Strange Evening

Hopped into the car after work last night and discovered, as is not unusual, that there wasn't anything on the radio or in the glovebox that I felt like listening to - so I switched over to ABC Classic and caught the end of an intro for Mike Oldfield's 'Tubular Bells'. They were going to play the whole thing, all 50 or so minutes of it. I hadn't heard all of 'Tubular Bells' for years. I used to play it a lot from vinyl as a kid - one of my Dad's more decisive influences on my taste in music - and I really think it's a superb piece. Even more so, given that Mr Oldfield was only 19 when he wrote, performed and recorded the thing all by himself, track by track. Bastard.

Anyway, I couldn't go home. I wanted to listen to all of it again, and I wasn't going to sit in my own driveway to do it. So when I got to the turnoff for my place I kept going...and going. It was quite eerie, driving through the dead streets listening to this peculiar yet very familiar, comforting thing as I got further and further away from town. Eventually I was out of the suburbs altogether and on unlit roads winding up into the range, gradually dragging the aerial further and further out of its socket to keep the signal. It was a beautiful night last night - cold and still; cloudy, but a gorgeous, scattered cloud lit around the edges by an enormous, low half moon. If I was a smoker I would have stopped at the top of the range for the perfect cigarette. As it was I wound the windows down and sucked in lungfuls of fresh, pine-scented air. I did a huge loop and managed to roll back into my driveway well after midnight just as the track ended.

Slept like a baby.