The Soundtrack of Our Lives
A Double Album in Prose
by Annie Christie
Genre: Drama
Swearwords: One mild one only.
Description: For anyone who has ever got lost in music!
Swearwords: One mild one only.
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 Fourteen
It’s the damage that we do and never know
It’s the words that we don’t say that scare me so (Elvis Costello)
~ 1979 ~
It’s the damage that we do and never know
It’s the words that we don’t say that scare me so (Elvis Costello)
~ 1979 ~
Billy didn’t give up. In February he bought Heart of Glass and posted it to Rachel at University. Laura said that Grant had refused to take him there. It was more likely that Grant couldn’t get his parents’ car. Word was Billy heard nothing back.
Time dragged on till the Easter holidays. Rachel wasn’t in evidence. At school Billy was still giving out the story that he and Rachel were in a long distance relationship. I’m not sure how many people believed it. I’m not sure he believed it. I felt sorry for him. And yes, maybe I hoped against hope that… and it was in that context that when Laura suggested that Billy and Grant and she were going to the pictures and would I like to ‘make up a foursome’ I didn’t immediately say no. I hadn’t seen Grant for a while and I was pretty sure he’d had his fill of me, but I was prepared to risk the shame if it meant a couple of hours in the cinema with Billy.
I was a teenager, I didn’t think it through. Of course I knew I wouldn’t get to sit beside Billy. I should have learned something from the Stevie/Laura/Scooby debacle, but when she invited me, I had no thought in my head other than just maybe it would turn out that I could sit beside him in the pictures, like I had in Chemistry and, well, chemistry would do the rest. What a fool I was! I should have realised Laura had it all planned. Again.
So the four of us went to the cinema one Friday night. Billy sat next to Grant. Laura positioned herself the other side of Billy and I was stuck against the wall, next to Grant. I realised at that moment I’d scored the Scooby seat! It was certainly the worst of all possible worlds. I was nowhere near Billy, and as Grant went through ‘the moves’ on me, I had no escape route. The only saving grace was that I was pretty sure Billy wasn’t doing the same. The film was The Deer Hunter. Not exactly a rom-com. But long enough for Grant to get what he wanted. We went to a pub afterwards but I was too nervous to drink. Grant and Billy ordered pints and Laura had a vodka and coke. I stuck with the coke. I didn’t want to give Grant an inch. Something in me kept telling me that once he ‘got what he wanted’ I’d be total history. So the only power I had was in not giving it to him. His retaliation was not to have anything to do with me unless he was in a situation where he might use powers of persuasion to achieve his goal. It’s not exactly romance, is it?
~ ~ ~
I remembered that evening tonight because I’d put a large gin in my tonic and stupidly put Breakfast In America on the CD player – classic mistake – and it took me straight back to those days of Easter 1977. The song that was playing all that time was The Logical Song. It seemed so appropriate! Nothing made any sense. Many’s the time I cried myself to sleep listening to There are times when all the world's asleep, The questions run too deep, For such a simple man Won't you please, please tell me what we've learned I know it sounds absurd, Please tell me who I am and I’m pretty sure I’m not the only one who has asked these questions. About boys about girls about love and life. About what was happening and what it all meant. It was then that I picked up the phone. In 2013, it was time for answers. And there was only one person to talk to. We’d not spoken in years but now it was time. Little did I know where that phone call would take me. Come Dancing, Jane, it’s all there still in the Windmills of your Mind.
~ ~ ~
‘I don’t even remember what you’re talking about,’ Laura replied. ‘Christ, Jane, it was over thirty years ago. Let it go, can’t you?’
I said yes, but the answer was no. The Logical Song was still playing in the back of my mind.
