What is a car journey without a soundtrack?
Too darn long, that's what. For the last six months I've been driving around in stony silence with only my own thoughts for company. Always dangerous.
It happened after my battery went flat and the stereo, belligerently, refused to turn back on without some cryptic code being tapped into the display. I had a vague memory of the previous owner of the car handing me a card bearing the aforementioned code, but it went the way of every other important document I own; to the large and growing pile of unsorted correspondence in the loft.
I've really felt the absence of musical accompaniment on my travels. Music maketh the journey, I find. We all know that a certain album can spirit you back to a time and place in a heartbeat, but the flashback is so much more potent when it's associated with a particular journey. Perhaps, it's having nothing else to focus on. Or maybe it's the opportunity to sing your heart out within a soundproofed sanctuary.
If I hear The Eagles or Elton John I am immediately transported back to childhood, to the back seat of our family car where four of us were squashed in a two-lean-forward-two-sit-back formation. Elton John singing Candle in the Wind was a regular lullaby on the way back from visiting relatives. Moby's Play and Morcheeba's Big Calm will always be driving across Virginia to get to the Carolina coast in 2000 with my friend Helen as we set off on our travels.
I recently had the task of driving a car full of female chums to a hen weekend in York. The trip prompted me to find the stereo code and end the radio silence which led to the life-affirming experience of belting out Born to Be Wild, from the Easy Rider soundtrack, at 70mph with my closest friends. Priceless.
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