Perhaps there’s more to be written about this sun soaked, and currently desiccated city. Will the rain ever come?

I’m old enough to remember the summer of 1976 where there were endless days of summer sun. One day piling up on the next where the only clothing was shorts and T shirts.  I was still a year away from moving to London and living in the countryside in a little village near Banbury in the Midlands.

I had set myself the task of putting together a world beating rock and roll band with jazz stylings just as the whole punk thing got underway. I remember being spat on at one of our gigs which was probably no more than our music deserved.

Just a few days ago with the family away I took the car and the dog back up the M40 to see the old village. Unfortunately, there was a dreadful accident on the motorway which meant the journey took five hours and frankly ruined much of the pleasure of being back.

I knocked on the door of my old cottage and was welcomed in by a pleasant woman only to find the place a wreck and populated by half a dozen large dogs. I paid my respects to my twenty-two-year-old self and left. The village was still beautiful with many of the houses built with honey-coloured Northampton stone along with the Grand Union Canal drifting by. I met one of the longboatmen who told me the canal was now shut due to lack of water.

The waterboatman was there for the Fairport Cropredy Festival that was to take place on the following weekend. My band, the elegantly titled Cat’s Cradle, played at the very first Cropredy festival in the summer of seventy-six. I had hopes and dreams.

So, not the most successful of trips and perhaps a lesson for me not to wallow in nostalgia. I think it was the god’s way of telling me to stop looking in the rear-view mirror and power on to the next great thing whatever that may be.

In 1976 the weather finally broke on 27^th August, and we were subsequently drenched in rain for two months. Some hapless, but now long forgotten, politician was made drought minister who encouraged us to save water and bath with a friend. How we laughed. Once the deluge came and the rivers broke their banks he was resurrected as minster for floods. I’m writing this on the 18^th August and await the 27^th with some trepidation.

As I recall, the summer of 1977 was much cooler and wetter. Elvis died and the UK became obsessed with Queen Elizabeth’s Silver Jubilee celebrations. And punk at its full bondage and razorblade peak delivered the coup de grace to my band. After much trepidation the decision was made to move to London.

Somehow, I found a house to rent on Royal College Street in Camden town. There must have been a music business connection as the property was owned by Al Stewart’s manager who at the time was swimming in cash as Year of the Cat had been a big hit.

I shared the house with James and four others whose names seem to have evaporated. There was a fancy clothes shop over the road called Swanky Modes which maybe one person remembers. James and I used to go to the Old Eagle of an evening and play bar billiards. Perhaps I’ll dig a bit further into old-timey London on some future occasion.

Those with better mathematical skills than I will have already spotted that I moved to London fifty years ago in the Autumn of next year. A decision that I have never once regretted.