annanotbob's Diaryland Diary
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She combs her hair
Today I took Sara to the best chiropractor we know, who has just moved to the town I lived in as a teenager. I hadn't really thought about going back there as any kind of a deal, other than it's thirty miles of twisty country roads from here, though I don't go back there and don't have fond memories of the girl I was back then. I wasn't thinking about having the past dredged up as I was going there for a reason from my life today, but as we approached I found all sorts of weird memories bursting through, starting with the village hall where, in 1969 I first heard and danced to Cream's Sunshine of Your Love played through a proper sound system rather than my record player - I shall go and find it for our listening pleasure, hang on:
it goes on a bit, but they all did then. Anyway, that was the first guitar riff that really got to me and I hadn't thought of it for ages, but driving past the turning in the road, I had a flash of being fifteen and off to a party - I can remember the name of the boy whose party it was - he was in the year above me at school and I was excited to have been invited. Wearing a very short dress and thick blue eyeshadow, somebody's dad giving us a lift, hearing the music from outside, feeling so grown-up, hoping I'd get a snog.
Whatever, it was a ghastly day in many respects, bringing up all sorts of memories and I've been reliving it ever since, seeing that girl through so many different lenses. Exhausting.
While Sara had her treatment I wandered around - fantastic charity shops, but that much bounty somehow stops me buying anything. Usually I mooch through racks of vile shite and sometimes there's one half-decent item so I buy it - when there's loads of good stuff in my size I realise I don't really want any more clothes and don't bother.
It's a very beautiful old town, but a terrible place to be a teenager as there was nowhere to go and nothing to do. We just hung around taking drugs till we got moved on or chucked out, when we went and took some more drugs somewhere else, but with all this Tudor shit as a background, which I barely noticed back then. I was the manager of a record shop from age 19 to 21. The owner lived upstairs and used to let me stay in his flat when he went away. It's a bookie's now:
There's loads of it the same - any old shop at street level, but up above, beautiful old buildings
which had been invisible to my young eyes. That was quite a shock. But I was stoned witless for at least part of every single day, so maybe not altogether surprising.
My first job, which I did for a couple of hours each day after school, was in the Wimpy Bar and bugger me if it's not still there. I ended up working there on and off for years, 20p an hour I used to get, plus tips and as much food as you can eat. We had lunch there, the food I ate most nights:
which was a whole Proustian madeleine moment and after that I said, 'Enough! Take me back to my present day, I like it better there!'
And back we came, to see lovely Renny, home from Greece. The funding for his MA has finally come through and he's moving to London next Saturday. Terrible, to have them both leaving within a month. I don't see Renny that often, but he's been just round the corner and I've liked that. Ah well.
|11:25 p.m. - 29/08/2009
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