Pilfering from the past seems to be what we like to do musically these days. Remixed or just regurgitated, we don’t seem to mind.

I couldn’t be called a concert going glutton but  in the last few years even I have found myself groovin-and-a-movin to Stevie Wonder, Simon and Garfunkel, Leonard Cohen and now the Pointer Sisters who are still apparently doing it for themselves. Although, in the Sisters case, not for that long and with a fifteen minute break in the middle for them to have a cup of English Breakfast and a lie down.

When I looked around the crowd I wondered two things:

ONE: Why  did everyone but us look like they were from a  Hamilton School reunion from the class of ’51?

TWO: What made us all spend $120 to  watch one original sister, her daughter and her granddaughter (I’m not joking)  insert the word  AUUUCKLAAAND into a show that was so clearly on its final outing?

Don’t get me wrong, I had a great time. I was On Fi-ya! with two sensational  sisters  of my own being So Excited, being Romeo and Juliet, requesting a Slow Hand at the top of my voice even though He’s So Shy.

Perhaps the point is simple as that Slow Hand request. We live in the digital future but  it would seem we’ve no plans to let go our analogue past. Like the wedges in my shoe collection, why can’t the seventies and eighties be the gift that keeps on giving for as long as we all shall live? How delicious to stir up the memories of  those slower simpler days pre everything: pre kids, pre the really big breakups, pre wealth protection and pre nups,  just rocking on your heels because you’re a bit wasted, drinking screw drivers and  gimlets with no one in the room saying  haven’t we met before?

What’s not to like about that?

I seem to fly a lot. I hate it. I love to be in new places, but I hate the process of getting there. Fiery inferno are the two key words that spring to mind.  I know this is completely irrational, that I have far greater opportunity to die in the taxi that will propel me from the airport on the other side of the trip, but it doesn’t stop the heebie jeebies.

When I board a flight, for an hour or a day, I always study the other passengers. Within seconds, they transform into the cast members of Snakes on a Plane. Who will be the hero I wonder. Who will be the first to scream and weep? Who will wet their pants? If we have some time before the actual inferno occurs (i.e. a hostage situation) is there anyone here I could fuck?  I do the hover test with a few. This is when you imagine their faces are hovering two inches away from your own.  No, no, no. Maybe.

When I get safely to my destination – which has often also involved hurtling through crazy traffic in a taxi driven by someone as foreign as me, but angrier – I always take a moment to give thanks. I light a candle and I thank whichever god or spirit might be passing through the room at the time.

Giving thanks is important to me.

If you buy shoes in the Northern Hemisphere, is the  best place for them above your head?