Long Live

Listening to Runrig's Loch Lomond (a relatively known Scottish band that enjoyed big success in the late '80s and continue to do so now), when suddenly, a deep feeling of something hit me squarely in the chest. I thought maybe I ought to cry to get rid of it but no tears came and it proved to be fruitless except to stupidly distort my face in an expression of half smile and half cry. You know that distant look of pleasurable pain that people wear when they recall forgotten memories.
It was a feeling that I had not felt in a while and it took a few moments to analyse it; meanwhile Runrig carried on pelting about the bonnie banks of Loch Lomond.


"You take the high road and I'll take the low road/and I'll be in Scotland before you/where me and my true love will never meet again/on the bonnie bonnie banks of Loch Lomond"

I appreciate Scotland and its bonnie banks as much as the regular tourist does. In fact, as I write this, I am suddenly stuck with the realisation that I have never even seen the shores of Loch Lomond - the vast expanse of water I recalled as I listened to the song are the bonnie banks of Loch Ness instead, home of the famed marine monster.

Loch Lomond moved on to some Gaelic song that I didn't understand but nevertheless succeeded in transporting me on a virtual time machine back to the late '80s when I was a wee lass in England. There is such an ethereal and romantic quality to their music, so familiar that I could almost feel the shiver of coming autumn.

Yes, it takes a Scottish band to exhume my English life. You see, one of my best friends at school, Moira Buchanan (Scottish nonetheless), introduced me to Runrig (notice all Scots just LOVE their homeland - her eyes used to well up in tears just at the mere mention of haggis). Anyway, Runrig became long forgotten until they sprung to mind again one day when I was straining my brain for songs to download. After a decade of showy, gimmicky, synthesizer-infused American music, Runrig's simple honest guitar rifts really brought it all back for me.

The feeling was nostalgia. I miss England! Especially so during the anthemic choruses.

For seven of my formative years, it was where I lived. With 10 months of the year spent there, watching the seasons come and go as I slipped from teenager to twenty-something, England came to be pretty much, home.

I miss school dinners (believe it or not!), my polyester school uniform that used to sizzle with static on cold winter days, sitting on old radiators to warm my forever-cold fingers, climbing out of windows and sneaking through holes in fences, smoking on snow-covered baclonies, playing lacrosse on ridiculously cold frost-covered fields ("Miss...you want me to put on a short skirt and run around out there??!") and later at university, rowing on the River Wear at 6am with ice covered oars.

I miss the dank smell of my college bar, the smell of Persil on a ex-boyfriend's pink and green indie shirt. Sweaty frenzied 80s bops, boisterous rugby songs, Tainted Love on the dance floor, braving 9am lectures in pyjamas and a jumper with accompanying hangover, spitting black olive pits into the river, mooning my butt at passing tourists from the shore, cold cold wintry winds, hot hot summer days.

Buying cheap Cab Sauv in a box, light nights in the summer, watching Neighbours with a roomful of people, singing hymns in chapel, nipping down to 'town' on Saturdays for Salt N Vinegar crisps, the trek from High Street Kensington through Hyde Park to get to the beef brisket noodles in New Kam Tong on Bayswater, salt beef sandwiches from Selfridges, really good taramasalata, the sudden gust of musty underground air of an approaching train, lying on the pavement on Kings Road watching the well-heeled strut by, catching Les Miserables from discounted upper circle seats of the Queen's Theater - so steep that if you sneezed you may land next to one of the cast members.

I miss the English and their obsession with tea and ale and how they keep their filthy Doc Martens on when lying in bed. How they make witty jokes to show off their intellect. How, in my time, baseball caps and coloured jeans were all the rah rah rage in the small northern univeristy of Durham.

England, London in particular has changed. It's less conservative, less grunge, less posh. It's all metro and uber and Euro. My contemporaries are probably balding, stuck in important jobs in the city and have swapped partying in Ibiza for vacations in Florida with the kids. Life as it was back then can never ever be re-enacted. Episodes and stories have become random newspaper pages caught by the wind, allowing you fleeting glimpses now and then of a life past but never the reliving of the complete saga. I will never stand on the edge of Malham Tarn, inhale the cold autumn air, gasp at a passing deer in the silvery moonlight with James' Sit Down topping the charts and snog the will out of the unforgettably cute public school boy next to me.

Old age is making me melodramatic.

I have no doubt that one day I will look back at the present and feel a pang of nostalgia hit me the same way listening to Runrig has. I don't wish for life to return to the way it was. After all, life is a moving train that stops at many stations but you can never get off for long. It's a one way journey that is bittersweet when looked back upon. I only wished I had embraced it more back then. I had merely lived it without truly savouring it.

Thank goodness for memories. And bands like Runrig.