Nostalgia ain't what it used to be.

Feeling nostalgic today, must be my age..

I remember when this song (see image above) was in the charts (35 years ago!) I was at university and had a week-end job as a chef in a greasy-spoon cafe a couple of miles from where I was living at the time. I used to cycle there and back and the route had a really long hill section in it. I recall having this track pumping out of my Sony Walkman, cranking the volume up to 11 as I got faster and faster down the hill on the way to work, it felt exhilarating. As things levelled out and I was at maximum velocity an open top triumph Spitfire drew alongside me being driven by some flash bloke with shades and a tash, to my horror, in the passenger seat was my recently "ex" girlfriend! Clearly she had "moved-on" and feeling somewhat out-done that I was still on a push-bike and she was in a snazzy sports car I struck my best "uninterested look" by directing my gaze upwards and away from the car. I felt it was going well (the music was helping) until I realised that, in my state of distraction, my front wheel had brushed the curb and I was in one of those uncontrollable wobbles that you sometimes get on two wheels when steering corrections get ever more violent and pronounced ending in inevitable disaster.

Over the handlebars I went, the world spun for a few seconds and I ended up in a ditch full of blackberry bushes by the side of the road, blood oozing from several nasty scratches on my arms and face. They didn't even stop to see how I was, and I limped on to work to get plastered-up and put in a full shift (we weren't snowflakes in those days, although my Dad would probably disagree) I limped back home later that evening to fix my bent front wheel, lick my wounds and feel sorry for myself. I threw the cassette-tape into the back of a drawer and I never set eyes on that girl again, but as fate would have it, like this song, she's scorched into my memory because of the powerful sensory associations I experienced in those moments. I can't help being reminded of that event every-time "eye of the tiger" pops up on the radio or on the TV. These days I sometimes forget why I'm in a particular room but remember that moment as clear as a bell, such is the interconnected nature of memory.