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 Three
And I find it kinda funny, I find it kinda sad,
The dreams in which I'm dying are the best I've ever had (Tears for Fears)
~ 1983 ~
And I find it kinda funny, I find it kinda sad,
The dreams in which I'm dying are the best I've ever had (Tears for Fears)
~ 1983 ~
Life went on. I got a promotion. I didn’t want one. It was more money but the work was just as boring. I was still living at home. Rachel was living in a shared flat with some other trainee teachers. She’d more or less moved out of our circle. Laura was desperate to leave University, feeling isolated now we’d all abandoned the place. Grant finally qualified as an accountant and he interviewed for a job at my company. I found myself really hoping he wouldn’t get it. He didn’t. He hadn’t taken the direct or obvious route and my company liked folk to play it straight. Grant’s time would come. When financial services really took off he’d be there and waiting.
When I met Laura in the Easter holidays she told me Rachel never got a single from Billy for her birthday that year. It was the first time he’d missed. But it was probably just as well. The contenders were Kajagoogoo’s Too shy which was insanely irritating but really got under your skin, or Men at Work, Down Under, equally catchy and slightly more appealing.
Of course I’d wanted to know whether anyone had heard from Billy. No one was admitting to it. But there was some news. It came through the post. An invitation to a school reunion. It was the fifth anniversary of Rachel’s year leaving and they ‘kindly’ extended the invitation to our year as well. There were, as far as I can see, two reasons for this. One was because they couldn’t guarantee getting above twenty of their own year to turn up and the other was that the ‘organisers’ wanted to show off their husbands, boyfriends, successful lives. I’m sure it was mostly about the men. They wanted to prove that despite us having had the advantage of boys in our year at school, they’d still Top Trumped us on getting the whole package.
I didn’t really want to go. But I knew that if I’d been invited then the likelihood was that Billy had. It was a long shot, but surely he wouldn’t miss the chance to see Rachel again? Even if he was ignoring her. Was he ignoring her? Who knew? Certainly not me.
Laura and I agreed to go. She told me that Rachel was going, though she hadn’t been involved in organising the event. So the other reason was clearly that the girls who had been in Rachel’s shadow during school wanted to show her they’d lucked out.
It presented all kinds of problems. Me, I was expected to turn up alone and with a boring job, boring life profile. But Rachel, more would be expected of her. I wouldn’t have gone if I was her. But being Rachel, such things didn’t faze her. I really hoped against hope that the potential shame of turning up there alone might make her put in a concerted effort to get Billy to come. I couldn’t be sure, of course, but I did what I could. I sent Billy his birthday single. The number one on May 4th 1983 was Spandau Ballet’s True. That’s the one I sent. At the time I thought it was perfect. On reflection, perhaps not so much. But I hoped that Billy would either take it as a gesture of contrition or provocation from Rachel and turn up. I included a copy of the invitation to the reunion which was at the end of the month.
At the same time I bought F.R.David’s Words, which was what I really wanted to say to him… but didn’t have the nerve. Words don’t come easy to me, how can I find a way to make you see I love you… But since I didn’t have the nerve, I sent the ‘Rachel’ record on its own. I guess you could say ‘anonymously’. I leave you to judge my intention, I’m sure you have already.
Laura was home in between finishing University and her graduation. She planned to come round to ‘get ready’ together before the reunion. So we could go in there together. Strength in numbers.
‘Should I invite Grant?’ I asked.
‘No way,’ she said.
At the time I thought it was because Laura didn’t have a boyfriend and so she’d be embarrassed if I turned up with Grant in tow. I know better now.
‘We’ll just say we didn’t know ‘partners’ were invited,’ she said.
‘Okay.’
‘It’ll be a laugh to see Scooby and Doobs and Stevie again, don’t you think?’
I distinctly remember Laura saying that. I remember thinking, not so much. But whatever it took to get Billy back. I wasn’t going to miss it.
