Reader Old Texan sent me an email with this enclosed:
…and purely coincidentally, The Divine Sarah published Long Ago, It Must Be, which starts with the hypothesis (not hers) that time stopped in 1999, and everything that’s happened since then has been just a dream. In that piece, Sarah talks wistfully about how 1999 was a time when some of her friends were still sane, and of other friends since passed away.
Well, 1999 was an okay year for me, I think: living on the lakefront in Chicago with Connie, doing consultant work and traveling to Britishland occasionally:
(that’s the Bath Weir in the background)
It was a good year, no doubt about it. But if I look back to my favorite years pre-2000, I’d have to choose 1981.
Oh man, 1981…. I had a job I loved — imagine that — which also involved travel (only all over South Africa, not the UK) and which earned me a decent salary:
(Cape Town)
(just north of Durban: Umhlanga Rocks, where my Mom lived)
(Port Elizabeth “PE”)
(Kimberly, with its “Big Hole” diamond mine)
In 1981, I was still playing in the Atlantic Show Band — we’d pretty much given up playing clubs and were doing gigs at proms, wedding receptions and office parties etc. — and that, believe me, was a blast. The music we were playing? Bette Davis Eyes, Fire, Angel Of The Morning, Stop Dragging My Heart Around, Another Brick In The Wall, Crazy Little Thing Called Love, Heartache Tonight, You May Be Right… aaah, kill me now.
I was driving a very nippy little Opel Kadett (company car, ergo free), and I was still single, with a very active Little Black Book.
I was twenty-seven years old, and I ruled my world. If I could choose a year to relive, then 1981 beats all the others, in spades.
Feel free to tell me in Comments which year you’d like to go back to, with reasons. (Email if Comments are still screwed up for you, and I’ll post it.)