Back to the Future

My ideal week would probably be revisiting my past. Then, I’d come back to the future. For example, I could go back to September 8th for 1965, 1975, 1985, 1995, 2005, 2015, and …. well, I’m already in 2025, so I have a day to spare 😀. Maybe, I’d go back to September 1982, when I started a year’s work as a voluntary evangelist with London City Mission. Anyway, first things first. Let’s go back 60 years.

September 1965

I was only 3, so I would have been at home all day. I’d kinda like to visit and see myself, and maybe even be myself for a few hours. Perhaps I’d watch Huckleberry Hound and Murphy Agus a Chairde on RTE TV. And for music, here are some songs that I might have heard on the radio:

• I Got You Babe – Sonny and Cher
• (I Can’t Get No) Satisfaction – The Rolling Stones
• Help! – The Beatles
• Like A Rolling Stone – Bob Dylan
• What’s New Pussycat – Tom Jones
• We Gotta Get Out Of This Place – The Animals
• Mr Tambourine Man – The Byrds
• California Girls – The Beach Boys
• Don’t Lose Your Hucklebuck Shoes – Brendan Bowyer
• Make It Easy On Yourself – The Walker Brothers

September 1975

I would have been 13 and in secondary school in Cork. The building, in Sharman Crawford Street, was only used for a few years as a secondary school. It’s had various uses over the years. Nowadays, it’s an art school.

I probably wouldn’t have thought of it as a particularly happy period at the time, but now it’s all very nostalgic. I was quite a swotty teenager, but it didn’t do your status much good to be swotty, so you had to pretend that you weren’t swotty 😀. It was always a daunting occasion if the teacher read out the class exam results publicly, and you did well. They’d all hate you. I never remember any physical violence, but it was quite upsetting if you felt that the cool kids disliked you. At this stage, I was big into the Beatles. I don’t think that I’d discovered Pink Floyd yet. I was interested in George Harrison’s spiritual outlook. Like myself, he wasn’t very impressed with the religion that he grew up with. I did briefly bump into some Hare Krishna folk in Cork in 1975, but later that year, I started to meet evangelical Christians. And that’s where I pretty much settled in the Summer of 1980. TV shows that I would have watched include This is Your Life, The Rockford Files, Halls Pictorial Weekly, Aimen High, Rhoda, The Odd Couple, and The Little House on the Prairie. I would have been big into listening to Radio Luxembourg 208 in September 1975. I still find old shows on the web. Here are some of the hits of the time.

• Moonlighting – Leo Sayer
• Hold Me Close – David Essex
• Sailing – Rod Stewart
• The Last Farewell – Roger Whittaker
• Summertime City – Mike Batt With New Edition
• That’s The Way (I Like It) – KC & The Sunshine Band
• A Child’s Prayer – Hot Chocolate
• The Best Thing That Ever Happened To Me – Gladys Knight & The Pips
• Pandora’s Box – Procol Harum
• There Goes My First Love – The Drifters

September 1985

I actually have a diary for 1985. I was just beginning my final year at Thomond College of Education, Limerick. A new girl started in our Christian Union. So, that’s when I first met the girl who was to become my girlfriend by Christmas, and my wife a few years later. I remember speaking on the Book of Exodus at Limerick Baptist Church, and frequent visits to the Maranatha Christian coffee bar, which was just across the road from Mallow Street Christian Fellowship. I popped into that church just yesterday. Songs that I remember from September 1985 include the following.

• Dancing In The Street – David Bowie & Mick Jagger
• Into The Groove – Madonna
• Running Up That Hill – Kate Bush
• Part-Time Lover – Stevie Wonder
• Yesterday’s Men – Madness
• Don’t Stop The Dance – Bryan Ferry
• Body Rock – Maria Vidal
• Lean On Me (Ah-Li-Ayo) – Red Box
• She’s So Beautiful – Cliff Richard
• The Lodgers – The Style Council

Madness played in the Savoy Cinema, Limerick on October 24, 1985, as part of their Mad Not Mad tour. I don’t know why I didn’t go. Maybe I saw it as worldly music. I went to Live Aid in 1985, and I was a big fan of the Style Council, so I wasn’t entirely averse to pop music. But you would hear scary stories about violence in Limerick at that time. My social life was spent in the Christian scene, which was much friendlier and safer. And maybe I was busy in college and too in love with the new girl in the CU to think about anything else 😀.

September 1995

By 1995, we were married with two delightful toddlers. And I was working in Limerick and Tipperary with Baptist Missions. I do remember working with folk from Mallow Street Christian fellowship in street evangelism in Cruises Street, which just came into existence a few years earlier. And I spent a good deal of time in Limerick Baptist Church and Tipperary Christian Fellowship. I wouldn’t have been big into pop music, now that I was a Christian mission worker and in my 30s. At the same time, I always like to use pop music to bring me back to a past era. I wouldn’t have consciously sought out pop music much, but years later, I might hear a song on the radio that suddenly brought 1995 to life again.

