Gone midnight on a Saturday

My neck creaks when I turn my head. The sound travels up into my ears and is loud.

On the desk:

- an empty packet of Tesco potato chips

- four shiny bright pennies in a stack

- a yellow highlighter

- The Very Best of Cat Stevens

- two ashtrays (one empty, one full)

- other empty things: a Games Workshop t-shirt packet and one that used to contain Sainsbury's breadsticks (or, because it's Sainsbury's and not Tesco, grissini), a glass, a can of John Smith's Original Bitter, a blue cigarette lighter, a one-pint plastic container of full-fat milk

- a tea towel

- the end of a roll of toilet tissue

- a tiny pillow made out of a shiny gold fabric with 'ANNIE X' written on it

- a hole punch

- some money-off Tesco vouchers

- several unpaid bills (including one from the Norwich Diocesan Board of Finance. The ground rent I owe it - from 2001 at £1.25 a year - is now £10), and some unanswered letters

- a phone

- speakers attached to the computer and music coming out of them:

Days (Kirsty MacColl)
There's a CD player on top of a fridge in a torrid Nicosia kitchen. It hasn't rained for months and everything is burning and I am in tears realising that there is nowhere to go from here except away. The children must have been in bed (they were very small then)

Out of time (Rolling Stones)
I am at a concert. Chris Farlowe continues singing this when the power fails and there's only his voice and the drums until it comes back on

Sun arise (Rolf Harris)
I can harmonise with this, but am ashamed to admit it

Stir it up (Bob Marley and the Wailers)
I am a teacher working at a high school in the Jamaican bush when I buy Johnny Nash's Greatest Hits and hear this for the first time. I am in my early 20s. Along with Guava Jelly, it introduces me to the idea that music can enter you via your ears and the soles of your feet and reach the parts that nothing else does.

My students take me to parties you can only get to by walking miles and miles and miles in pitch blackness because roads don't go anywhere near there and people are all very tall and dark and handsome and whisper things in your ear and dance far too close and hold you with a hand in the small of your back while they touch your body with theirs and yours wonders how on earth it can carry on doing this for a single moment longer because surely any minute now it'll dissolve and sink to the ground or somebody will notice and word will get back and you'll be out of a job . . . oh

One day some time later I leave the Johnny Nash LP too long in the sun and it melts.

Back in the high life (Steve Winwood)
I am driving very fast along tiny Norfolk by-roads to the hotel where I'm running a week-long training course for junior civil-service managers. The hotel is being renovated and there's no hot water and the group dynamic is becoming quite interesting. It's lunchtime and I've been home to have a shower. I am now on my way back. The car windows are open and I've turned the music up loud.

Later, after the scheduled training's finished and before we all go to our separate rooms to get ready for dinner, some of us are sitting in the bar and I'm drawn into conversation by someone who looks straight through my eyes and holds my hand and tells me things.

I am captivated.

+++

My mother used to tell me that I was too easily led. Maybe she just didn't want to believe that I rarely went anywhere I didn't want to go . . .