I think I may have lost all my followers as I’ve been less than prolific around here of late but I only have 15 posts to write before I get to a grand total of 500 in the bank, and with any luck I’m going to complete them just ahead of this blog’s 10th birthday at the start of 2026. I’ve had plenty of inspiration of late but once you lose momentum in the world of “web logging”, it’s hard to get started again. Only one way to find out just how hard…
Have you had a good summer? I certainly have and a lot to do with the effort I’ve put in to catching up with old friends. When I say old friends I really mean that, as some I hadn’t seen for over 40 years. I also did this back in 2015, the year before I started this blog, but back then I didn’t track down the more elusive ones, so this time I was going for broke. Since 2015, both my cousin and one of the old flatmates have died, so if you’re thinking of metaphorically picking up the phone anytime soon, don’t put it off a moment longer.
Some famous fictional groups of friends
I first went to Edinburgh to meet up with my old flatmate and her sister who always come up for the festival. She has featured here before, standing with me outside our first flat in Aberdeen, and as I also spent a week in The Silver City (it’s the radioactive granite that gives it that name!), I had a trip down our old street to see what had changed. The photography has got better, that’s what, plus the fence has gone. Weirdly, the cracked path is showing the same general pattern, it’s just got 45 more years of wear and tear. And, the door is now blue.
Number 18, 45 years on
But the meet-up that was the most long awaited was the one with the girl I sat beside for most subjects between the ages of 12 and 16. She was the smartest girl in our year and because of her smarts she was railroaded into doing Medicine at university. For two weeks we resided in the same hall of residence, but it was only two weeks because at the end of that time she realised that Medicine was definitely not for her and promptly left. After that I didn’t see much of her but she became a successful accountant and we continued to exchange Christmas cards from opposite ends of the country. Funnily enough she is one of the few people in the real world who know about this blog as every now and again we text each other if a Bay City Roller has died, or if something momentous has happened in the world of early ’70s pop music, as we had both been forensic in our approach to following the charts back in those days. Needless to say, the meet-up after 45 years apart was such a joy and all the old stories about our schooldays came tumbling out. We will do it again for sure.
But this is a music blog so what song should I share? I actually did a search for songs about friendships and this one, In My Life from 1965, jumped out at me. I particularly like the video showing the young whipper-snapper Beatles as the best of friends, something we sometimes forget. As it says in the website, The Forty Five, “With A Little Help From My Friends might be the obvious song in their canon about friendship, but the true tearjerker is this sepia-tinged offering that looks back at a life and those that have meant the most throughout it.“
I am loving my current life, but I’m so glad I still have all these friends from the past in my life too. This blog may be A Nostalgic Journey Through The Tracks Of My Years, but this post has definitely been A Nostalgic Journey Through The Friends Of My Years!
Until next time…
In My Life Lyrics
Song by Paul McCartney/John Lennon
There are places I’ll remember
All my life though some have changed
Some forever not for better
Some have gone and some remain
All these places had their moments
With lovers and friends I still can recall
Some are dead and some are living
In my life I’ve loved them all
But of all these friends and lovers
There is no one compares with you
And these memories lose their meaning
When I think of love as something new
Though I know I’ll never lose affection
For people and things that went before
I know I’ll often stop and think about them
In my life I love you more
Though I know I’ll never lose affection
For people and things that went before
I know I’ll often stop and think about them
In my life I love you more
In my life I love you more
What's It All About? 