, using quotes from songs playing on the jukebox. At the end of the night, I was left with the card to post. When I got home, still drunk, it seemed like an even better idea to make up a full mixed tape.
Looking back it was one of the more stupid things I did – and you’ll have realised by now there was a lot of them to choose from. After our wee messages: The tape ran: Jack and Diane, Every Breath you take, They don’t know about us, Modern Love, Speak like a child, Zoom, Come on Eileen, Only You, Town Called Malice, Beat Surrender, Hard to Say I’m sorry, Centrefold, Layla, I’ll find my way home, More than This, Some Guys Have all the Luck, Arthur’s Theme.
What was I thinking about?
The Christmas card read:
I know when to go out, I know when to stay in (Grant)
Every single day, every word you say, I’ll be watching you (Jane) I didn’t want to write this but Laura thought it was hilarious.
After all that we've been through, I will make it up to you (Rachel)
She was really drunk and didn’t really want to do it, but we talked her into it.
Why should it matter to us if they don’t approve
We should just take our chances while we’ve got nothing to lose (Laura)
By that time we’d all had far too much to drink to work out the subtext on that one.
I never sent it. In the morning I thought better of the whole thing. It backfired of course, because we never got any response and the others blamed me. How could I tell them I’d never sent it. Instead I sent a card on my own behalf and it simply read:
All I want to do is see you again Is that too much to ask for?
And if I’d only signed it… But I didn’t have the nerve. Instead I stayed home over Christmas, playing Billy’s tape and wishing I had the nerve to live up to the words stop apologizing for the things you've never done 'Cause time is short and life is cruel but it's up to us to change This town called malice.
Little did I know.
About the Author
Annie Christie is a pretty ordinary person, except that she was born Annie Christie and then married a man called Christie and so is still called Christie despite having taken on her husband’s name. She sometimes wonders if she should have called herself Christie-Christie: but who would believe that?
Born near Drum of Wartle in Aberdeenshire, Annie moved as swiftly as possible to a place with a less bizarre name – Edinburgh – but the bizarreness chased her and she now lives with her husband Rab in rural Galloway, with a Kirkcudbrightshire postcode. (That's Cur coo bree shire to the uninitiated.) She is an active member of the Infinite Jigsaw Project.
The Soundtrack of Our Lives is Annie's fourth McSerial written for McStorytellers.
Born near Drum of Wartle in Aberdeenshire, Annie moved as swiftly as possible to a place with a less bizarre name – Edinburgh – but the bizarreness chased her and she now lives with her husband Rab in rural Galloway, with a Kirkcudbrightshire postcode. (That's Cur coo bree shire to the uninitiated.) She is an active member of the Infinite Jigsaw Project.
The Soundtrack of Our Lives is Annie's fourth McSerial written for McStorytellers.