I’d said: ‘Back in 1979 when we went to the Deer Hunter, were you already planning to get off with Billy, and more importantly, was Grant already going out with Rachel?’ It was a simple question, though actually it was the most difficult of questions, given the impact affirmatives would have on the rest of our lives. But we’d had those lives when I asked the question. It was all in the past. All I wanted was some honesty. It mattered. To me, it still matters. I’m still waiting for the truth. Tonight, when we go back to school, I’m going to get it. Because, like Bruce Springsteen said, the past is always with us. He actually said: The past is never the past. It is always present. And you better reckon with it in your life and in your daily experience, or it will get you. It will get you really bad. It will come and it will devour you, it will remove you from the present. It will steal your future and this happens every day. I never knew how right he was till I walked back into school in 2013. But you need to know the past first…
~ ~ ~
Something big happened that May. The world changed on its axis. On the morning of May 4th we woke up to the first woman prime minister. But the coming of the Thatcher era, which was to have profound effects on all our lives, was insignificant to what was happening right on our doorsteps.
The election that changed our country for ever happened on May 3rd 1979. Billy turned 18 on May 4th. As such he was just too young to vote, as if his voting would have made any difference. At the time what was more important was that come May 4th 1979 and there was no birthday record from Rachel. As I recall, it was the day of his Higher English exam (the one he subsequently failed for the second time, meaning that he left school with a grade D for English, which was what he’d got in 1978).
He went out and bought the top three songs. He had a point to make, right? The top three were– Bright Eyes, by Art Garfunkel, Some Girls by Racey and Pop Muzik by M. Could you pick a more cheesy three? But when you read into the lyrics personally you can see how provocative they might have been. Not Bright Eyes, of course, that’s just about rabbits, but the other two. If he’d have left it at Bright Eyes he might have got away with it. But the others. That was pure inflammatory. He was desperate, though. I recognise that. He was perhaps trying to be light-hearted. But how could he know she would hear It's something we should talk about rather than the challenge some girls lie? Their days of speaking through songs was long gone. He should have known that. And that accusing her of living in a disco was never going to get her back with him. But Billy had seriously lost the plot by then.
Perhaps he wanted to make sure she understood by delivering them in person. He got on a bus to St Andrews. But that was never going to end well now, was it? Turned out she wasn’t in. Her flatmate said she was in an exam. Or at the beach. Or something. Billy was left So Lonely – doubtless singing the song to himself as he wandered along the beach that had not yet become famed for Chariots of Fire.
I can just imagine him in his pain singing: Well someone told me yesterday, That when you throw your love away, You act as if you just don't care, You look as if you're going somewhere. I don’t know for certain, of course, but it was a Billy kind of a thing to do.
One way or another, he ended up in Kate’s Bar which was the student hangout for the cool kids. Rachel had segued effortlessly from cool at school to cool at Uni. I guess there was never any doubt that that would happen. But Billy was like a fish out of water. He clung to the jukebox, doubtless wishing he was back in the Italian café when life had been so much simpler all round.
Some time later she came in, on her own. She told him her flat mate had said he’d come calling. Told him to make it quick. At least that’s what I heard from Laura. Laura said he was playing Watching the Detectives when she came in and that wound her up. How would Laura know? She wasn’t there any more than I was. But then, Laura says, he was a couple of pints the worse for wear by that time. He handed her the records. She told him to grow up. Or some such. I wasn’t there, remember. He got the bus back home. End of.
But the next day, May 5th, when he came back into school, he got a surprise. I gave it to him. It was the Elvis Costello cassette. He should have guessed. It wasn’t a record. They sent each other records. But she’d stopped. Perhaps he thought it was cheaper to post. It obviously meant something to him.
But it meant something to me too. I’d bought it. I mean, I didn’t know then about all that had happened the day before, I just knew that it had been his 18th birthday and he’d not turned up for his exam. Which couldn’t be good. I had had the cassette with me the day before and was waiting in the common room to give it to him before he went in to the exam. Which he never did. By the next day, my bravado in the plan of giving him a present I knew he’d really like had lost its momentum. And Laura had just finished telling me the ‘story she’d heard from Grant last night’ about Billy and Rachel and he walked in the door. I didn’t know what to do. I panicked. I gave it to him. Of course I meant to tell him it was from me. I just couldn’t. I assumed he’d work that out. What actually happened was that I muttered ‘sorry for your 16th’ as I shoved it his way, and he looked at me like I was something from another planet. I wimped out. ‘She’d want you to have this,’ I said.
