Getting you through the Monday

At pubquiz the other night (did I mention we won?!) I got a bunch of answers right about the music of 1970.

Yes. You read that right.

Nine. Teen. Seventy.

It was a shock when I heard the opening bars of this in the pub. I probably haven't heard the Guess Who in 25 years. Suddenly I had the odd sensation that I was in two places at once. I was 44 years old, in Rome, surrounded by my adult friends, drinking a pint, thinking about work the next day, and other kinds of grown-up things. In an instant, that was superimposed by a skinny eight year-old kid in bell bottoms, lying on the living room floor in our apartment in Victoria, with the album cover on the floor while the big black round thing went round and round on the turntable. I knew all the lyrics.

The Guess Who, Cream and Jefferson Airplane (and the Beatles and Simon and G, godhelpme) was what was playing in my whole world when I was still in rubber pants. It is, in other words, deeply ingrained. Hardwired, one might say.

It's weird that I had so thoroughly forgotten it.

I've often felt as if I died or diverged somehow, and became someone else at about 25. Who did that kid go on to become? I've no idea. She's just another person from the deep and misty past with whom I've long since lost touch.


But the Doors are a different set of memories.

Oh lordy! That three days! I was only 17!

Oh the tequila! Oh the vat of lime Jello! Oh the chocolate cake! Oh the cigarillos!

Was I ever 17? Is it possible really to be that young?