Since it was lost and then was found my sat nav has been playing a blinder. It was a difficult drive to Newbury tonight, made more difficult by what looked like a 45 minute delay on the M25. The sat nav wasn't having that. It wanted to get us to the venue on time and took us through tiny country lanes to get us to the M4. It probably saved us at least 20 minutes and meant we didn't get stuck in traffic. At one point we crossed a bridge over a gridlocked M25 and gave us a vision of the Hell that we had avoided.
I can forgive it all its previous sins.
The gig was fine and afterwards I was greeted by a woman who asked me if I remembered her. I have to confess that I didn't, but she revealed herself to be the first girl that I had ever snogged with, at a school disco back in the early 80s. We had inexpertly locked faces in the dark, near the table where you could buy cherryade. My friends had taken the piss out of me afterwards and maybe hers had too, because on Monday at school I think I avoided her (or she avoided me) and that was the end of that. We were in different peer groups and classes so I didn't really see too much of her again at school, so maybe it's not surprising that I didn't recognise her after three decades. Even though she played a significant part in my youth and even though I can recall quite a few things about those few moments of passion we shared, it was unlikely that we could have picked each other out of a line up after three decades.
So it was strange to see her again, but nice too, even if as usual it brought the passage of years into sharp focus. My life is passing by like it's a cartoon image in a flip book in the hands of an impatient child, who isn't even flicking it properly so several pages are passing by without even being seen. I am six days away from my 45th birthday and am more freaked out that it's five years since I was so bothered about turning than I am at the idea of being halfway through another decade.
It may be the only time that the woman I first snogged and the woman I last snogged would be in the same room, but I headed home with my wife. The gigging and driving has made this week almost as stressful and tiring as touring and we decided to chill out a bit when we got home, drinking some champagne to celebrate three months of marriage and watching some telly. Wayne's World was on and although we'd watched it quite recently it's good enough to see another dozen times and I don't think I could ever tire of Garth saying of women, "They want you to go after them. They love it."
It's even enjoyable when you don't know the references. And the bit where the boys pastiche the Laverne and Shirley opening titles led us on a little internet quest to see the original. Although this was a big sitcom in America I am not sure it was even shown in the UK, but neither of us had ever seen an episode. I quite liked watching the evolution of the series just from the way the opening titles changed throughout the seven series. To begin with the slapstick is quite contained and there aren't too many clips of over the top costumes of business, but as the series go on there are more outlandish incidents, then the location of the series changes and then finally one of the main actresses is no longer in the show (even though it's still called Laverne and Shirley). It's more interesting trying to imagine what has happened than knowing the truth.
But we did watch a bit of the first episode and then the entire episode of Happy Days that the characters first appeared on (has any sitcom had more spin-offs than Happy Days?) And suddenly it was 3am. But fun to see the Fonz at work again and to sing the Happy Days theme at 3am, a little bit tipsy.
