This year marks the anniversary of an important time in my life. 15 years ago I went to see Pink Floyd, live at Earls Court in London. I can honestly say it was the greatest concert I have ever been to.
The strange thing is that the memory has improved with time.
I travelled to the gig from Liverpool, where I was living at the time. It was an organised coach trip and was very exciting for a 19 year old student, I can tell you. The trip took about 8 hours, 1 1/2 hours of which were spent in a service station in Birmingham. Unfortunately, we got to the gig 1 1/2 hours after it started. The coach driver, bless him, dropped us all off a couple of miles from Earls Court, leaving us to run across that small town know as London. What a guy.
Luckily, the first half of the show as the new stuff, which we were not bothered about. We caught the entire second half and I was blown away. The Floyd are well known for their light shows and it was spectacular. They must have spent well over a hundred quid. Maybe even two.
These days there would be complaints about them not using energy saving light bulbs, but people didn’t care about that stuff back then.
The strange thing is, even though I missed a good chunk of the show, I feel as if I saw it all. Watching the DVD of the show has filled in the gaps to the point where my perception has turned into reality. As far as my brain knows, I didn’t miss anything.
Time is a great healer, it has even healed the holes in my memories.
Being older, I now appreciate the lyrics to ‘Time’ a bit more. Probably because I have less in front of me now.
“Ticking away the moments that make up a dull day
You fritter and waste the hours in an offhand way.
Kicking around on a piece of ground in your home town
Waiting for someone or something to show you the way.
Tired of lying in the sunshine staying home to watch the rain.
You are young and life is long and there is time to kill today.
And then one day you find ten years have got behind you.
No one told you when to run, you missed the starting gun.
So you run and you run to catch up with the sun but it’s sinking
Racing around to come up behind you again.
The sun is the same in a relative way but you’re older,
Shorter of breath and one day closer to death.
Every year is getting shorter never seem to find the time.
Plans that either come to naught or half a page of scribbled lines
Hanging on in quiet desperation is the English way
The time is gone, the song is over,
Thought I’d something more to say.”
EDF could have retired on this gig.