Have you ever been to a school reunion? Maybe ours were different but I think they are never without some level of anxiety. The best you can hope for is that everyone else’s lives have turned out as boring as your own. Unless, of course, you’ve ‘made it’ somehow and then you can go with confidence.
On top of that, especially if the reunion is actually at school, there’s the feeling as you walk through the doors that you’re walking right back in as your fifteen or sixteen year old self. You never realised that school has a smell, but when you walk back in for the first time since you’ve left, you are confronted by it. What is it? The smell of your adolescent hopes and dreams? In my case, it was naked fear more than school dinners.
That first reunion, as me and Laura walked in together I felt nothing more keenly than an overwhelming desire to run for it. And then we heard him:
‘Don’t cry for me Jane and Laura.’ I turned round, willing it not to be Stevie. It was Scooby. Which was a relief.
I swear I was sweating at the thought of meeting Stevie again. It was ridiculous. It was only my overwhelming desire to see Billy that kept me in the building. And in the end, Billy never showed.
Don’t get me wrong, it was a well organised event. It was just the personification of painful. For me at any rate. There we all stood, with drinks and what I guess you might call canapés, or nibbles, in the Assembly Hall where eating and drinking are forbidden to students – the same hall we’d got off with each other (or not) just five years before. The scenes of glory and shame all rolled into one. Five years older but still horribly recognisable.
Obviously the ‘organisers’ had done the best job in ‘moving on.’ Some of them were even married and sporting their husbands on their arms. The odd one or two had baby pictures. I realised how little anything had changed for me. I almost expected to be told to sit down and open my exam book.
As for our gang, Scooby was just Scooby. Doobs was still Doobs. And Stevie, who inevitably turned up late to make an entrance, was just an older, cockier version of Stevie. I kept one eye on the door throughout ‘catching up’ with them, in case Billy came in. At one point I thought I was going to have a panic attack as I realised that he might just turn up with a girl – who wasn’t Rachel – or even a wife.
Unbelievably, the first of us to be married was Scooby. He was working in ‘construction’ and brought along his wife. She was like a Mrs Scooby in every respect. They say there’s someone for everyone but I’d never have believed there could be a female version of Scooby. They seemed happy enough though they both still didn’t look a day over seventeen.
Doobs wasn’t married, but he had a picture of a mini Doobs he’d fathered. Stevie later described him (rather cruelly, I thought) as a semi-detached parent. He didn’t have a job either. His life was, predictably, something of a mess. But he had money. Laura told me it was because he was dealing drugs. I didn’t believe her, but it wouldn’t have surprised me.
And what about Stevie? He was in a sharp suit. He was an estate agent. Figured. But he didn’t bother talking to me. He acted like he’d never known me. He totally fitted the brief of coming to the reunion to show off.
It wasn’t till nine thirty, when we’d all but given up on her, that Rachel turned up. Dressed to kill, of course she turned heads. But it wasn’t just what she was wearing. It was that she came with Grant on her arm.
‘How could she?’ I whispered to Laura.
‘She couldn’t come alone now, could she?’ Laura hissed back.
‘So is Grant doing her a favour or what?’ I asked.
As they entered I noticed the song playing: Mad World. It certainly was: All around me are familiar faces, and the world was certainly going round in circles. And Grant more or less ‘looked right through me’ all night.
‘Never expected that,’ Doobs said to me. He had, as usual, drunk too much and was hanging round me as if he knew it was the safest harbour he’d find.
‘They’re just doing it to piss off the girls,’ I said. And wished I believed it.
‘I always thought you and…’ Doobs said.
‘No,’ I said, ‘He’s just Laura’s brother.’
‘Ah yes, good old brothers, I wish I’d had one,’ Doobs said.
‘You had Scooby,’ Laura said.
‘True,’ Doobs replied, ‘but he’s got… what’s her name?’
‘Sadie,’ Laura said.
I was impressed she’d picked that up. I had still been recovering from the shock of seeing Mrs Scooby to clock her name.
‘Brothers stick around,’ Doobs said, mournfully, ‘not like mates. Speaking of which, what’s ever happened to Billy?’
