The Soundtrack of Our Lives
A Double Album in Prose
by Annie Christie
Genre: Drama
Swearwords: A couple of mild ones.
Description: For anyone who has ever got lost in music!
Swearwords: A couple of mild ones.
Description: For anyone who has ever got lost in music!
Disc One
Side Two
Mis-Spent Youths
Holdin' on to sixteen as long as you can
Change is coming 'round real soon
Make us woman and man (John Cougar)
Side Two
Mis-Spent Youths
Holdin' on to sixteen as long as you can
Change is coming 'round real soon
Make us woman and man (John Cougar)
Track Thirteen
And I would rather be anywhere else
But here today (Elvis Costello)
~ Lost without your love, 1978-79 ~
And I would rather be anywhere else
But here today (Elvis Costello)
~ Lost without your love, 1978-79 ~
The song of the summer of 1978 was You’re the One that I want. Remember these were the days when films were eagerly awaited, queued up for and promoted in a way impossible today. We’d all become used to music videos on Top of the Pops now, of course, but Grease was smart. They released trails for the movie as pop songs. So we all sat through You’re the One that I want repeatedly, in glorious anticipation of what the full film would be. We were supposed to be revising for our Highers but Grease was most surely the word.
If I can clearly remember Scooby, Stevie, Doobs and Billy as the Bohemian Rhapsody boys, even more so can I remember them all aping it up to You’re the One that I want. Billy and Rachel danced it at the final school disco that year and they had all the moves down pat. No one else would have dared to do it. But that was Billy and Rachel. I always thought it was like a present they were giving to the rest of us. It was traditional to have some kind of comic skit at the end of summer term, usually taking the piss out of the teachers. I expected Yes Sir I can Boogie would make an appearance, but instead Billy and Rachel just took the place apart.
And they got us all joining in. The boys had turned up in their rather too small college jumpers which had been all the fashion in third year but were now generally discarded, and Billy’s Harrington did a passable leather jacket – none of us could afford leather jackets in those days. The boys had been primed by Billy so they knew all their moves. We were girls. We knew all the moves and it only took a bit of encouragement to get us joining in. The place rocked. It was like an episode of Glee twenty years before its time. In fact, yeah, we may have even invented Glee!
At the end, Scooby put on a falsetto voice and shouted out: ‘What are we all going to do after graduation? Maybe we’ll never see each other again?’
Yeah, right. We knew our story wasn’t over yet.
For a start, as soon as it was released, we were queuing round the block to see the movie. ‘Oh, those summer nights.’
That summer I had a job. I think it was my parents’ way of trying to make sure I went back to school in August. Their aim was to show me the horrors of the world of work. It was in an insurance company. But it wasn’t a proper job, so I didn’t get paid proper money. It was filing for a friend of my dad’s. It was pretty hideous. They needn’t have bothered. I wanted to go back to school, simply because I knew Billy was going back, and Rachel wasn’t. I never thought I stood a chance, but still…
So I endured six weeks without Billy and I was beginning to realise that the next summer I would be facing the rest of my life without Billy and Laura and Rachel. On the bright side, Scooby and Doobs had left that summer– not being boys to stick it out beyond Highers – and Scooby wasn’t even doing Highers, he was fighting his way through another year of CSE’s, not even having made it to O Grade standard the year before. It was left to Stevie to sing Summer Nights to Billy in an ironic tone.
Now, in those days you didn’t turn up at school in August for the results, you awaited the plop of the envelope on the carpet with a stomach in knots. But because I was out at work my mum intercepted the envelope. Whatever my parents thought, I knew I was going back to school. I was even looking forward to it in a strange way. But only because of Billy. I knew that however bad my results were I’d get back into school and I certainly had no intention of making the insurance job permanent. I’d had enough of my dad’s jokes about ‘risk’ management to last a lifetime by the time the results came through.
In the end I did pass all my Highers so it was Sixth Year Studies for me. I was looking forward to things being different but the classes weren’t my priority. It was the Sixth Form Common Room that we all craved. A place to heroes, a place to be us. A place we could play music and drink coffee and kick back and dream of the future. A place we could be with Billy and without Rachel. Or so we thought. Be careful what you wish for is good advice, believe me.
Sixth Year Studies was just a minor inconvenience. No one took it seriously. We all saw it as the ultimate in pointless boredom. It was largely ‘independent’ study, the goal being to get us ready for University. In reality it meant we had a lot of time sitting in the sixth form common room (until a teacher chased us into the library), doing very little. Very little apart from preening ourselves and trying to get Billy to notice us.
