It lies in several fragments on the floor. Like Humpty Dumpty. Like God. The book from which I can only escape by finishing  writing it. Exactly which this blog, well my part in it at least, is probably another attempt to do.

 

But Yes I remember then, Tim. Summer ’80. I remember now too. I can even remember the future where I’m sitting. This timeless place into which I slipped all those years ago. But  oh woops there I go again…so easily distracted nowadays!…

 

And just to say, because there really is no hurry to get to the end of this….that meeting at the Iroquois, Tim, that’s not the bit I remember! I remember this, more….

 

That’s us maybe just after a gig, could be later that night, because we’ve all got bottles....more fragments …and the most we ever looked like a punk band. Which of course we weren’t. It’s the picture you used for the Trouser Press interview I think, and later we did too on one of our vast pile of posthumous records. That’s Morris on the left with his Village People ‘tache then, scrolling right, Kimberley and Robyn – two boys with girl’s names – and me, the other M, Matthew on the right. It caught us at a fine time, just weeks away at this point from obeying pop’s most important rule. Be ephemeral. Be good, bad, honest, stupid or brave, brilliant and pretty, but above all DON’T LAST. Then we will worship you. Rockers, funksters, bluesers and rappers can last. But not popsters. Which of course we weren’t either. But that didn’t stop us trying. So shortly after meeting you and getting home from New York, as the nights shortened back in London, we broke the band and went our separate ways….Morris to the gasoline station in Gloucester he wound up working in, Kimberley to help build an Anglo Saxon village in Cambridge, and to start writing songs again, and Robyn to the pub. Me, I can’t remember. But wherever it was, I do remember that the Evening Standard became my morning paper.

 Where did you go next Tim?

Because I do remember you, too, all sweet and smiley and laughing quite a lot. And New York, pretty much exactly as you describe it, all ramshackle and sophisticated although they don’t always go together well, yes it’s all there except for the dripping cooling vents you forgot those, so you might as well have walked down a blazing hot street on a sunny day with an umbrella if you wanted to avoid all that aircon rain. Although looking up wasn’t the only thing you had to do. I remember that week when we were there, some poor soul died falling through a metal grill in the pavement.

 

But Yes, Happy New Year Tim! And a question for you too, because I have just played it maybe a hundred (well, at least ten) times at various occasions all over Sendai here in the snowy north of Japan these past few weeks. If it is a Christmas song, why does John Lennon sing “Another year over, a new one just begun?” Maybe he had slipped a bit in time too? Whatever, it’s still a shocking video….

Well at least he tried!

I love your jumbled poem and butterflies drinking turtle tears...