‘Navy,’ Laura and I replied in unison.
And Doobs snorted his beer right out his nose.
‘You’re kidding me,’ he said.
The high point of the evening, if high point you can call it, was ‘the competition’. The organising committee had asked everyone to bring along a copy of their favourite song since leaving school. I can’t even remember what they were. Apart from Stevie’s which was Angel is a Centrefold. Typically poor taste. There was a wash of power ballads and pop trivia and then someone played True. I totally blushed. But no one was looking in my direction. No one saw me. No one knew.
I found myself wishing and hoping that Billy, the only reason I’d gone in the first place, wouldn’t turn up. If he turned up while they were playing True… I looked at Rachel. She was oblivious. She was slow dancing with Grant. Could life get any worse? I kept thinking that if Billy turned up he’d be totally shamed. I couldn’t bear it. And it would be my fault. It was like the worst, slowest car crash in history. And I, as always, was a bystander, but not exactly innocent.
Hardly surprising then as the music rumbled on, that I swore I would never go to another reunion again.
It rolled to a halt at eleven on the dot. Laura chummed me home.
‘They’re just friends, right?’ I asked her.
‘Who?’ she said, like she didn’t know.
‘Rachel and Grant,’ I said.
‘Oh, yeah, uh, I meant to tell you something about that,’ she started.
The blood rushed to my head and my heart started pounding.
‘We’re moving in together,’ she said.
‘We who?’ I managed to get out.
‘Grant and me. We’re moving in to Rachel’s flat,’ she said, like it was a matter of fact thing. ‘I meant to tell you, but ...’
There was no end to that sentence and I didn’t want to ask on what basis they were all three ‘shacking up’ as my dad would have called it.
Later that night I tried to convince myself that nothing was going on, but Joe Jackson’s ‘dum, de dum, de dum, de dum’ beat of Something’s going on around here was playing over and over in my mind. I rationalised it that Rachel had three bedrooms. Nothing to see here. If I don’t look it isn’t there.
I made a pledge that night to keep away from them all. For ever. If these were my friends, who needed them? There was no Billy and I didn’t need this lot. I cried myself to sleep, but I’m not sure even now what I was crying for most. Was it feeling betrayed by Grant? By Laura, or by Rachel? Was it for myself or for Billy? Or just for my adolescence. I felt like I grew up that night. And I didn’t like the feeling.
I went back to work. We lost touch. Life went on. But different. Laura made a couple of attempts to ‘invite’ me to things but I played the ‘too busy’ card. I went to work. I went home. I stayed in and watched TV and relived my past vicariously through music. I played the old tunes to death. What else was there to do? I was twenty two and a completely hopeless case.
~ 1984 ~
I saw Scooby and Sadie in the street by chance one day the next year. He was making a show of himself outside HMV singing Radio Ga Ga. She was laughing. They looked really happy. I had a pang of jealousy. Then I pulled it back and told myself I was happy for Scooby. Why shouldn’t he find love? Wasn’t it something we’re all entitled to.
It was February. I thought Radio Ga Ga would be the perfect single to send Rachel for her birthday. If I was Billy. But Billy didn’t send her that year’s number one – which was Frankie Goes to Hollywood – Relax. He bought it. He just didn’t send it. How do I know? That’s for me to know and you to find out, as we used to say. Just trust me, I know.
On Billy’s birthday the number one was Duran Duran, The Reflex which started with the line You've gone too far this time. I knew no one would be sending him that. I bought, but didn’t send, Phil Collins’ Against all Odds which was number two. I loved that song. I told myself it was our song. Even if Billy didn’t know it. 'Cause we've shared the laughter and the pain And even shared the tears
You're the only one who really knew me at all. And even if Billy didn’t really know me. What was there to know? All there was was take a look at me now, Well there's just an empty space, And there's nothing left here to remind me,
Just the memory of your face.
I knew it was hopeless but that didn’t stop me wishing I could just make you turn around Turn around and see me cry, There's so much I need to say to you… I bought the album on cassette and played it constantly in my car.
