Endless Summers

Music, summer and time travel

Some writers can only write in a quiet environment; they find music, or noise of any kind, a distraction. Music doesn’t bother me; I have it on in the background. Eventually, it fades away, especially during intense concentration. Sometimes I don’t even notice the album or playlist has long since ended.

Music is a time machine. Writing is a way to explore the past.

And sometimes alter it.

Girl From Mars

Last week, in a moment of personal horror, I discovered that one of my favourite songs, ‘Girl from Mars’ by Ash, was now thirty years old. ‘Girl from Mars’ came out on 31 July 1995. I first heard the song when Ash performed on Top of the Pops two weeks later (10 August 1995) and bought it on CD single the next day.

It also appeared on the compilation album Shine Too, which I bought on cassette tape. The Shine series was the indie equivalent of the Now albums, capturing the zeitgeist of the Britpop era. Check out the track listing for Shine Too: Oasis – ‘Some Might Say’ by Oasis, Paul Weller – ‘The Changingman’, Ash – ‘Girl from Mars’, The Stone Roses – ‘Love Spreads’, Edwyn Collins – ‘A Girl Like You’, The Boo Radleys – ‘Wake Up Boo!’, The Lightning Seeds – ‘Change’, Dodgy – ‘Staying Out for the Summer’, Cast – ‘Finetime’, Elastica – ‘Waking Up’, The Cranberries – ‘Ridiculous Thoughts’, Sleeper – ‘Vegas’, Gigolo Aunts – ‘Where I Find My Heaven’, Gene – ‘Haunted By You’, Belly – ‘Now They'll Sleep’, Teenage Fanclub – ‘Sparky's Dream’, Suede – ‘Stay Together’, Happy Mondays – ‘Kinky Afro’, Joy Division – ‘Love Will Tear Us Apart '95’, Pulp – ‘Underwear’.

There isn’t a duff track among them. This was my soundtrack to the summer of 1995 and a welcome break from the first year of my HND Graphic Design course.

It was a year plagued by self-doubt and regret. The course wasn’t what I expected – oversubscribed, under-resourced, highly competitive and lacking in direction. There were about eight Apple Macs shared between over a hundred students (and some didn’t even have colour monitors) and no colour printers. Our Course Head was a genius or psychopath depending upon what mood he was in (he also looked like Dr Hill from the Re-Animator films).

There was a guy on my course, ‘Ian’, older than everyone else – possibly late thirties or early forties. ‘Ian’ was a strange individual: receding curly hair, rotting teeth, always wore the same clothes – blue trousers, shirt and tie, a stained brown and yellow jacket, and always came to college carrying a briefcase. He also had a wheezing breathing problem, which didn’t stop him from smoking, and when he spoke, he sounded like a heavy-breather on the end of a phone line.

We had an end-of-year show that took place in either late June or early July, which seemed like an unnecessary extra pressure since we were only halfway through the two-year course, and served no other purpose than the torturous whim of our Course Head. After the show, everyone from my course descended upon the Winchester Arms (‘The Winch’) to either celebrate or drown their sorrows.

I never cared much for The Winch. It was more of a ‘townie’ pub, but because of its proximity to the college campus, it became the default drinking spot for the end of the academic year. There was an outside area with seating, overlooking a small green in front of the town museum and the Castle Hotel.

Someone persuaded ‘Ian’ that it would be funny if he were to do a naked streak across the green. Of course, once he was naked, they stole his clothes and ran inside the pub. I missed the actual event, but emerged from the side door in time to glimpse Ian’s’ pale flabby buttocks as he stood naked in the front door, arguing with the horrified bouncer who would not let him in. Edwyn Collins’s ‘A Girl Like You’ was playing from inside the pub. It’s unfortunate the song is now forever associated with the image in memory of ‘Ian’s’ naked buttocks. Somehow, it’s also fitting that it is also the overriding image of the first year of my HND Graphic Design course.

