There’s something very special about books that reaching emotions, as if we are all shut off from them and need to find a way of reaching them. It was certainly true about me in the past. I remember going to the local cinema in my teens (it was the Regal in Uxbridge) and feeling emotions that I had never felt before. I fell in love with film, or at least with the magic of it, the illusion of sitting in a camera obscura and observing an unknown (or as yet unexplored world). Maybe we never do explore it all. Perhaps that’s what books and films are for.
I was just listening to another of my three vinyls, Rumours by Fleetwood Mac. That was 1977. I was 30. Ten years later I used to listen to the same album on my yellow Sony Walkman every evening as I travelled home from UCL. I was doing my PhD at the time, and E had just been born. Strange listening to it now. Looking out the window at the people driving back from work, and the kids playing. Almost a lifetime ago.
I went to my second Spanish class last night. It’s so hard, I don’t think I’ve got the right brain for languages (although I love linguistics). Anyway we always practise in class by telling stories about our lives – where we live, what we do, what was our favourite holiday, etc. Probably all too much information. But it stirs up emotions.
London is full of emotional memories for me, places and times. So I was thinking where was I in 1977 when Fleetwood Mac made that record. Strange thing is that I was right here, working as a junior doctor, living not more than 100 yards away. And the asylum has been transformed into a beautiful park, like a campus, full of homes and families and health, and surrounded by countryside. It’s very magical and I am very happy here.
Listening to my Walkman all those years ago, I was haunted by the rather broken female voice that touched me so much. Of course I now know it was Stevie Nick who was in love with Lindsey Buckingham. All the joy and anguish of their relationship is there, not just in the words, but in their sound of their voices behind the crackle of the vinyl. The lyrics still crack me up. It’s so hard to find, love.