I’d finally come out of my bedroom and taken to driving around in my car. My parents were becoming far too irritating in their belief that I should ‘get out there’ and ‘have a life’. They never went as far as saying ‘take a risk’, but I felt it was always on the tip of my dad’s tongue. For me, risk management stayed firmly in work. But I needed to be out of the house and I had nowhere to go, no desire to make friends, so I used to drive around aimlessly, kind of hoping that fate would intervene and I’d somehow bump, or even crash into Billy.
That year I had flashbacks to Bohemian Rhapsody when Queen brought out I want to Break Free and I cried cynically when Billy Joel started on his Uptown Girl. How could Rachel have done that to Billy? I wouldn’t have… she didn’t deserve… I just listened to Phil Collins and The Jam and wished I had the nerve to track Billy down and speak like a child. But of course I never did. I was far too risk averse. But I was hit hard by The Style Council’s you’re the best thing that ever happened to me. I could be a lot, but I know I’m not…
And then a song came out which really made me sit up and cry. It was Rick Springfield, Jesse’s Girl. And it kind of said it all. I sent a copy to Grant. Anonymously. It was the least that I could do! There was something kind of comforting in knowing that someone else had experienced the pain Billy would be feeling if he had the slightest inkling of what Grant and Rachel were up to. The song had been out a couple of years earlier, but never got noticed. As it was, in 1984 it was a one hit wonder and you may never even have heard of it. But it meant the world to me.
I wondered if I should have seen it coming even earlier. I thought back to 1978 when they’d played The Cars My Best Friend’s Girlfriend. I don’t remember where it was, but I remember Grant was there. He and Billy were already buddies back then. I wouldn’t have put it past him to plan it all those years. It was another decade before Del Amitri put into song what I felt at that moment – but yeah, I wondered if I was the last to know.
The only consolation I took from it all was that life could be worse than it was for me. It must be worse for Billy. So yes, I guess I spent most of 1984 crying for Billy. That year my dad bought me one of those ‘year you were born’ CDs – CDs being the new thing – and on it was Roy Orbison’s Crying Over You. They said that CD’s were indestructible, but I fairly took it out on that one. It wasn’t only Roy Orbison who was blind now, was it?
Looking back, I swear if I’d seen Rachel or Grant on one of my midnight drives in 1984, I’d have run them over. And you wouldn’t have blamed me, would you?
When I met Laura in the Easter holidays she told me Rachel never got a single from Billy for her birthday that year. It was the first time he’d missed. But it was probably just as well. The contenders were Kajagoogoo’s Too shy which was insanely irritating but really got under your skin, or Men at Work, Down Under, equally catchy and slightly more appealing.
Of course I’d wanted to know whether anyone had heard from Billy. No one was admitting to it. But there was some news. It came through the post. An invitation to a school reunion. It was the fifth anniversary of Rachel’s year leaving and they ‘kindly’ extended the invitation to our year as well. There were, as far as I can see, two reasons for this. One was because they couldn’t guarantee getting above twenty of their own year to turn up and the other was that the ‘organisers’ wanted to show off their husbands, boyfriends, successful lives. I’m sure it was mostly about the men. They wanted to prove that despite us having had the advantage of boys in our year at school, they’d still Top Trumped us on getting the whole package.
I didn’t really want to go. But I knew that if I’d been invited then the likelihood was that Billy had. It was a long shot, but surely he wouldn’t miss the chance to see Rachel again? Even if he was ignoring her. Was he ignoring her? Who knew? Certainly not me.
Laura and I agreed to go. She told me that Rachel was going, though she hadn’t been involved in organising the event. So the other reason was clearly that the girls who had been in Rachel’s shadow during school wanted to show her they’d lucked out.
