Minutes after Pete was in the door, unpacking his stuff in my spare room, a memory randomly launched to the front of my mind.
I threw on the Dire Straits’ 1985 Brothers in Arms. Lil’ bro recognized those opening aching chords in an instant… “these mist covered mountains” Mark Knopfler whispers.
And both of us were whooshed back to memories of Polesden View in Bookham, Surrey, our L-shaped home with Pete’s room above the corner of the L (direct view in from Mum and Dad’s and downstairs) and mine over the garage down one end of the L.
After moving in around the age of 11, I had quickly started to put up posters and magazine picture cuttings on different parts of life that moved me. Random placings across different walls eventually organized into a ‘Jazz’ wall, an ‘Athletics’ wall (Linford Christie, Jonathan Edwards and Carl Lewis dominated), a wall full of the most interesting Independent on Saturday magazine covers that I had cut out (great photography), a U2 wall (and flag of the Joshua Tree Tour hanging from the ceiling).
But, facing the door as you opened it was the main wall, with a giant wall-length poster of the zany neon album cover of Money for Nothing, which you can see here.
Music paints a picture in an instant, working from the canvas a thirty-year old memory in a single chord.
And it was great to have three days of surfing and driving together, with random reminiscences of all the dots and lines that have had us Brothers in Arms since. And too the wrestling conversations that come with a second ale 🙂
