Entangled - Genesis

A Year to Remember...

I wonder what we’ll think when we look back at 2020. It’ll certainly be a year that we’ll never forget - for obvious reasons. However, when we look back it will be only one of the many extraordinary times that will be etched deeply into our living memories. It’s all a bit dark right now isn’t it?

Yet when I think of sunnier days and happier times, my mind immediately takes me back to 1976. The year of the ‘Big Drought’. I had some great replies when I asked my social media platform yesterday if they remembered that year. There was a whole spectrum of replies. As a 14-year old boy myself, I remember it very well. It was an unprecedented time. A time post-WW2 where the country came together to face an unheard of national crisis – which we survived. Sounds familiar?

If you experienced 1976 for yourself you'll remember that Summer went on forever – well that’s how it felt anyway. As I clearly remember, it finally came to an end in a cataclysmic thunderstorm on the evening of Saturday 25^th September - when we all breathed a huge if somewhat soggy sigh of relief. Never have so many people in one nation prayed for rain!

The thing is, everything comes to its own natural end and runs out of steam. The Corona-crisis will too. It’s going to take time and strength to get through it – and a bit of nostalgia of better times. The current trend of listing and nominating albums that ‘meant-a-lot-at-the-time’ underlines just how much we love to hold onto the ‘good old days’ and in my case reliving that long hot, carefree summer with a dose of ‘More than a Feeling’ or ‘Entangled’ rather than the dreadful ‘Save your kisses for me’ or even more-dreadful (if that’s a term) ‘Mississippi’. Gave me a warm sense of belief as well as relief from yet another bad-news-broadcast on TV.

Time will heal…

Forty-four years’ on from 1976, (a matter of moments it feels to me), so much has happened. We’ve seen the rise and fall of the Space Shuttle, Concorde, Video, CD’s and the Floppy Disc. Will Apple, Facebook and good old Google be around in Forty-four more years’? Who knows but new life-challenges and inventions, will come and go – they always do. The terrible things that happened in 1976? Well, we tend try to forget the bad stuff don’t we and move on to rise out of the ashes. Rebuild. Stiffen our upper-lips and make the best of what we’ve got. 

Just like we did in 1976.

1,052 Marathons, 255 Ultras, 9 Guinness World Records & 15 Marathon des Sables