It presented all kinds of problems. Me, I was expected to turn up alone and with a boring job, boring life profile. But Rachel, more would be expected of her. I wouldn’t have gone if I was her. But being Rachel, such things didn’t faze her. I really hoped against hope that the potential shame of turning up there alone might make her put in a concerted effort to get Billy to come. I couldn’t be sure, of course, but I did what I could. I sent Billy his birthday single. The number one on May 4th 1983 was Spandau Ballet’s True. That’s the one I sent. At the time I thought it was perfect. On reflection, perhaps not so much. But I hoped that Billy would either take it as a gesture of contrition or provocation from Rachel and turn up. I included a copy of the invitation to the reunion which was at the end of the month.
At the same time I bought F.R.David’s Words, which was what I really wanted to say to him… but didn’t have the nerve. Words don’t come easy to me, how can I find a way to make you see I love you… But since I didn’t have the nerve, I sent the ‘Rachel’ record on its own. I guess you could say ‘anonymously’. I leave you to judge my intention, I’m sure you have already.
Laura was home in between finishing University and her graduation. She planned to come round to ‘get ready’ together before the reunion. So we could go in there together. Strength in numbers.
‘Should I invite Grant?’ I asked.
‘No way,’ she said.
At the time I thought it was because Laura didn’t have a boyfriend and so she’d be embarrassed if I turned up with Grant in tow. I know better now.
‘We’ll just say we didn’t know ‘partners’ were invited,’ she said.
‘Okay.’
‘It’ll be a laugh to see Scooby and Doobs and Stevie again, don’t you think?’
I distinctly remember Laura saying that. I remember thinking, not so much. But whatever it took to get Billy back. I wasn’t going to miss it.
Have you ever been to a school reunion? Maybe ours were different but I think they are never without some level of anxiety. The best you can hope for is that everyone else’s lives have turned out as boring as your own. Unless, of course, you’ve ‘made it’ somehow and then you can go with confidence.
On top of that, especially if the reunion is actually at school, there’s the feeling as you walk through the doors that you’re walking right back in as your fifteen or sixteen year old self. You never realised that school has a smell, but when you walk back in for the first time since you’ve left, you are confronted by it. What is it? The smell of your adolescent hopes and dreams? In my case, it was naked fear more than school dinners.
That first reunion, as me and Laura walked in together I felt nothing more keenly than an overwhelming desire to run for it. And then we heard him:
‘Don’t cry for me Jane and Laura.’ I turned round, willing it not to be Stevie. It was Scooby. Which was a relief.
I swear I was sweating at the thought of meeting Stevie again. It was ridiculous. It was only my overwhelming desire to see Billy that kept me in the building. And in the end, Billy never showed.
Don’t get me wrong, it was a well organised event. It was just the personification of painful. For me at any rate. There we all stood, with drinks and what I guess you might call canapés, or nibbles, in the Assembly Hall where eating and drinking are forbidden to students – the same hall we’d got off with each other (or not) just five years before. The scenes of glory and shame all rolled into one. Five years older but still horribly recognisable.
Obviously the ‘organisers’ had done the best job in ‘moving on.’ Some of them were even married and sporting their husbands on their arms. The odd one or two had baby pictures. I realised how little anything had changed for me. I almost expected to be told to sit down and open my exam book.
As for our gang, Scooby was just Scooby. Doobs was still Doobs. And Stevie, who inevitably turned up late to make an entrance, was just an older, cockier version of Stevie. I kept one eye on the door throughout ‘catching up’ with them, in case Billy came in. At one point I thought I was going to have a panic attack as I realised that he might just turn up with a girl – who wasn’t Rachel – or even a wife.
Unbelievably, the first of us to be married was Scooby. He was working in ‘construction’ and brought along his wife. She was like a Mrs Scooby in every respect. They say there’s someone for everyone but I’d never have believed there could be a female version of Scooby. They seemed happy enough though they both still didn’t look a day over seventeen.
Doobs wasn’t married, but he had a picture of a mini Doobs he’d fathered. Stevie later described him (rather cruelly, I thought) as a semi-detached parent. He didn’t have a job either. His life was, predictably, something of a mess. But he had money. Laura told me it was because he was dealing drugs. I didn’t believe her, but it wouldn’t have surprised me.