Billy had a bit tougher time of it. He’d ‘invested’ rather a lot of time in Rachel the previous year and as a consequence he hadn’t ‘got the grades’ he needed to get into University – which was his parents’ choice for his future. I’m not sure it was ever Billy’s choice. So he was retaking Higher English, Physics and Maths. His nose was firmly to the grindstone. And he was hardly in the Sixth Form Common Room. When he was, he was a shadow of his former self. Every time he came in we put on Bowie, mostly Starman or Space Oddity, but he seldom rose to the occasion.
Rachel was off enjoying her new life at University and we girls barely gave her a thought. Billy, on the other hand, clearly thought of nothing but her. If he was an animal you’d have said he was pining. And of course that made him all the more attractive.
Stevie, who never knew when to stop and really thought he was cock of the walk in the sixth form common room, whereas in reality he was just truly a pain in the arse, pushed it too far– and started singing Sandy incessantly whenever Billy was around – until he turned up with a black eye.
At the first school disco in September they played Leo Sayer’s Lost Without Your Love and that was the last we saw of Billy at school discos. We hardly saw him anywhere any more. He had his head down, all autumn. And he never emerged until the Christmas Disco when Rat Trap was the song of the moment. It was clear that this song had been written to speak directly to him.
He acted on what he heard. That December he went to see Rachel at University. He couldn’t have timed it worse. She had her first term exams and she didn’t want to be ‘emotionally blackmailed’ by Billy. At least that’s what Laura told me that she’d said. Laura was able to relay such information because Billy had talked Grant into taking him there by car. And Laura had gone along for the ride. Laura and Grant had sat it out in Kate’s Bar while Billy fronted up to Rachel to tell her he would leave school, get a job in a bar, anything to be with her.
It sounded a bit desperate to me. Sounded a bit like Laura was making something out of a song lyric. But then on the other hand, it could have been Billy, what did I know? I saw nothing of him any more apart from a distance. I still thought he’d never forgiven me for his sixteenth birthday debacle. I didn’t really blame him. It hadn’t looked good whichever way you came to it and I never really had the chance to explain myself.
So I was getting left out of the loop. I was a bit miffed that they’d not invited me along to St Andrews with them, especially since I thought I was still ‘going out’ with Grant – though even I knew it was an on-off relationship of convenience. And the convenience wasn’t mine.
I kept away from Grant and Laura over the Christmas holidays, at the time I was terrified Grant would buy me a ring, and then somehow I’d be forced to have sex with him. I was naïve in the extreme. I didn’t think that Grant liked me, but I couldn’t work out why he was ‘using’ me. But then, I was using him to get time in Billy’s company. So it’s pot calling kettle black really, isn’t it?
Anyway, I missed out on most of the action because Grant and Billy were playing in a ceilidh band through most of the holidays. Billy was trying to earn money either to be with or spend on Rachel. I wasn’t invited to the gigs. Laura used to go. She told me they were really boring, but of course I was jealous about the time she spent with Billy. I don’t know if any of it was deliberate. I never asked then and I haven’t had the nerve to ask since. I’ve drawn my own conclusions from time to time and they aren’t pleasant, but Laura was my best friend and come 2013 she was my only way of seeing Billy again, so I didn’t want to piss her off. At the time I remember I always thought that one day I’d sit down and ask Laura to tell me the truth – but that day has somehow never come.
When we were back at school after Christmas, Laura reported that Rachel had spent no time with Billy over the holidays. She’d never turned up to a single gig. Not even on Hogmanay. She’d had a whole month of holidays while we’d had a paltry two weeks and she’d never even made the effort to see Billy. According to Laura.
‘That’s all you know,’ I said, ‘I bet they spent time together you don’t know about. Why would you even know?’
‘She’s moved on,’ Laura told me, with a smug look like she knew something.
‘How’d you know?’ I asked.
‘We went shopping,’ she said.
I assumed she meant her and Rachel. And that hurt. Why hadn’t she invited me along? Something was rotten in the state of Denmark, all right, and it wasn’t just that the best song in the charts was You Don’t Bring me Flowers, though it has to be admitted that’s the lamest of songs.
I didn’t believe what Laura said. I didn’t want to believe it. Even though of course for anyone else to stand a chance with Billy it needed to be true. When it came down to it, I knew that for me to stand a chance with Billy would take more than him and Rachel having split up. But it was pretty clear that Laura was making a play for Billy. She was convinced the coast was clear, after all. I did take a lot of comfort that from however much she seemed to throw herself at him – and she did it a lot in the Common Room that year - Billy didn’t respond. He hadn’t given up on Rachel. Sure she was disco and he was new wave, she was a student and he was still at school, but he was willing to ride the storm. However much we all wanted to believe that 1979 was the year of Don’t Stop Me Now, it was much more Oliver’s Army.
