The summer of 2001 was a very long summer, and somewhere near the middle of it was
Eternity/The Road to Mandalay - Robbie Williams
although I hardly noticed.
That was the summer of my finals, memorable for my flat mate having a party on the flat roof and falling from a chimney, bringing it down with him, and smashing through the ceiling of the room I was revising in for my last exam. I was cross, but only for a couple of days.
Then I was home for a couple of weeks, in a strange dreamlike state, then back to St As for graduation. That was the first time I'd been there in high summer, and I certainly had the thought that I wished I'd been there in high summer some more. Hell of a beautiful place on the longest day of the year.
Then, back to London, all sorts of hanging around, having fun, including the playscheme in Portsmouth, which I was nominally in charge of that year, which involved a fair bit of planning - making lists, stacking boxes etc
I have an odd memory, actually, which slightly surprises me about my personality then, but also, as it develops it rather confirms it. I (I think it was me) had the bright idea to try to get more children to come to the playscheme, so Alex and I headed down to Portsmouth in his car with a bunch of leaflets with a plan to pay a visit to various schools in the area. Had we rung ahead? Not even sure ... this seems very forward-thinking and evangelical of me to even consider.
As I recall, it was a day pissing with rain, and we kind of lost our nerve, and didn't do much except have a McDonalds and sit in the car listening to Wimbledon. It was either the match when Henman beat Federer or when he would have beaten Ivanisevic to reach the final if the rain hadn't stopped his flow. I guess the latter.
The summer of Henmania! What a mania! And Strokesmania, of sorts. I was somewhat a participant in it, but let me say, I am equally fond of Free All Angels by Ash, which I think is criminally underrated, very much the sound of that summer, and, I think, to this day Burn Baby Burn will rock the indie dancefloor just as much as Last Night ...
The Portsmouth playscheme that year was a bit chaotic but, I think a lot of fun. Someone was taking pictures, so I still have pictures of my birthday, popping champagne, feeling no pain. I have quite a good haircut, what the hell. And am sunburnt of course.
Robbie Williams' 'Eternity/The Road to Mandalay' was Number 1 for the two-week duration of the playscheme. It was there for summer madness.
I tried not to listen to these two songs at the time, and I know why. Because they were ok. Because they were pleasant, understated, pop songs, and I certainly could not deal with the possibility of actually tolerating Robbie Williams songs. Even the vocal is tolerable. How intolerable!
This was Robinson Williamsburg's 4th, of 7 solo Number 1s, after 6 with Take That. He owned that half-decade that crossed the millennium in the UK. And, quite impressively, his albums sold very consistently in the UK for a very long time. First six were all 2 million plus or thereabouts, then even when they dipped, as they always do, they were still very good sales figures, up to the present day. Even the biggest artists, like Beyonce and Sheeran, have a big dip in sales at some point. I suppose the consistency in Williams' sales is because he never sold a bean in the US, which I never fully understood. So he was always big in a smaller pond, so not as far to fall.
Anyway, I notice that this song, Eternity, which I worry I would quite like if it were by someone I didn't loathe (I don't actually loathe Robbie Williams anymore, btw, I loathe Tories, war, climate change and all that kind of stuff ...), was written about Geri Halliwell and has Brian May on guitar, which calls back to a couple of previous August Number 1s. I think I felt at the time, and there may be something in it, that, after the cool-classic indebted retroism of Britpop (Beatles/Bowie/Kinks/Wire etc) pop music saw value in going deliberately retro after that, but its gods were the uncool ones, ABBA, Bee Gees, Elton John (not cool at all in the 90s, unlike now) and Queen.
Anyway, the fun continued that summer, and then stopped abruptly on 11th September, when one of the most significant and terrible events in history took place, and I got a job in a bookshop.
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