Latest Blog Post

Its Friday 28^th February 1986 and I’m 53 days into being 14 years old.

I’m on a bus travelling from my home town in Gourock to the SECC in Glasgow to see Simple Minds perform on their ‘Once Upon a Time’ tour.

The bus has been put on by Rhythmic Records in Gourock, a small independent record shop which was the centre of the universe for anybody interested in music in that town.

My brother is there with a friend, but I can’t remember who. I end up dazzled by the lights, noise and atmosphere like an experience I’ve never had before.

I’d watched Live Aid the summer before, but I had never been to a gig like this. It was massive, like 10,000 people massive!

On the bus home, I protected the poster that I got which went straight on my wall and stayed there for years. It’s a poster of the album cover of Once Upon a Time.

Fast forward more than 32 years and I am stood to the left of the stage in the ‘golden circle’ (which is not so golden) at Newark Riverside Park with Alison watching Simple Minds again for the second time in my life.

So many things to write about here, so many things to say. Such a wonderful thing.

Alison surprised me with the tickets on my birthday in January, I never even knew they we playing. I didn’t know they still played but apparently, they play a lot. It’s just one more demonstration of why Alison is my soul mate. She knew I would have loved it and scooped them up, bought the golden circle tickets knowing we would have the best view, even though the golden circle was a bit of comedy.

So here we are now, 32 years later. That same boy who coveted the poster on the Rhythmic Records bus in amongst people of his age and older, most of whom can’t stand up because they’re so drunk watching Jim Kerr jump about the stage like he’s a 21-year old, singing classics from another millennium.

They insisted on playing some of their ‘new stuff’ which always disappoints a crowd like this, during those moments and in the darkness, I could think back to the guy on the bus.

And then I’m reminded by a song by Marillion called Childhoods End who sings about a childhood lost. I wondered what advice that 14-year old would give to me if I bumped into him in the crowd that night.

I would tell him excitedly about everything that had happened, about how not worry in a few weeks time when my school basketball team that I was captain of would lose the Scottish cup final by 2 points because I would be fouled out with 5 minutes to go. I would tell him that that would be ok, that I shouldn’t despair, that I would be playing for Scotland within a year, and within three years be captain of Scotland. It would be that and that alone that would get me into dentistry, and he wouldn’t believe me.

I would tell him that I would go on to look after people that were dying in hospital. I would do cancer operations and trauma operations. I would stitch consultants faces up as their wives died upstairs following car accidents. I would speak to my profession and cry on stage getting a standing ovation. I’d own my own business and have the most amazing family and the most blessed life. He would be amazed.

He would tell me to slow down and to smell the roses. To look around because I would have more than he could have ever imaged in his wildest dreams.

He would question whether we were the same person and then he would realise that we were. We would shake hands and say “chill out big man, you’re doing alright”.

It was so special that concert, because it was like being in a time machine, only being able to take Alison back with me to where I was.

It was such a precious gift and I’ll never forget it because ultimately the 14-year old and the 46-year old are just about exactly the same. We both have a simple mind.

Blog post number: 1750