He played it. Accidents will happen. It’s the damage that we do and never know, it’s the words that we don’t say that scare me so. He thought they were back on!
Laura was furious when I told her. I couldn’t understand why. She told me to butt out of Billy’s life. I did as I was told. I was far too embarrassed to speak to him by then. I had already written it off. We were going to leave school. I had to face the reality that I would never see Billy again. The way I was feeling I would be quite happy never to see any of them again.
But then there was Benmore. When Laura got off with Billy. That was the straw that broke the camel’s back for me. When I got home I decided I was going to leave it all behind and get a job. I’d lost any desire to go to University. It seemed like it would just be more of the same as school. I didn’t want to be a misfit for another four years. Work seemed the obvious way out. Sitting in a boring office with boring people of all ages who didn’t want to share their boring lives and only talked about what was on television or where they were going on their holidays. I reckoned that was about my level. I’d made my bed. I intended to lie in it. Leave the cool kids to fight it out at Uni. I was headed like Sheena Easton for a life of Nine to Five a couple of years before she even came up with it!
You’ll remember I told you about Benmore before. Meatloaf saw Billy Up the Junction but we all had one more disco to attend. One last chance to wallow in adolescent angst before we went our separate ways.
And I was as surprised as Billy when Rachel turned up.
~ 2013 ~
I still remember the song that had played when Rachel walked into the disco that night. It was Joe Jackson, Something’s going on around here. I remember the look on Laura’s face. I can’t describe it clearly, but I can remember it. But who invited her? That’s the million dollar question.
It wasn’t Billy. I had seen the look on his face. He wasn’t expecting her. He was dancing with Laura for one thing. He’d never…
‘I’m not going to come to the reunion until you tell me what really happened,’ I said.
What kind of a toothless threat was that?
She laughed.
‘You said that in 1979,’ she replied. ‘But you’ve been at every reunion since. Nothing would keep you away, would it?’
I tried to cover, tried to act like it didn’t matter, but what she said sounded mean and hurt me to the core. If I’m honest of course the reason is that I was jealous. And I probably still am jealous. That’s me, always the bridesmaid and never the bride. But I’ve never known whether Laura was just playing with me, trying to wind me up because she knew how much Billy meant to me, or whether she really did get off with him.
~ ~ ~
That evening in 1979 Rachel walked in like she owned the place. Let’s face it, she did own the place. Even though she’d left, she was still the queen. And Billy was all over her. They sat out talking during Are Friends Electric, and when Up the Junction came on he looked really uncomfortable so that, though reluctant, he allowed her to pull him up to dance to Ring My Bell. He stayed there for Sunday Girl, and Dance Away. And then it was Leif Garrett, Disco Crap, an ill-timed punch and well, you know the rest. Or you think you do. I did too. How wrong are we? This story is far from over.
Discography
Blondie, Heart of Glass https://youtu.be/WGU_4-5RaxU
Supertramp, The Logical Song https://youtu.be/Qbf9G9sCuC0
The Kinks, Come Dancing https://youtu.be/hTG7hnnqD5w
Windmills of your mind https://youtu.be/qKV9bK-CBXo
Art Garfunkel, Bright Eyes, https://youtu.be/a502RejLz8s
Racey, Some Girls https://youtu.be/jNwYwavVnas
M, Pop Muzik https://youtu.be/Avvh5H-EPWU
Police, So Lonely https://youtu.be/0cl641xmxto
Elvis Costello, Watching the Detectives https://youtu.be/EFzT5quy4pI
Elvis Costello, Accidents will happen https://youtu.be/ytOzQ9EsT_U
Sheena Easton, Nine to Five https://youtu.be/AUlhygu4ogI
Tubeway Army, Are Friends Electric https://youtu.be/zs-eFRbgn6M
Squeeze, Up the Junction https://youtu.be/RQciegmLPAo
Anita Ward, Ring my Bell https://youtu.be/k8zuqsqdCAQ
Blondie, Sunday Girl https://youtu.be/u5SmLgGnKJ4
Roxy Music, Dance Away https://youtu.be/NavzcV_gRiE
Time dragged on till the Easter holidays. Rachel wasn’t in evidence. At school Billy was still giving out the story that he and Rachel were in a long distance relationship. I’m not sure how many people believed it. I’m not sure he believed it. I felt sorry for him. And yes, maybe I hoped against hope that… and it was in that context that when Laura suggested that Billy and Grant and she were going to the pictures and would I like to ‘make up a foursome’ I didn’t immediately say no. I hadn’t seen Grant for a while and I was pretty sure he’d had his fill of me, but I was prepared to risk the shame if it meant a couple of hours in the cinema with Billy.
