He could barely speak English. I could barely speak Italian. But somehow, we communicated with one another, almost playing a silent game.
A few seconds pass. His gaze goes behind the counter. To a small ornate wooden frame. And an image inside. “Is that Mary?” “No. It’s Jesus. It’s a da Vinci. From a museum in Amsterdam.”
She shared her name with the character in Blue Bay Blues so perhaps that is how Richard’s 1978 album Past Hits And Previews became the soundtrack to our summer afternoons.
Where I went to school, boys – men – didn’t dance. Not unless they were full of whisky bluster or beer bravado, anyway, and certainly not the way he was, his lithe body a study in confident, soft, expressive masculinity.
After cassettes lost favour I bought Jonathan on CD. And Jonathan on vinyl. In Spanish, Italian, French and English.
Greensleeves is the sound of anticipation. The sound of promise and summer. The sound of hot days. The sound of ice-cream on your tongue, melting over your fingers, dripping onto your toes.
We’ve never emailed each other. We don’t need Facebook to be friends. We hardly text each other. And then, on the eve of another summer, you tap into your phone...
The songs met us in hope and in despair in 'the middle of the air'. There was a space of yearning there. That space is where the artists, songwriters and psalmists send us. That is the place we can be met.
Dive into our collection of summer stories. The local pool, the beach, the river, romance, summer jobs...Powderfinger, Skyhooks, Kate Bush, Joy Division...
My mate Tommy had a licence and a car; the only one in our gang with a birthdate old enough to drive.