And what about Stevie? He was in a sharp suit. He was an estate agent. Figured. But he didn’t bother talking to me. He acted like he’d never known me. He totally fitted the brief of coming to the reunion to show off.
It wasn’t till nine thirty, when we’d all but given up on her, that Rachel turned up. Dressed to kill, of course she turned heads. But it wasn’t just what she was wearing. It was that she came with Grant on her arm.
‘How could she?’ I whispered to Laura.
‘She couldn’t come alone now, could she?’ Laura hissed back.
‘So is Grant doing her a favour or what?’ I asked.
As they entered I noticed the song playing: Mad World. It certainly was: All around me are familiar faces, and the world was certainly going round in circles. And Grant more or less ‘looked right through me’ all night.
‘Never expected that,’ Doobs said to me. He had, as usual, drunk too much and was hanging round me as if he knew it was the safest harbour he’d find.
‘They’re just doing it to piss off the girls,’ I said. And wished I believed it.
‘I always thought you and…’ Doobs said.
‘No,’ I said, ‘He’s just Laura’s brother.’
‘Ah yes, good old brothers, I wish I’d had one,’ Doobs said.
‘You had Scooby,’ Laura said.
‘True,’ Doobs replied, ‘but he’s got… what’s her name?’
‘Sadie,’ Laura said.
I was impressed she’d picked that up. I had still been recovering from the shock of seeing Mrs Scooby to clock her name.
‘Brothers stick around,’ Doobs said, mournfully, ‘not like mates. Speaking of which, what’s ever happened to Billy?’
‘Navy,’ Laura and I replied in unison.
And Doobs snorted his beer right out his nose.
‘You’re kidding me,’ he said.
The high point of the evening, if high point you can call it, was ‘the competition’. The organising committee had asked everyone to bring along a copy of their favourite song since leaving school. I can’t even remember what they were. Apart from Stevie’s which was Angel is a Centrefold. Typically poor taste. There was a wash of power ballads and pop trivia and then someone played True. I totally blushed. But no one was looking in my direction. No one saw me. No one knew.
I found myself wishing and hoping that Billy, the only reason I’d gone in the first place, wouldn’t turn up. If he turned up while they were playing True… I looked at Rachel. She was oblivious. She was slow dancing with Grant. Could life get any worse? I kept thinking that if Billy turned up he’d be totally shamed. I couldn’t bear it. And it would be my fault. It was like the worst, slowest car crash in history. And I, as always, was a bystander, but not exactly innocent.
Hardly surprising then as the music rumbled on, that I swore I would never go to another reunion again.
It rolled to a halt at eleven on the dot. Laura chummed me home.
‘They’re just friends, right?’ I asked her.
‘Who?’ she said, like she didn’t know.
‘Rachel and Grant,’ I said.
‘Oh, yeah, uh, I meant to tell you something about that,’ she started.
The blood rushed to my head and my heart started pounding.
‘We’re moving in together,’ she said.
‘We who?’ I managed to get out.
‘Grant and me. We’re moving in to Rachel’s flat,’ she said, like it was a matter of fact thing. ‘I meant to tell you, but ...’
There was no end to that sentence and I didn’t want to ask on what basis they were all three ‘shacking up’ as my dad would have called it.
Later that night I tried to convince myself that nothing was going on, but Joe Jackson’s ‘dum, de dum, de dum, de dum’ beat of Something’s going on around here was playing over and over in my mind. I rationalised it that Rachel had three bedrooms. Nothing to see here. If I don’t look it isn’t there.
I made a pledge that night to keep away from them all. For ever. If these were my friends, who needed them? There was no Billy and I didn’t need this lot. I cried myself to sleep, but I’m not sure even now what I was crying for most. Was it feeling betrayed by Grant? By Laura, or by Rachel? Was it for myself or for Billy? Or just for my adolescence. I felt like I grew up that night. And I didn’t like the feeling.