I was a teenager, I didn’t think it through. Of course I knew I wouldn’t get to sit beside Billy. I should have learned something from the Stevie/Laura/Scooby debacle, but when she invited me, I had no thought in my head other than just maybe it would turn out that I could sit beside him in the pictures, like I had in Chemistry and, well, chemistry would do the rest. What a fool I was! I should have realised Laura had it all planned. Again.
So the four of us went to the cinema one Friday night. Billy sat next to Grant. Laura positioned herself the other side of Billy and I was stuck against the wall, next to Grant. I realised at that moment I’d scored the Scooby seat! It was certainly the worst of all possible worlds. I was nowhere near Billy, and as Grant went through ‘the moves’ on me, I had no escape route. The only saving grace was that I was pretty sure Billy wasn’t doing the same. The film was The Deer Hunter. Not exactly a rom-com. But long enough for Grant to get what he wanted. We went to a pub afterwards but I was too nervous to drink. Grant and Billy ordered pints and Laura had a vodka and coke. I stuck with the coke. I didn’t want to give Grant an inch. Something in me kept telling me that once he ‘got what he wanted’ I’d be total history. So the only power I had was in not giving it to him. His retaliation was not to have anything to do with me unless he was in a situation where he might use powers of persuasion to achieve his goal. It’s not exactly romance, is it?
~ ~ ~
I remembered that evening tonight because I’d put a large gin in my tonic and stupidly put Breakfast In America on the CD player – classic mistake – and it took me straight back to those days of Easter 1977. The song that was playing all that time was The Logical Song. It seemed so appropriate! Nothing made any sense. Many’s the time I cried myself to sleep listening to There are times when all the world's asleep, The questions run too deep, For such a simple man Won't you please, please tell me what we've learned I know it sounds absurd, Please tell me who I am and I’m pretty sure I’m not the only one who has asked these questions. About boys about girls about love and life. About what was happening and what it all meant. It was then that I picked up the phone. In 2013, it was time for answers. And there was only one person to talk to. We’d not spoken in years but now it was time. Little did I know where that phone call would take me. Come Dancing, Jane, it’s all there still in the Windmills of your Mind.
~ ~ ~
‘I don’t even remember what you’re talking about,’ Laura replied. ‘Christ, Jane, it was over thirty years ago. Let it go, can’t you?’
I said yes, but the answer was no. The Logical Song was still playing in the back of my mind.
I’d said: ‘Back in 1979 when we went to the Deer Hunter, were you already planning to get off with Billy, and more importantly, was Grant already going out with Rachel?’ It was a simple question, though actually it was the most difficult of questions, given the impact affirmatives would have on the rest of our lives. But we’d had those lives when I asked the question. It was all in the past. All I wanted was some honesty. It mattered. To me, it still matters. I’m still waiting for the truth. Tonight, when we go back to school, I’m going to get it. Because, like Bruce Springsteen said, the past is always with us. He actually said: The past is never the past. It is always present. And you better reckon with it in your life and in your daily experience, or it will get you. It will get you really bad. It will come and it will devour you, it will remove you from the present. It will steal your future and this happens every day. I never knew how right he was till I walked back into school in 2013. But you need to know the past first…
~ ~ ~
Something big happened that May. The world changed on its axis. On the morning of May 4th we woke up to the first woman prime minister. But the coming of the Thatcher era, which was to have profound effects on all our lives, was insignificant to what was happening right on our doorsteps.
