We’re moving from my company’s office in London and packing up years of music memorabilia to return to me here in Fife.
This change is triggering so many memories I can barely sleep.
Laboriously sorting the contents of a busy life into boxes at the age of 62 is an admission that time marches faster as our limbs get slower.
In fact, putting anything into a box at this age sometimes feels horribly prophetic, especially if there’s a lid involved.
Tempting fate is fine but no one wants to get into bed with it on a regular basis.
I run a music industry communications agency – Murray Chalmers PR – and looking back through all the gold discs, tiny promotional T shirts and photos reminds me I was once the fearless, thin young buck around town.
Now when I’m in London I’m even scared of being down in the tube station at midnight.
Still, the memories provide warm vicarious thrills.
Neighbours went loco for Yoko
Did I ever tell you about the time Yoko Ono visited my new office in Kensington and was told to keep her voice down by the aggressive and already troublesome yoga teacher downstairs?
Yoko simply marched up the stairwell to the top floor office where the first thing she saw was a huge framed poster of herself and John Lennon on the wall.
As she walked around looking for me, the staff stood in complete awe.
The only trouble was that this top floor space wasn’t mine – although at least the occupants (one of whom went on to marry Princess Beatrice) were thrilled to meet a legend.
There was also the time we bought in bags of expensive, healthy vegan food for a different superstar client, only to have to run to the corner shop to get them two bars of full fat Dairy Milk instead.
Tears at the tube station and bubbly for breakfast
March 21, 2014 was the day we got in the office at 7am to announce Kate Bush’s first live shows in 35 years.
While the world reeled at the news we were all reeling too, because we’d hit the champagne at 8am to celebrate Kate’s brilliant return.
I – supposedly the captain of the ship – was drunk by 9am.
In fairness, it was an emotional day. I had already burst into tears outside Walthamstow tube station from the stress of keeping these shows secret for months.
As we age our memories get more cherished. Reminiscing is wasted on the young, too immersed in living to care about yesterday.
And so many of my memories relate to office life – the place where many of us once spend great chunks of our time.
Like the occasion my eccentric 70-year-old, Chanel-clad personal trainer had me strip off in the hallway so she could appraise my body like a lump of Scottish beef – all this while our staff were working close by.
I stood there reddening as Belinda’s clipped voice bellowed: “The legs are GOOD! The chest is GOOD!! The shoulders are GOOD!!! But, my darling, that middle section is NOT GOOD”.
She then sped off in her chauffeur driven car to Kensington Palace to train ‘the Princess’.
That was after giving me and the staff something called a skinny hug as she left.
Such was the joy of having an office near royalty in posh Kensington.
Music industry excesses extended to the office
I know working from home has benefits – you can put a wash on while doing a spreadsheet and feeding the cat – but I really do miss office life.
I moved from Dundee and started in the music industry in London in the mid-1980s, when the money flowed like Cristal champagne and where at least one of our assistants was a part-time drug dealer, or so it seemed.
I wasn’t immune to all the fun, of course, and nor did I want to be.
This was an industry where we worked hard but played harder.
And often the two became intertwined.
Wild times with my office family
It wasn’t unknown to go for a long boozy lunch, stagger back to the office around 4pm, make some calls and then go back to the same restaurant for dinner.
We were living a life of bacchanalian success and stone- cold sobriety was for those not having the hits.
At midnight we’d often head back to the office to carry on carousing.
We all had well-stocked wine fridges in our plush private offices and the tea lady would wheel her trolley round twice a day in a vain attempt to impose caffeine normality on our collective hangover fug.
The elderly photo archivist sold eggs in between guarding her Marc Bolan and Sex Pistols pics like they were the crown jewels.
These were happy days when EMI called itself a family, and it was.
I remain friends with many of that family now, 37 years after I was adopted into it.
Somehow, I don’t think impersonal zoom calls will ever compete with that.
