Tuesday 20 March 2012

Rumours Of Summer


Clutches of tiny Tildas the size of a disappointing gift are whispering in the trees. The susurration loses the words. Reminders, fragments of heartbreak, petty lies and the small cruelties of youth. The scratched record of stolen songs and ill-chosen words that together and competing is less eerie than it is just another layer to the breeze. It has been a fine day, a gentle day, not too warm, spring and soon gone as I never forgot each year that the pleasant malaise of this brief season will vanish in rain and cheap whitewash again until June. But tomorrow, tomorrow, for today was a rare and lovely thing. In a shared string vest and stolen wellington boots the Will Selfs said nothing to one another as each armed with fly-swat and tins of Norseman lager for ammunition shooed away Tracey Emin - when she could be bothered to bother them, which was rarely. She’s there now basking in the evening, losing an unwanted tan to a cloudy evening. Terry Thomas is eating ice-cream, not his.
We’re listening to Rumours.
Not the Pistols, the Clash, Culture Shock, or Poppies. It’s not that sort of day. The album so full of break up and loss conspires as ever to be summer. We’re all hippies today, because it’s too nice to be anything else. I worked on the typewriter I’ve had since I was thirteen. The pages handed to the internet when Paul called by, and this too, so if you can’t read this you won’t know anyway will you?
I’m not one for summer. Not for hay fever and unpleasant heat in the open, but in the woods and on a ramble, on a walk in good baggy shorts and a suitable hat I’m the very feller. It’s a truism that it was always summer when you were young, and still for me well into my twenties. Who remembers the rain of Brixton when instead there was cider in the park? Free festivals and friends, no one wearing very much, the best sort of party, friends and new friends, music and laughter. And through the magic of the Walkman the cricket scores too, on the sly.
And Rumours.
Everyone loves Rumours. Everyone worth talking to about music in any case, summer and still though the music is sad it’s wistful, but importantly not about now, but about sadder memories that only make the present better. Long looks, a smile returned, being one of the beautiful people. I was young and I’m not jealous of youth now, because when I was young I really was. I had fun, and frolics, and things were important as they had to be – apart from the future, which was not even tomorrow. Because you’re never twenty-three again, that summer is once. And it was great, and many more like it. I’ve been lucky in love all my life, so Rumours is not about me. But it’s summer in the park, and later the pub, and another party, and the music is great.
I don’t regret a thing and I begrudge anything less.
Rumours, and a smile returned. Love in the sun. It’ll rain tomorrow but let tomorrow take care of itself.        

4 comments:

  1. I was married with a two year old boy at twenty three. My circle of friends had shrunk to none that visited.A social life was something other people talked about.

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  2. Not my fault, I was about eight at the time!

    I was having too much fun being young when I was young for any of that. Now I've not had a single day with just Q and I since our kids were born, not one. That's all right though, I'm in my 40s now. A social life might now be something other people talk about, but I chose to have the little scamps and live in the marcher lands of nowhere. What you say only reinforces that I was right to be young when I was. And I was. And it was great. Tony the tiger great.

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  3. Absolutely. And it's great to have those times to look back on. I should have done more with my time than I did - Hind sight is a great thing. I made bad choices for the right reasons. I've never been lucky in love but I have been very lucky with my children and I wouldn't change that for any amount of fun in the sun.
    I was never free to just enjoy myself, even as a child and I rebelled against that as much as I was able but thats all to complicated to write about here.

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  4. But for the fact I'm an aspie who has never allowed myself to believe that people fancied me, even when I was actually having sex with them, my twenties were therefore (almost) as fantastic as those of our host. If there wasn't a game on, there was a gig on, and if not a gig, then a party, and if not a party, then band practice. I'd swear I was at university until I was thirty, given working in media is much like hanging out with people, except you get paid. And it never occurred to me until I left the BBC that most companies don't run a bar that you are encouraged to visit at lunchtime.

    I have a few regrets from the time - I should have simply been bolder in what I did - but otherwise no - fantabulous times.

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