The election that changed our country for ever happened on May 3rd 1979. Billy turned 18 on May 4th. As such he was just too young to vote, as if his voting would have made any difference. At the time what was more important was that come May 4th 1979 and there was no birthday record from Rachel. As I recall, it was the day of his Higher English exam (the one he subsequently failed for the second time, meaning that he left school with a grade D for English, which was what he’d got in 1978).
He went out and bought the top three songs. He had a point to make, right? The top three were– Bright Eyes, by Art Garfunkel, Some Girls by Racey and Pop Muzik by M. Could you pick a more cheesy three? But when you read into the lyrics personally you can see how provocative they might have been. Not Bright Eyes, of course, that’s just about rabbits, but the other two. If he’d have left it at Bright Eyes he might have got away with it. But the others. That was pure inflammatory. He was desperate, though. I recognise that. He was perhaps trying to be light-hearted. But how could he know she would hear It's something we should talk about rather than the challenge some girls lie? Their days of speaking through songs was long gone. He should have known that. And that accusing her of living in a disco was never going to get her back with him. But Billy had seriously lost the plot by then.
Perhaps he wanted to make sure she understood by delivering them in person. He got on a bus to St Andrews. But that was never going to end well now, was it? Turned out she wasn’t in. Her flatmate said she was in an exam. Or at the beach. Or something. Billy was left So Lonely – doubtless singing the song to himself as he wandered along the beach that had not yet become famed for Chariots of Fire.
I can just imagine him in his pain singing: Well someone told me yesterday, That when you throw your love away, You act as if you just don't care, You look as if you're going somewhere. I don’t know for certain, of course, but it was a Billy kind of a thing to do.
One way or another, he ended up in Kate’s Bar which was the student hangout for the cool kids. Rachel had segued effortlessly from cool at school to cool at Uni. I guess there was never any doubt that that would happen. But Billy was like a fish out of water. He clung to the jukebox, doubtless wishing he was back in the Italian café when life had been so much simpler all round.
Some time later she came in, on her own. She told him her flat mate had said he’d come calling. Told him to make it quick. At least that’s what I heard from Laura. Laura said he was playing Watching the Detectives when she came in and that wound her up. How would Laura know? She wasn’t there any more than I was. But then, Laura says, he was a couple of pints the worse for wear by that time. He handed her the records. She told him to grow up. Or some such. I wasn’t there, remember. He got the bus back home. End of.
But the next day, May 5th, when he came back into school, he got a surprise. I gave it to him. It was the Elvis Costello cassette. He should have guessed. It wasn’t a record. They sent each other records. But she’d stopped. Perhaps he thought it was cheaper to post. It obviously meant something to him.
But it meant something to me too. I’d bought it. I mean, I didn’t know then about all that had happened the day before, I just knew that it had been his 18th birthday and he’d not turned up for his exam. Which couldn’t be good. I had had the cassette with me the day before and was waiting in the common room to give it to him before he went in to the exam. Which he never did. By the next day, my bravado in the plan of giving him a present I knew he’d really like had lost its momentum. And Laura had just finished telling me the ‘story she’d heard from Grant last night’ about Billy and Rachel and he walked in the door. I didn’t know what to do. I panicked. I gave it to him. Of course I meant to tell him it was from me. I just couldn’t. I assumed he’d work that out. What actually happened was that I muttered ‘sorry for your 16th’ as I shoved it his way, and he looked at me like I was something from another planet. I wimped out. ‘She’d want you to have this,’ I said.
He played it. Accidents will happen. It’s the damage that we do and never know, it’s the words that we don’t say that scare me so. He thought they were back on!
