overlap

Lots of songs take me to particular places, but there's a few that belong specifically together. Danny and the Juniors' 'At The Hop', ELP's 'Fanfare For The Common Man', 'Blame It On The Boogie', Stephen Tin Tin Duffy's 'Kiss Me' and a handful of others are pretty much impossible to separate from the ice rink in my home town. This evening I've been at exactly the sort of disco skating session that was the highlight of my week at fifteen and onwards. I saw in several new years there, I spent my birthday alone there once or twice, and rarely failed to have a good time. While my peers were trying to get served in the bar - sometimes successfully, sometimes less so - there was me and a couple of other people alternately skating round in circles and begging the DJs to put on something a bit more rock. I probably don't have to look too far to find the protective cardboard sleeves I made to carry one or two vinyl singles in the bag with my skates every week, even now. No wonder when I went to dig out my skates a couple of years ago and found the plastic withered, brittle and cracking with age so as to be unusable, it brought me to tears. The feelings Ray Davies (link in post title) ascribes to his sister in the song pretty much nails how I feel too, about my poor knackered old skates and the rink in the old town that hasn't been used as such in at least a decade. My Bauer Turbos were state of the art skates in the mid-80s, even if they were no longer quite that by the time their owner-from-new passed them on to me. So, there's a newish rink in town, and with the exception of three or four seasonal spins round the temporary outdoor Winterval rink, this evening is my first go at proper skating in I don't know how many years. And now I know where the rink is, I can see a new pair of skates rapidly rising up my research shopping list. Now if only I could get the DJ there to play something that's older than the contents of my fridge - skating with people significantly less than half my age is one thing, but heaven help us all in the unlikely event At The Hop ever comes on! * Come Dancing - The Kinks