Our favourite songs help us to feel comforted and they are our shelters in times of storms. Songs, like perfumes, help me to anchor specific moments and phases of my life. Nice scents almost inevitably cause me to recall the time and the place when someone wears them; similarly, when these songs are being played, they always remind me of the particular vignette.
Some of my favourite songs which are burnt into my long-term memory are the ones which paralleled the time when i was in primary school. My primary school is no longer around - but the building and the land surrounding it still exists. The groups which grew up with me through primary school are : Abba, Bee Gees, Carpenters (very melancholic songs) and many others. There are songs by solo artistes which are etched into my hard-disk. Here is a specific mental clip which is associated with the singer Paul Anka - Times of Your Life. Some lines of the song:
(Intro music: Violin - Piano)
Good morning, yesterday
You wake up and time has slipped away
And suddenly it's hard to find
The memories you left behind
Remember, do you remember
The laughter and the tears
The shadows of misty yesteryears
The good times and the bad you've seen
And all the others in between
Remember, do you remember
The times of your life (do you remember)
The mental clip: I was on my way to school on a Saturday morning (Saturday mornings were only meant for soccer and classmates and friends; nothing else) when i heard this song. The air was fresh - morning dew intermingled with frangipanis and joss-sticks incense. In fact, If you walk along Guan Chuan Street today you will probably have the same feeling. The short hand of the clock was about to reach 7 in the morning and the rest of the world around Tiong Bahru Primary School was asleep but who cares? The excitement of kicking a soccer ball with my usual kakis in my class surpassed anything which required any of my attention.
Some fellows were already wearing their boots on College Field. I did not own a pair of Addidas or Puma - i only had a pair of rubber-studded hockey canvas boots - Made in China. My family was not well-to-do.
Very few people of this generation know or care to know that College Field had a one-storey red-brick building next to my Primary School which looked like a stable. Yes, a stable - where horses dwelled. But by the time i knew about this building - which was essentially dark and had long passageways- like a longhouse minus the traditional legs of the kampung house, it was already in a dilapidated condition.
My football 'club' followed a strict warm-up regiment. A few laps around the squarish College Field, followed by leg-raises, star-jumps and push-ups. The leg-raises were the toughies - quite a number of us were close to tears while counting aloud. But surely after the routine body-pushing, character-inducing exercises, we were rewarded with the magical time of matches, together with the thrills and spills.
All these would last up to 11 am and we would trot up the wide steps to the left of the brick-red building (about 30 steps?), dropping dirt off our boots and perspiration off our bodies to enjoy the next highlight of the day - Ice-cold soft drinks (in glass bottles, of course). Besides the usual brands like Coca-Cola and Pepsi, we had the once-famous brands like Kickapoo Joy-Juice, Sinalco, Fanta Grape and Fanta Berry, 7-Up and other lesser-known ones. BUT there was no isotonic drinks yet. For 30 cents a bottle, we would have ice-cubes in glass cups. Some of us would have 'Sng Buay' (Sour plums-basically for the salt) to go with the Coke. It is known to prevent muscle cramps after a 'Siong' work-out session.
After the boys' talk, we would bid farewell to each other to go home or, if energy permitted or the general mood prevailed, to go a friend's house in Lim Liak Street to carry on our chit-chat for a second round of small goal-post soccer at the badminton court near his place.
That's the Times of Your Life video-clip which plays itself out in the recesses of my mind everytime this song is played over the airwaves - usually in Gold 90.5
No comments:
Post a Comment