Discography
Bowie, Starman
Bowie, Space Oddity
Grease, Summer Loving https://youtu.be/NaX28UJYAsA
Grease, Sandy https://youtu.be/cxbMk-8701M
Grease, You’re the One that I want https://youtu.be/7oKPYe53h78
Boomtown Rats, Rat Trap https://youtu.be/opd14v2I7Ik
Bread, Lost without your love https://youtu.be/7oKPYe53h78
Neil Diamond/Barbra Streisand, You Don’t bring me flowers https://youtu.be/NZ4ECFfoSfg
Elvis Costello, Oliver’s Army https://youtu.be/DF7jFWmFbTg
Queen, Don’t Stop me Now https://youtu.be/HgzGwKwLmgM
If I can clearly remember Scooby, Stevie, Doobs and Billy as the Bohemian Rhapsody boys, even more so can I remember them all aping it up to You’re the One that I want. Billy and Rachel danced it at the final school disco that year and they had all the moves down pat. No one else would have dared to do it. But that was Billy and Rachel. I always thought it was like a present they were giving to the rest of us. It was traditional to have some kind of comic skit at the end of summer term, usually taking the piss out of the teachers. I expected Yes Sir I can Boogie would make an appearance, but instead Billy and Rachel just took the place apart.
And they got us all joining in. The boys had turned up in their rather too small college jumpers which had been all the fashion in third year but were now generally discarded, and Billy’s Harrington did a passable leather jacket – none of us could afford leather jackets in those days. The boys had been primed by Billy so they knew all their moves. We were girls. We knew all the moves and it only took a bit of encouragement to get us joining in. The place rocked. It was like an episode of Glee twenty years before its time. In fact, yeah, we may have even invented Glee!
At the end, Scooby put on a falsetto voice and shouted out: ‘What are we all going to do after graduation? Maybe we’ll never see each other again?’
Yeah, right. We knew our story wasn’t over yet.
For a start, as soon as it was released, we were queuing round the block to see the movie. ‘Oh, those summer nights.’
That summer I had a job. I think it was my parents’ way of trying to make sure I went back to school in August. Their aim was to show me the horrors of the world of work. It was in an insurance company. But it wasn’t a proper job, so I didn’t get paid proper money. It was filing for a friend of my dad’s. It was pretty hideous. They needn’t have bothered. I wanted to go back to school, simply because I knew Billy was going back, and Rachel wasn’t. I never thought I stood a chance, but still…
So I endured six weeks without Billy and I was beginning to realise that the next summer I would be facing the rest of my life without Billy and Laura and Rachel. On the bright side, Scooby and Doobs had left that summer– not being boys to stick it out beyond Highers – and Scooby wasn’t even doing Highers, he was fighting his way through another year of CSE’s, not even having made it to O Grade standard the year before. It was left to Stevie to sing Summer Nights to Billy in an ironic tone.
Now, in those days you didn’t turn up at school in August for the results, you awaited the plop of the envelope on the carpet with a stomach in knots. But because I was out at work my mum intercepted the envelope. Whatever my parents thought, I knew I was going back to school. I was even looking forward to it in a strange way. But only because of Billy. I knew that however bad my results were I’d get back into school and I certainly had no intention of making the insurance job permanent. I’d had enough of my dad’s jokes about ‘risk’ management to last a lifetime by the time the results came through.
In the end I did pass all my Highers so it was Sixth Year Studies for me. I was looking forward to things being different but the classes weren’t my priority. It was the Sixth Form Common Room that we all craved. A place to heroes, a place to be us. A place we could play music and drink coffee and kick back and dream of the future. A place we could be with Billy and without Rachel. Or so we thought. Be careful what you wish for is good advice, believe me.
Sixth Year Studies was just a minor inconvenience. No one took it seriously. We all saw it as the ultimate in pointless boredom. It was largely ‘independent’ study, the goal being to get us ready for University. In reality it meant we had a lot of time sitting in the sixth form common room (until a teacher chased us into the library), doing very little. Very little apart from preening ourselves and trying to get Billy to notice us.
Billy had a bit tougher time of it. He’d ‘invested’ rather a lot of time in Rachel the previous year and as a consequence he hadn’t ‘got the grades’ he needed to get into University – which was his parents’ choice for his future. I’m not sure it was ever Billy’s choice. So he was retaking Higher English, Physics and Maths. His nose was firmly to the grindstone. And he was hardly in the Sixth Form Common Room. When he was, he was a shadow of his former self. Every time he came in we put on Bowie, mostly Starman or Space Oddity, but he seldom rose to the occasion.
Rachel was off enjoying her new life at University and we girls barely gave her a thought. Billy, on the other hand, clearly thought of nothing but her. If he was an animal you’d have said he was pining. And of course that made him all the more attractive.
