“And now I know how Joan of Arc felt…”
THAT is if Joan of Arc had a week crammed with Glastonbury (from the safety of my sofa), football, the ongoing saga of my house and bemoaning the non-working electric windows in my car. Doubt it somehow, but we both got a bit hot.
Having repeatedly fallen out of love with over-hyped, over-commercialised, over-scrutinised Premier League football, it has been refreshing to sit down, watch the World Cup and remember the drama, thrilling moments and unpredictability which made so much of the globe fall in love with it in the first place.
The latest chapter in the story of my house was supposed to be the last one – it being taken off the market with three new tenants due to be moving in yesterday and taking delivery of a new bed for the middle bedroom.
Instead, with a reference form still unreturned to the agents, the move-in date is in danger of being moved back – again – and it needed a hurried dash from the osteopath’s table in Cheltenham to Cardiff to await the bed.
And while it provided a chance to cover a fair amount of ground through the B section of my iPod – mainly through the songs beginning Big, Bill and Bird – it was another chance to regret not getting the non-opening electric windows fixed.
My car has become something of a miracle – bereft of any noticeable care for years, it has just kept going. Four years ago, it looked like it had reached its natural end, having been kept on the road up to the point just long enough to be left behind in favour of other transport around the globe.
But on my return, it spluttered back into life – eventually – and with more travels always just over the horizon, it never seemed worthwhile replacing it with a newer version destined to sit unmoving for months on end.
And while my car has kept on going as travelling plans got shunted back, it has developed a few eccentricities. There is a strange knocking noise from, seemingly, inside the glove compartment, the locks require an expert touch and brute force to open, the radio does not work (thanks to someone nicking the aerial) and the windows won’t open (major design flaw not to have a manual option).
While that’s fine for much of the year, in the height of summer and combined with a temperamental air con system, it can make journeys a tad uncomfortable (to say nothing of the difficulties paying at toll booths or car parks).
But at least there was a good soundtrack.
This latest section has taken us from The Bell by The Villagers to Birds Flew Backwards by Doves and thrown up a few anomalies – three tracks from Patterson Hood in five entries (all from the sole album of his on my iPod) and REM’s Überlin confusing Apple’s finest engineering and appearing among the Bs.
And it also brought back memories of some long-standing pub arguments.
Once upon a time, The City Arms in Cardiff was the gathering spot for a group of journalists and friends, usually with no or little prior arrangement – we knew that from 6pm-ish on a Saturday, after the old Sports Echo had gone to press, whoever was on duty would wander round from the office to the pub and we would gradually gather, feed the jukebox, mull over the day’s results and put the world to rights.
Faces changed, venues shifted, Fridays became the new Saturday – regardless of the fact several of us had to be up for a 12-hour plus shift on Wales on Sunday the next day – but a core group (now spread across the country, but several will gather in Edinburgh this weekend for a stag do) remained in place and, even with some truly awful smelling toilets, The City Arms was (and always will be) our spiritual home.
Some of what was discussed became a regular element in my Sports Echo column, although most of it has been long forgotten (probably for the best), but the ongoing discussions between two of us included debating the best Smiths and Radiohead albums – while he went for Meat Is Murder and OK Computer, my argument was always in favour of The Queen Is Dead and The Bends.
Nothing against his choices, both excellent albums. But both The Queen Is Dead and The Bends work, almost flawlessly, as complete works from start to finish and belong to that elite group of albums which should always be listened in that manner and never (repeat, never) shuffled.
From time to time, those arguments are rekindled via social media and, chances are, when we finally get round to reconvening in The City Arms, they will spark up again.
The Bends and Bigmouth Strikes Again popped up among the highlights of this latest section, but they were far from the only ones from artists who soundtracked the same section of my life.
Along with Billy Bragg (Between The Wars), The Wedding Present (three versions of Bewitched) and The Lemonheads (Big Gay Heart), who we have stumbled across a few times, there was also Big Decision by That Petrol Emotion, an excellent track they never really got round to repeating (not that the O’Neill’s songwriting talent hadn’t flourished elsewhere).
There were also a couple of excellent newer entries from Sun Kil Moon (Ben Is My Friend) and Palma Violets (Best of Friends), while we careered through 800 with Beware Your Only Friend by Bonnie ‘Prince’ Billy.
The Prince was partly behind one of the finest overheard chat-up lines when the person responsible for him being in my collection once asked a girl “Do you want to come back to mine and listen to some miserable music?”. Remarkably, think it actually worked.
While the Big songs we have mentioned soundtracked the journey to Cardiff, the sweltering return was dominated by variations on Bill – pick of them Bill Hicks by Hamell on Trial (a bit of a discovery), Billie Holiday by Warpaint and Billy by Prefab Sprout – and Bird, most notably Birdbrain by Buffalo Tom and Birdhouse In Your Soul by They Might Be Giants.
Off to open a window…