I went back to work. We lost touch. Life went on. But different. Laura made a couple of attempts to ‘invite’ me to things but I played the ‘too busy’ card. I went to work. I went home. I stayed in and watched TV and relived my past vicariously through music. I played the old tunes to death. What else was there to do? I was twenty two and a completely hopeless case.
~ 1984 ~
I saw Scooby and Sadie in the street by chance one day the next year. He was making a show of himself outside HMV singing Radio Ga Ga. She was laughing. They looked really happy. I had a pang of jealousy. Then I pulled it back and told myself I was happy for Scooby. Why shouldn’t he find love? Wasn’t it something we’re all entitled to.
It was February. I thought Radio Ga Ga would be the perfect single to send Rachel for her birthday. If I was Billy. But Billy didn’t send her that year’s number one – which was Frankie Goes to Hollywood – Relax. He bought it. He just didn’t send it. How do I know? That’s for me to know and you to find out, as we used to say. Just trust me, I know.
On Billy’s birthday the number one was Duran Duran, The Reflex which started with the line You've gone too far this time. I knew no one would be sending him that. I bought, but didn’t send, Phil Collins’ Against all Odds which was number two. I loved that song. I told myself it was our song. Even if Billy didn’t know it. 'Cause we've shared the laughter and the pain And even shared the tears
You're the only one who really knew me at all. And even if Billy didn’t really know me. What was there to know? All there was was take a look at me now, Well there's just an empty space, And there's nothing left here to remind me,
Just the memory of your face.
I knew it was hopeless but that didn’t stop me wishing I could just make you turn around Turn around and see me cry, There's so much I need to say to you… I bought the album on cassette and played it constantly in my car.
I’d finally come out of my bedroom and taken to driving around in my car. My parents were becoming far too irritating in their belief that I should ‘get out there’ and ‘have a life’. They never went as far as saying ‘take a risk’, but I felt it was always on the tip of my dad’s tongue. For me, risk management stayed firmly in work. But I needed to be out of the house and I had nowhere to go, no desire to make friends, so I used to drive around aimlessly, kind of hoping that fate would intervene and I’d somehow bump, or even crash into Billy.
That year I had flashbacks to Bohemian Rhapsody when Queen brought out I want to Break Free and I cried cynically when Billy Joel started on his Uptown Girl. How could Rachel have done that to Billy? I wouldn’t have… she didn’t deserve… I just listened to Phil Collins and The Jam and wished I had the nerve to track Billy down and speak like a child. But of course I never did. I was far too risk averse. But I was hit hard by The Style Council’s you’re the best thing that ever happened to me. I could be a lot, but I know I’m not…
And then a song came out which really made me sit up and cry. It was Rick Springfield, Jesse’s Girl. And it kind of said it all. I sent a copy to Grant. Anonymously. It was the least that I could do! There was something kind of comforting in knowing that someone else had experienced the pain Billy would be feeling if he had the slightest inkling of what Grant and Rachel were up to. The song had been out a couple of years earlier, but never got noticed. As it was, in 1984 it was a one hit wonder and you may never even have heard of it. But it meant the world to me.
I wondered if I should have seen it coming even earlier. I thought back to 1978 when they’d played The Cars My Best Friend’s Girlfriend. I don’t remember where it was, but I remember Grant was there. He and Billy were already buddies back then. I wouldn’t have put it past him to plan it all those years. It was another decade before Del Amitri put into song what I felt at that moment – but yeah, I wondered if I was the last to know.
The only consolation I took from it all was that life could be worse than it was for me. It must be worse for Billy. So yes, I guess I spent most of 1984 crying for Billy. That year my dad bought me one of those ‘year you were born’ CDs – CDs being the new thing – and on it was Roy Orbison’s Crying Over You. They said that CD’s were indestructible, but I fairly took it out on that one. It wasn’t only Roy Orbison who was blind now, was it?
Looking back, I swear if I’d seen Rachel or Grant on one of my midnight drives in 1984, I’d have run them over. And you wouldn’t have blamed me, would you?
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.