I’m guessing it was around February 1983 – it was definitely a Sunday afternoon and I had Radio 1 playing while I was doing my best not to complete a homework essay, the topic of which could have been:
a) Some sort of creative writing piece in French
b) An analysis of some aspect or another of Bertolt Brecht’s play, The Caucasian Chalk Circle
or c) Peter The Great (without mentioning his introduction of a tax on beards, which whilst a highly amusing fact, would according to our History teacher, not earn a mark in an A Level exam).
As it wasn’t yet evening, my level of urgency to get the essay finished would have been low and it wouldn’t have taken a great deal to distract me. And distract me a piece of music did. Something that sounded just perfect for a rainy (probably – I was in Stockport) Sunday afternoon in February. A guy singing softly over an acoustic guitar and a lovely saxophone bit, exactly where it needed to be. The pen was put down and I listened transfixed, hoping that there would be a mention of the artist and title at the end of the song, as I’d not been listening that closely prior to the song playing.
I had a tiny spiral-bound notebook during the early 80’s, in which I kept a list of songs I’d heard on the radio that I liked. This book without doubt contained the neatest writing I’ve ever managed (*1) (*2). The name of Ben Watt and the title Some Things Don’t Matter were duly added when the song did indeed get its back announcement. At this point in time, I had no idea who Ben Watt was and for a few months, the song was just a memory, logged in my notebook.
Forward to July 1983, and I’m in my first week working for a firm of auditors in Manchester during my summer holidays. I’ve got some work there via George who lives round the corner. George chats to my father a lot and between them they have decided that some exposure to the accountancy world would be very useful for someone studying French, German and History at A Level. It’s a small firm and I soon notice that George is actually a bit of a joke in the office. His arrival at 9am on a Monday with me for my first day has his colleagues open-mouthed. I barely see him again after that as he’s always late, at lunch or leaving early – “visiting clients”, I’m told by said colleagues, who can barely supress their laughter. Everyone else in the office is old (i.e. over the age of 30), apart from Nigel. He’s delighted to see a younger person and talks to me a lot. He’s in his mid-20s, and the only mention of music that passes between us is him telling me how great he thinks Yes are.
Nigel reappears after popping out for lunch, complete with an HMV bag. He’s very excited and tells me that he’s just spent 99 pence on a brilliant album. I make some comment about prog rock albums and clearance sales. Undeterred, he gets out an album that’s called Pillows & Prayers and tells me to look at the the track listing. My eyes home in on Side 1, Track 5. “Wow! Have you heard that Ben Watt song? Were there any more copies of this album? That’s worth the price on its own!”, I gibber excitedly.
I take my lunch break and return with the same album. We share an office with Audrey, who looks like she should have retired a couple of decades earlier. Audrey tuts all afternoon as Nigel and I discover a shared love of John Peel shows and do next to no work.
It’s coming up to 40 years since I purchased that album. It’s been played a lot, well – parts of it have, none more so than Some Things Don’t Matter, which has never lost the ability to transport me back to a rainy Sunday afternoon in February 1983.
Maybe I’ll write about Pillows & Prayers at some point in the future, although I’d imagine most people reading this will be familiar with it. But this is Ben Watt’s moment of glory on this blog, and the point at which I humbly apologise to him for never purchasing the parent North Marine Drive album. Sure, I was relatively skint in 1983, but I’m ashamed to say that the first time I heard it in its entirety was via a streaming service. Maybe one day….
(*1) My handwriting is appalling. It’s so bad that I wasn’t allowed to use a pen at primary school – I was kept on pencil so that I could rub things out and try to make them legible for the teachers. Even now I can’t use a biro and have any hope of reading what I’ve written a couple of days later. A fine-nibbed fountain pen just about does the trick, and has marked me down as mildly eccentric with younger colleagues. I have been described as “lacking fine motor skills” for most of my life. Actually, “clumsy” is the word that’s usually used.
(*2) A list of really stupid things that I’ve done would include, somewhere near the top, the disposing of said notebook around 1988/89. As someone who is a self-confessed hoarder, this was totally out of character. As I recall, my logic was that I’d most likely never again hear those songs I’d not bought by then, so the book was just taunting me about missed purchases. Luckily I can still “see” some of the entries in my head (obviously the “neat” writing helped) and a number of them were acquired when iTunes became a thing.
TGG
Wasting time in the study 
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