I do enjoy the expression on Malcolm’s face in that advert, and the concept of running with the cats for joy I can relate to. Yesterday afternoon our cat Tilly declined to come out for a run with me, but it had been a good day.
It had started when a client rang to say that an outstanding invoice was about to be settled and then came the offer of a book deal. The latter will need a lot of time for not much return, but if the project comes to fruition it adds a prestigious publisher to my roster and another book to my growing list of titles.
Then a very positive lunch meeting with someone I had worked with a couple of years ago looks likely to yield some collaboration to mutual benefit in a new venture. As I wrote the other day in another blog working with good people always lifts the spirits and in matters of the spirit music has always played an important part, so when I stopped for fuel on the way home and spotted one of the music magazines on display in the kiosk featured some of my favourite artists I added a copy to my fuel purchase. When I got home and looked at what was on the CD that came with the magazine I was thrilled; the compilation of 15 tracks from the late 1960s was one I might have chosen myself.
As I gleefully read through the track list notes something in the depths of my mind made the leap forward a few years to that hot summer of 1976. In those balmy months a new romantic interest often saw me driving the twenty miles home as it was getting light. Pirate radio was still on the air at that time with the latest incarnation of Caroline amongst what you might find depending on the vagaries of signal strength and I could usually find something to listen to to keep me company as I made my way back to grab a hour of sleep before getting ready for another day at work.
Three track stick in my mind from those drives: “Harvest for the World” by the Isley Brothers, Bob Dylan’s flawed ode “Hurricane” and a slightly novel, and rude, album track from an outfit called Supercharge, “She moved the dishes first”. It was easy enough to get the Isley’s and Dylan songs on vinyl from my local record store, but I wasn’t able to track down a copy of the Supercharge album.
Time moved on and over the nearly 40 years since I have made the occasional effort to find a copy of “Local Lads Make Good”, but without success until yesterday. With the memory having been triggered I had another look on the web and there it was, complete with “She moved the dishes” and it took but a few minutes work to download. So I was not only reunited with a long lost favourite, but I have also realised, having found them on YouTube too, that I had seen also Supercharge in action live. Listening to the full album for the first time has been a real joy.
So on all sorts of fronts yesterday was a good day, even if Tilly wouldn’t run with me.
The Voice of the Bloke at the Back 