Paul Fitzpatrick: June 2025

There’s a nice song by Joni Mitchell about the passage of time called “The Circle Game’.
 
In the song Mitchell homes in on a boy’s journey to adulthood – when he’s 10 he yearns for a future that’s just out of reach.
“words like when you’re older must appease him”.

The boy turns 16, attaining all the freedoms he wished for but people keep telling him to slow down, to enjoy life whilst he’s young
“Take your time, it won’t be long now till you drag your feet to slow the circles down”.

He turns 20, time’s moving fast.
Feeling the burden of adulthood he’s already having to reconsider earlier ambitions.
“Though his dreams have lost some grandeur coming true. There’ll be new dreams, before the last revolving year is through”

The story is ubiquitous – one minute we’re in a rush to be grown up and independent, the next we yearn to be young and carefree…. a bit like when we started full-time employment and realised our beloved six-week summer holidays had come to an end.

Growing up there were few events more eagerly anticipated than the school summer holidays.

What ensued was a magnificent six weeks…. no pesky alarm clock to disturb those essential growth hormones, no school bus to rush for and no half-baked homework to concern yourself with.
Every mid-morning rise triggered a blissful groundhog-day, where reenacting the preceding twenty-four hours was a dream not a nightmare.

The first sound I’d hear was the radio transmitting from downstairs, or in the days before double glazing, a neighbour’s garden, which was always a win…. it meant it was a sunny day.

Most days we’d gather at the local park, a green space next to a power station, with a few swings, a roundabout and a stretch of grass large enough to host the daily football contests that would often last until it got too dark to play.
Summers were spent exclusively outdoors and sport played a big part in our activities. Wimbledon fortnight would see us converging on the local tennis club. The British Open would see us heading to the nearest pitch and putt course and a few brave lads would even rustle up some cricket gear during big test matches.

We were fortunate that most of the older kids we hung around were decent guys, happy for us to make up the numbers. They were into sport, and music and good senses of humour which inevitably shaped our tastes. They’d wax lyrical about the new Stones album, a recent Monty Python sketch, a Nastase drop shot, a Trevino putt or a Rivelino free kick and we’d soak it up like sponges.

On the rare days there was no sport, our little cabal would explore our perimeters, walking aimlessly until we got too far out of our comfort zone.

On one of our jaunts we saw a kid our age being hauled out of a nearby canal, lifeless. His devastated friends explaining to police that he’d only dived in for a swim as it was such a hot day.
Seeing the movie ‘Stand by Me’ brought a lot of those summer memories back, except none of us looked like River Phoenix and the dramatic landscape of Oregon is a bit different to Glasgow.

The only mischief I can remember getting up to was ‘apple knocking’ which consisted of sneaking into someone’s back garden at dusk and pinching a few apples or stalks of rhubarb. The fun of course being in the jeopardy, as the spoils were often bitter and inedible.

Homelife during the summer holidays was akin to a pleasant stay at a friendly guesthouse, dropping in a couple of times a day to refuel, firstly for lunch – usually a can of Campbell’s chicken soup and a tin of Ambrosia Devon Custard (cold, straight from the tin), and then later for a quick tea when our dads got home.

The summer of 1971 is one I remember well. I had just completed the tricky first year at secondary school, I was just stepping into my teenage years and according to BBC weatherman Bert Foord, we were enjoying the warmest July since 1955.   

As with a lot of memories, the backdrop to these summers was music; glorious eclectic 70s music.

It seemed like everywhere you went there was a radio playing.
On a warm day folk would be in their gardens, wireless on, listening to music or coverage of the tennis from Wimbledon. If you went to the local shop the radio would be on, if any gardeners, window cleaners or builders were working locally they would be grafting to music and if you were in the vicinity of any girls one of them was sure to be packing a ‘tranny radio’.

I doubt it’s the same now but in those days any space inhabited by teenage girls, was sure to be accompanied by the sound of a transistor radio blasting out pop hit after pop hit.
You never knew what was going to be played next, The Who, Atomic Rooster, The Sweet and Middle of the Road would be unlikely bedfellows in any other setting but there they were cosying up to each other in the summer of 71.

Whenever I look back at the old charts, like the one above, it amazes me how many songs I can remember, in truth, virtually all of them. Juxtapose that with charts from the late 70s onwards and I struggle to identify fifty percent of them. The reason for that is simple…. I stopped being within earshot of the radio.

Mixtapes and vinyl took over my personal listening and after I left school there were no school bus or playground radios to usurp my consciousness anymore.

Ironically, now that I’m retired, free of the alarm clock and have got my full summers back, there’s no one to go down the park to play footie with and sadly the girl’s with their tranny radios are nowhere to be seen….

I think Joni had a point.

“And the seasons they go round and round
And the painted ponies go up and down
We’re captive on the carousel of time
We can’t return, we can only look behind 
From where we came
And go round and round and round
In the circle game”

Here’s a wee playlist featuring some of the tranny tunes I remember from those 70s school summer holidays.