Has the world changed or have I changed

This is the story of two books: one that will likely remain unwritten, and another that most definitely is out there.

Book 1

I have an idea for a book called How The F*ck Did We Get Anything Done.

I say ‘I’ but in fairness it is an idea that owes as much to a very old friend with whom I spend too long discussing how very different the world is now to when we first met.

‘No-one ever drank water.’ ‘Nope; tea, pop, squash and booze’ is as likely as anything to start a conversation.

My daughter occasionally asks me about life back then and can’t quite comprehend that in the mobile phone-less world of my youth, you had to be where and when you arranged. That we used to phone up a building in the hope that the person you wanted to speak to was in it. That until the utterly life-changing arrival of the video recorder, you couldn’t go out when something you wanted to see was on TV, or you missed it forever.

‘What?! No Youtube?’

‘God no. The internet was unimaginable. I mean, like time-travel unthinkable. The duvet - pasta! - hadn’t even arrived in this country for heaven’s sake.’

It is during these conversations with her - someone who hasn’t lived it - that my mind is most able to recreate - to refeel - how very different life was then.

Book 2

Anyway, have you read Mayflies by Andrew O’Hagan? It’s very good indeed, and it’s not only me who thinks so.

It is about friendship, youth, music, middle age and death, and it’s being made into a BBC drama.

The central event is a gig in Manchester, in 1986. Factory Records organised a series of events to celebrate Manchester's contribution to punk and all things related, one of them was an all day gig called The Tenth Summer of Punk. It was held at G-Mex (formerly Manchester Central railway station), with bands including New Order, The Smiths, The Fall, Pete Shelley (of Buzzcocks), OMD, A Certain Ratio, John Cale (of Velvet Underground), Howard Devoto (once of Magazine), John Cooper Clarke and more besides.

What links the books

I was at that gig. And as long as I live, I will never spend a better £13.

A dozen of us went, rattling around in the back of a transit van driven by easily the best looking of our number. We left before dawn, each with a gallon of cider, and returned to our Devonshire hometown 24 hours later, most definitely ciderless.

When I read Mayflies it got me thinking about how we got there - not the travelling bit so much as the whole process.

By coincidence, I spoke with that old friend on the same day as I’d just managed to get tickets for a gig we fancied - a matter of 30 seconds going online, choosing and paying for the specific seats we wanted, the tickets delivered to my phone instantly - and we tried to piece together what going to that gig involved back then.

This is how it likely happened

At the end of a Saturday night in the pub, we would’ve arranged to meet in town on Monday. WHSmiths, by the magazines.

The magazines did two things: they stopped you drowning in the tidal wave of self consciousness that rolled towards you the moment you sat or stood still doing nothing in a public place, and they allowed you to chew up any lateness on the part of your friend by reading the music papers - NME or Melody Maker.

It was here that you’d find tour news, discover one-off gigs and new releases.

One of us would have seen the advert for the GMex gig in the back of the NME while we were waiting. When the other arrived we would’ve gone to one of two cafes to have a pot of tea with four hot water refills with which to swallow the afternoon.

We’d have been desperate to go to the gig. I’d already seen many of the bands but it felt like something big was happening.

New Order were at the peak of their powers, turning post punk into dance music, and The Smiths had just released The Queen Is Dead which not only blew a cannonball through our ‘surely the next album can’t be as good as the last?’ concerns, it also caused a huge kerfuffle that seems oddly quaint now, with middle England and the Sunday press scandalised by lines like

‘I say, Charles, don't you ever crave
To appear on the front of the Daily Mail
Dressed in your mother's bridal veil?’

Then there was The Fall, A Certain Ratio, and everyone else. On the same bill.

We couldn’t have been any fuller of ‘we have to be there’ness. This was our Woodstock.

Many of us didn’t have a phone at home and those that did were generally discouraged from using it (often with a lock preventing anyone dialling a number above 1) so we wouldn’t be able to speak to everyone until the weekly unspoken understanding of being at the pub on Friday night.

We’d have got everyone around the pool table. Who’s up for it? Ok. £13s here next Friday night ok? £13 was still a lump to find when you are kicking around doing next to nothing with yourself and that week gave time for dole/pay cheques to arrive.

The following week I’d have collected the £13s from everyone. I’d have done my best to get myself up and the 2 miles into town to get to the post office before it shut at lunchtime, but almost certainly I’d have had to make the trip on the Monday when it stayed open all day.

I’d have handed the money over and the person behind the screen would’ve given me a postal order. Essentially a cheque issued by the post office to a named recipient, this secured your money’s safe passage to its intended target. A handwritten note detailing the number of tickets required would have been folded into the envelope along with the postal order, and a stamped self-addressed envelope for the reply. A stamp affixed to the front, and into the postbox it would have gone.

Two, perhaps three weeks later a reply might be expected. Not until this point - perhaps five weeks after seeing the advert - would we know whether we were going to the gig.

Only now would we have given any consideration to how we might get there. Exmouth to Manchester. A 508 mile round trip in a day. One of us had a driving licence, none of us had a car. The one who could drive hired a transit van - the only van available being without seats in the back.

That didn’t cause a moment’s pause, because it felt like a pilgrimage: we had to be there. Plus, cider.

And that - unlikely as it sounds - is how the f*ck we got it done.

It was - of course - one of the great days. And like all great days, you forget the travel, the lack of sleep, the hangover, the whatever.

But mostly you forget - as the world has moved in tiny increments from this taking 5 weeks to 30 seconds - the drawn out palaver of what is now the simplest task, the not-knowing if you were going, the YES arriving thanks to the smallest of increments undertaken over weeks and weeks.