Here are some songs from September 1995

• Country House – Blur
• Roll With It – Oasis
• Waterfalls – TLC
• Tu M’aimes Encore (To Love Me Again) – Celine Dion
• Kiss From A Rose – Seal
• Fantasy – Mariah Carey
• Runaway – Janet Jackson
• Colours Of The Wind – Vanessa Williams
• Fairground – Simply Red
• Broken Stones – Paul Weller

September 2005

By 2005, I was back in secular work. I did enjoy being in full-time Christian work, but I don’t think of it as a job for life. I think that I was hugely useful in Limerick in the early 1990s, but by 1998, the church had grown, and I felt that I should either move somewhere else, or go into secular work and focus on Tipperary Christian Fellowship. This fellowship was small. They didn’t really want to be a Baptist church, and I didn’t feel that they needed someone full time, at least not back then. But they’ve grown now, and they do have a full-time worker. A slight miscalculation that I made was that I thought that I’d have a lot more energy for church activities after finishing work each day, but no 😀. But I was always happy to take the Sunday meetings in Tipperary. These were very happy years. By 2005, we had four kids. I missed having toddlers, but looking back now, it was a fun time.

Again, I’d long grown tired of chart music, although I did start liking Radiohead in 2005. There was this TV show about the top 50 albums of all time, and Radiohead’s OK Computer was number 1. I had heard them before, but I dismissed them. I thought Thom Yorke always sounded as if he was crying 😀. But I got into all their albums in 2005. I spent a lot of time creating a website for Tipperary Christian Fellowship. It’s gone now, but I did reuse some of the material for this site. The best part of the site is all the stuff that isn’t related to the Daily Prompt. It’s always my hope that people will read that rather than all my silly answers to the Daily Prompt. But at the same time, if I were reading a Muslim blog, I’d be as keen to know about the individual writing as well as the religious material. So, do unto others as you’d have them do to you 😀. I like people to be honest about themselves. It can be tempting to present yourself as some sort of a cartoon character who’s had all his problems solved since his conversion. But truth be told, we’re all more like Homer Simpson than Ned Flanders. At least I am 😀.

Anyway, believe it or not, I do remember some pop songs from September 2005. I used to hear them on the radio while driving my eldest son to secondary school.

• Dare – Gorillaz
• Pon De Replay – Rihanna
• The Importance Of Being Idle – Oasis
• Long Hot Summer – Girls Aloud
• Cool – Gwen Stefani
• Don’t Cha – The Pussycat Dolls featuring Busta Rhymes
• Fix You – Coldplay
• Nine Million Bicycles – Katie Melua
• Bad Day – Daniel Powter
• You’re Beautiful – James Blunt

September 2015

All my life, I’ve been a sentimental person. I have a tendency to fear the future, despise the present, and long for the past. And I’m more excited about the distant past than the recent past. I suppose that I’m aloof from the daily stresses or boredom, so I can look at life from a different perspective. 2015 doesn’t seem like a particularly exciting year. But the kids were in, or heading to, university, we were still happy in Tipperary Christian Fellowship. I was working away as an instructional designer, and we went on a nice holiday to Brighton. And I saw early 1970s hero, Gilbert O’Sullivan at the University of Limerick Concert Hall. I don’t think that I can remember which songs were out in September 2015.

Anyway, let me talk about my bonus day.

Bonus Day: September 1982

So, getting back to my extra day, I’ll choose 1982. I knew even then that my time with London City Mission would be a very special time that I would remember for the rest of my life. It’s not that I haven’t had good times since, or before but it really did feel like moving to a different universe. I came back to Cork in September 1983 and shortly moved to Limerick to study. And I’m still in Limerick. I do love going to Cork, but I don’t get to London very often. And even when I do, so much of the London that I knew has changed. So, I would spend my extra day dashing from the Voluntary Evangelist (VE) base in Bermondsey to Platform 6 in London Bridge Station. There, I would catch the train to Charing Cross and onto Covent Garden Christian Centre. It might all sound very mundane, but it’s quite magical to me. Here’s some of the music that would have formed the background to September 1982. I wasn’t big into pop music in London, but these do touch me emotionally.

• The Bitterest Pill (I Ever Had To Swallow) – Jam
• Come On Eileen – Dexy’s Midnight Runners With The Emerald Express
• Hi Fidelity – Kids From ‘Fame’ featuring Valerie Landsberg
• All Of My Heart – ABC
• Why – Carly Simon
• Hard To Say I’m Sorry – Chicago
• Spread A Little Happiness – Sting
• Just What I Always Wanted – Mari Wilson
• Pass The Dutchie – Musical Youth
• Take A Chance With Me – Roxy Music

I just wish that some Christian contemporary music was more like this. And when I went to the UK, for the first time in my life, I started feeling Irish, and slightly proud to be so. Back in Ireland, I resented Irish culture being rammed down my throat, but it pleased me to hear Celtic influences in the UK. I could list some of the delightful Christian songs that I became familiar with in 1982, but that’s all covered elsewhere on my site.

So that’s my ideal week. If I had to have an ideal week in the present, maybe I would travel to the UK and spend a day in London, Cambridge, York, Edinburgh, Oxford, Winchester, Brighton and Penzance.