Laura was furious when I told her. I couldn’t understand why. She told me to butt out of Billy’s life. I did as I was told. I was far too embarrassed to speak to him by then. I had already written it off. We were going to leave school. I had to face the reality that I would never see Billy again. The way I was feeling I would be quite happy never to see any of them again.
But then there was Benmore. When Laura got off with Billy. That was the straw that broke the camel’s back for me. When I got home I decided I was going to leave it all behind and get a job. I’d lost any desire to go to University. It seemed like it would just be more of the same as school. I didn’t want to be a misfit for another four years. Work seemed the obvious way out. Sitting in a boring office with boring people of all ages who didn’t want to share their boring lives and only talked about what was on television or where they were going on their holidays. I reckoned that was about my level. I’d made my bed. I intended to lie in it. Leave the cool kids to fight it out at Uni. I was headed like Sheena Easton for a life of Nine to Five a couple of years before she even came up with it!
You’ll remember I told you about Benmore before. Meatloaf saw Billy Up the Junction but we all had one more disco to attend. One last chance to wallow in adolescent angst before we went our separate ways.
And I was as surprised as Billy when Rachel turned up.
~ 2013 ~
I still remember the song that had played when Rachel walked into the disco that night. It was Joe Jackson, Something’s going on around here. I remember the look on Laura’s face. I can’t describe it clearly, but I can remember it. But who invited her? That’s the million dollar question.
It wasn’t Billy. I had seen the look on his face. He wasn’t expecting her. He was dancing with Laura for one thing. He’d never…
‘I’m not going to come to the reunion until you tell me what really happened,’ I said.
What kind of a toothless threat was that?
She laughed.
‘You said that in 1979,’ she replied. ‘But you’ve been at every reunion since. Nothing would keep you away, would it?’
I tried to cover, tried to act like it didn’t matter, but what she said sounded mean and hurt me to the core. If I’m honest of course the reason is that I was jealous. And I probably still am jealous. That’s me, always the bridesmaid and never the bride. But I’ve never known whether Laura was just playing with me, trying to wind me up because she knew how much Billy meant to me, or whether she really did get off with him.
~ ~ ~
That evening in 1979 Rachel walked in like she owned the place. Let’s face it, she did own the place. Even though she’d left, she was still the queen. And Billy was all over her. They sat out talking during Are Friends Electric, and when Up the Junction came on he looked really uncomfortable so that, though reluctant, he allowed her to pull him up to dance to Ring My Bell. He stayed there for Sunday Girl, and Dance Away. And then it was Leif Garrett, Disco Crap, an ill-timed punch and well, you know the rest. Or you think you do. I did too. How wrong are we? This story is far from over.
Discography
Blondie, Heart of Glass https://youtu.be/WGU_4-5RaxU
Supertramp, The Logical Song https://youtu.be/Qbf9G9sCuC0
The Kinks, Come Dancing https://youtu.be/hTG7hnnqD5w
Windmills of your mind https://youtu.be/qKV9bK-CBXo
Art Garfunkel, Bright Eyes, https://youtu.be/a502RejLz8s
Racey, Some Girls https://youtu.be/jNwYwavVnas
M, Pop Muzik https://youtu.be/Avvh5H-EPWU
Police, So Lonely https://youtu.be/0cl641xmxto
Elvis Costello, Watching the Detectives https://youtu.be/EFzT5quy4pI
Elvis Costello, Accidents will happen https://youtu.be/ytOzQ9EsT_U
Sheena Easton, Nine to Five https://youtu.be/AUlhygu4ogI
Tubeway Army, Are Friends Electric https://youtu.be/zs-eFRbgn6M
Squeeze, Up the Junction https://youtu.be/RQciegmLPAo
Anita Ward, Ring my Bell https://youtu.be/k8zuqsqdCAQ
Blondie, Sunday Girl https://youtu.be/u5SmLgGnKJ4
Roxy Music, Dance Away https://youtu.be/NavzcV_gRiE
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.