Mid-Life Crisis Songs #43: Back To The Old House

A couple of weekends ago, I went to the 50th birthday of an old friend. It was a rather sombre affair, though everybody put on a brave face. As if turning 50 wasn't bad enough, his sister had organised the party as a surprise... and I'm sure he'd had better plans for his Saturday night than seeing all these creaky old faces from his past converging on his local. I'm not saying he wasn't glad to see us - I genuinely think he was - but you can hardly relax and enjoy yourself when you're having to do the rounds at a party like that. I'd tell my nearest and dearest never to arrange such a celebration for me (only 3 years to go!), but I think they know me better... and unless the venue was a phone box, I suspect they'd have trouble filling the room anyway.

The party was held in an area of Shipley, near Bradford, where I briefly lived back in the late 90s. It was a house-share with two colleagues, and I went into it thinking it would liven up my social life and open up a few new doors for me, though in truth they both had steady girlfriends at the time so I rarely saw them, even if they were home for the night. It was slightly less lonely than living by myself in a crappy two-up one-down on the edge of the M62, as I had done for 6 months prior to that, but even living with two other guys, most of the drinking I did was solitary.

My one real memory of that house was a party we had where I ended up out in the garden smoking my first and last ever joint. The rest of the evening is a bit of a blur (which probably owed less to the joint and more to the Jack), but apparently I later called and left lots of desperate messages on an on-again / off-again girlfriend's voicemail which I then had to delete the next day before she found her phone and heard them. Long story, but it wasn't my finest hour.

On my way to the 50th birthday party, I decided to take a drive past the house I used to live in, for old time's sake. And do you know what? I couldn't even find the place. I must have driven up every estate and side road in the area but none of them came close to the picture in my memory. This song, obviously, came to mind. It's the way Morrissey starts off by singing "I'd rather not go back to the old house" but ends up singing "I'd love to go back to the old house" just a couple of minutes later. I understand that completely.