The Endless Summer of Youth

When I was younger, the summers seemed endless, forever steeped in sepia-tinged nostalgia. The six weeks summer school break seemed like a blissful eternity, at least for the first two weeks. Then the ‘back to school’ displays appeared in shops and I spent the remaining four weeks with a creeping sense of existential dread. If there’s a soundtrack to those early summers, then it’s the sound of Space Invaders and the noise of slot machines in seaside arcades, and the theme tune to The Transformers or whichever cartoon airing during the weekday mornings.

There was always at least a week spent visiting my aunt and uncle in Bromley, where a highlight would be a day trip to London where I could trawl the comic shops. Back home, I spent my days searching the shelves the local video shop, desperately trying to find something (usually a horror) I had not already watched, my evenings spent lost in a world of Elm Streets, zombies, puppet masters and lost boys.

Summer 1989, judging by Ian’s Batman t-shirt and my 80s hair and ‘newsprint’ shirt from Concept Man.

In reality, most summers were mundane, but sometimes there were hints of adventures. Like the time a Page 3 model came to use the school swimming pool in the summer of 1988, or what my friend Ian (unrelated to ‘Buttocks Ian’) and I found in the woods in the summer of 1990… or the summer of 1991, when Bryan Adams was haunting the charts with ‘(Everything I Do) I Do It for You’, while sitting atop the climbing frame in the park, Ian and I spotted the singer Chesney Hawkes strolling across the field towards us…

The summer of 1992 was a proper endless summer, stretching from my last GCSE exam in June to the beginning of my art course in late September. It was the first time I experienced proper freedom, no longer bound by curfews or the pressure of studying, spending lazy evenings sitting in the park, drinking cheap illicit cider from three-litre bottles, in the company of school friends I had already outgrown and would not see again after that summer. A strange in-between time, with a soundtrack of Nirvana’s Nevermind, Manic Street Preachers’s Generation Terrorists and The Cure’s Wish. Wayne’s World, Batman Returns and Lethal Weapon 3 were that summer’s big films.

The Last Battle

The summer of 1987 was a poignant one. It was the summer between the end of primary school and the start of secondary school. An end to childhood and the gateway to adolescence. A time to put away childish things.

I went through many toy lines as a kid – Star Wars, Lego, The Transformers, Mask, Secret Wars – but my favourite, the one I always returned to, was Action Force (G.I. Joe in the US).

Because I had done well in my last year of primary school, my mum took me to the big Toymaster shop in Bridgwater and told me I could choose something up to £20. They had the Action Force Cobra Hydrofoil, which I had coveted for months. There was also the Action Force Transportable Tactical Battle Platform, which I had never seen before.

Both were tempting. I really wanted the Cobra Hydrofoil, but although my parents never enforced it, I knew there was an expectation that it was time to pack the toys away.

So, I chose the HeroQuest board game instead, which seemed like the more mature choice. I think this was the first time I had to make a difficult and regretful choice in life. When I returned home with my purchase, I could see the same hint of disappointment and sadness mirrored in my dad’s eyes.

That summer, I had the battle to end all battles, set up across the garden. This was the epic showdown between the Action Force and legions of Cobra, a culmination of all the plot lines created in my head and influenced by the comics I was reading. The villainous Cobra Commander finally met his end at the hands of his own minions, which seemed fitting.

The Last Battle, 1987.

I documented the event with a camera. In my head, my shots were epic, like those of a war imbedded photojournalist. It was disappointing when I got my photos back and realised how blurry and static they were, how they had failed to express my imagination.

At the end of summer, I packed everything away, destined for future school fetes and car boot sales. Years later, I felt guilty, like I had betrayed my childhood companions by so easily discarding them.

A spark of childhood imagination died that summer. I’ve never been able to get it back.

Late Summer

Well, that escalated quickly. It started with a song and went off on some weird tangents, but writing is like that sometimes.

I prefer late summer to early. It’s usually cooler; I like the contrast in weather when it’s overcast but still warm, and when there’s a hint of autumn in the air.

August always reminds me of a time of transition, between endings and beginnings. I’m almost fifty years old, but my mind still follows the school/college timetable. This is also the time when I feel the spark of creativity coming back. It’s easier to write when the skies are grey and the nights begin to draw in. So, I guess it’s time to get back to work...

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The Worlds Between the Words is still available, folks!