This Is Not A
BLOG!
Date: 12/07/05
25 Years On...
No, not this...
...although it's quite a neat album.
This week marks twenty-five years since the last time I took what
might be called a 'proper' holiday.
Makes me sound like a proper saddo, doesn't it? As if I cared, of
course.
It was a dark and stormy...erm...hold on, not that one...
It was July 1980. I was eighteen years of age. I had just sat my
'A'-level exams.
The original idea had been for the sort-of band of which I was a
sort-of member to spend a week "getting it together in the country"
(the 70s hadn't long ended - you can tell, can't you?). The bass player
had an uncle who owned a farm, on which there stood an uninhabited
bungalow which we might be able to use to rehearse.
Fortunately for the future direction of rock music, that idea fell
through when we were told that we couldn't use the bungalow after all.
Faced with the possibility of pioneering Unplugged years
before MTV came up with the idea or just having a straightforward
camping holiday, we chose the latter path.
There were five of us in all: let's call them 'Me', 'Carl', 'Alan',
'Steve' and 'Bill', partly because those were their actual names
(except for 'Me' who has never been called 'Me', except by me....oh
dear...and 'Bill', whose name was actually 'Steve', but wasn't called
that by us, and we already had a Steve, and life is complicated enough
as it is...).
So, one Friday evening, we set off for the village of Brimfield
in north Herefordshire.
The whole story can be found here.
It says much about it that I was able to write this account down over a
year later and with the thoughts, sights and sounds of that week still
very fresh in my mind. I also wrote a crappy poem about it, but I won't
try your tolerance any further.