Stevie, who never knew when to stop and really thought he was cock of the walk in the sixth form common room, whereas in reality he was just truly a pain in the arse, pushed it too far– and started singing Sandy incessantly whenever Billy was around – until he turned up with a black eye.
At the first school disco in September they played Leo Sayer’s Lost Without Your Love and that was the last we saw of Billy at school discos. We hardly saw him anywhere any more. He had his head down, all autumn. And he never emerged until the Christmas Disco when Rat Trap was the song of the moment. It was clear that this song had been written to speak directly to him.
He acted on what he heard. That December he went to see Rachel at University. He couldn’t have timed it worse. She had her first term exams and she didn’t want to be ‘emotionally blackmailed’ by Billy. At least that’s what Laura told me that she’d said. Laura was able to relay such information because Billy had talked Grant into taking him there by car. And Laura had gone along for the ride. Laura and Grant had sat it out in Kate’s Bar while Billy fronted up to Rachel to tell her he would leave school, get a job in a bar, anything to be with her.
It sounded a bit desperate to me. Sounded a bit like Laura was making something out of a song lyric. But then on the other hand, it could have been Billy, what did I know? I saw nothing of him any more apart from a distance. I still thought he’d never forgiven me for his sixteenth birthday debacle. I didn’t really blame him. It hadn’t looked good whichever way you came to it and I never really had the chance to explain myself.
So I was getting left out of the loop. I was a bit miffed that they’d not invited me along to St Andrews with them, especially since I thought I was still ‘going out’ with Grant – though even I knew it was an on-off relationship of convenience. And the convenience wasn’t mine.
I kept away from Grant and Laura over the Christmas holidays, at the time I was terrified Grant would buy me a ring, and then somehow I’d be forced to have sex with him. I was naïve in the extreme. I didn’t think that Grant liked me, but I couldn’t work out why he was ‘using’ me. But then, I was using him to get time in Billy’s company. So it’s pot calling kettle black really, isn’t it?
Anyway, I missed out on most of the action because Grant and Billy were playing in a ceilidh band through most of the holidays. Billy was trying to earn money either to be with or spend on Rachel. I wasn’t invited to the gigs. Laura used to go. She told me they were really boring, but of course I was jealous about the time she spent with Billy. I don’t know if any of it was deliberate. I never asked then and I haven’t had the nerve to ask since. I’ve drawn my own conclusions from time to time and they aren’t pleasant, but Laura was my best friend and come 2013 she was my only way of seeing Billy again, so I didn’t want to piss her off. At the time I remember I always thought that one day I’d sit down and ask Laura to tell me the truth – but that day has somehow never come.
When we were back at school after Christmas, Laura reported that Rachel had spent no time with Billy over the holidays. She’d never turned up to a single gig. Not even on Hogmanay. She’d had a whole month of holidays while we’d had a paltry two weeks and she’d never even made the effort to see Billy. According to Laura.
‘That’s all you know,’ I said, ‘I bet they spent time together you don’t know about. Why would you even know?’
‘She’s moved on,’ Laura told me, with a smug look like she knew something.
‘How’d you know?’ I asked.
‘We went shopping,’ she said.
I assumed she meant her and Rachel. And that hurt. Why hadn’t she invited me along? Something was rotten in the state of Denmark, all right, and it wasn’t just that the best song in the charts was You Don’t Bring me Flowers, though it has to be admitted that’s the lamest of songs.
I didn’t believe what Laura said. I didn’t want to believe it. Even though of course for anyone else to stand a chance with Billy it needed to be true. When it came down to it, I knew that for me to stand a chance with Billy would take more than him and Rachel having split up. But it was pretty clear that Laura was making a play for Billy. She was convinced the coast was clear, after all. I did take a lot of comfort that from however much she seemed to throw herself at him – and she did it a lot in the Common Room that year - Billy didn’t respond. He hadn’t given up on Rachel. Sure she was disco and he was new wave, she was a student and he was still at school, but he was willing to ride the storm. However much we all wanted to believe that 1979 was the year of Don’t Stop Me Now, it was much more Oliver’s Army.
Discography
Bowie, Starman
Bowie, Space Oddity
Grease, Summer Loving https://youtu.be/NaX28UJYAsA
Grease, Sandy https://youtu.be/cxbMk-8701M
Grease, You’re the One that I want https://youtu.be/7oKPYe53h78
Boomtown Rats, Rat Trap https://youtu.be/opd14v2I7Ik
Bread, Lost without your love https://youtu.be/7oKPYe53h78
Neil Diamond/Barbra Streisand, You Don’t bring me flowers https://youtu.be/NZ4ECFfoSfg
Elvis Costello, Oliver’s Army https://youtu.be/DF7jFWmFbTg
Queen, Don’t Stop me Now https://youtu.be/HgzGwKwLmgM
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.