Nine years ago today I married my best friend.

Happy anniversary, darling. Where but for you would I?

Philip Roth’s first book, Goodbye, Columbus, was published 50 years ago this week. I first read it in tenth grade English class at New Canaan High School. Twenty-eight years later the title story remains a favourite, and the doomed love of Neil and Brenda still tugs at my heart:

What was it inside me that had turned pursuit and clutching into love, and then turned it inside out again? What was it that had turned winning into losing, and losing—who knows—into winning? I was sure I had loved Brenda, though standing there, I knew I couldn’t any longer. And I knew it would be a long while before I made love to anyone the way I had made love to her. With anyone else, could I summon up such a passion? Whatever spawned my love for her, had that spawned such lust too? If she had only been slightly not Brenda . . . but then would I have loved her? I looked hard at the image of me, at that darkening of the glass, and then my gaze pushed through it, over the cool floor, to a broken wall of books, imperfectly shelved.

Sometimes we need not only thank the author who wrote something that remains so indelibly with us but also those who introduced us to such works. Thanks, Dr Benjamin. Yours was the first class that taught me how to read and therefore how to write.

During his brief visit to see The Wife and I on our Parisian holiday, my old college roommate, Jo, sadly confirmed Theodore Dalrymple’s contention that the English pub after dark was no place for a family man:

The little town where I now live when in England transforms by night. By day, it is delightful; I live in a Queen Anne house that abuts a charming Elizabethan cottage near church grounds that look as if they materialized from an Anthony Trollope novel. By night, however, the average age of the person on the street drops from 60 to 20, with few older people venturing out. Charm and delight vanish. Not long ago, the neighborhood awoke to the sound of a young man nearly kicked to death by other young men, all of whom had spilled forth from a pub at 2 AM.

Every empire falls, true, but in today’s age of information the fall is shamefully witnessed by all.

Thirty-three years ago today my family landed in Miami, FL, en route to South Pasadena, CA, for what was supposed to be a six-month stay before returning home to England. Two weeks later my father was informed our stay was indefinite.

News from 1975:

• On 29 January, the Weather Underground bombed the US State Department.
• On 11 February, Margaret Thatcher became the first and only leader of the Conservative & Unionist Party in the UK.
• On 18 March, McLean Stevenson’s character Henry Blake was killed in the M*A*S*H episode “Abyssinia, Henry.”
• On 4 April, Bill Gates and Paul Allen founded Micro-Soft in Albuquerque, NM.
• On 19 April, Derby County won the English First Division. Liverpool came second.
• On 30 April, the Fall of Saigon. Shit.
• On 28 May, FC Bayern München defeated Leeds United, 2 – 0, in the European Cup Final.
• On 17 July, the Apollo and Soyuz spacecraft docked in orbit for the first time.
• On 5 September, the Provisional Irish Republican Army bombed the London Hilton, killing two and injuring 63. We used to go there to eat at Trader Vic’s. I always ordered pressed duck.
• On 19 September, the first episode of Fawlty Towers aired on BBC2.
• On 1 October, the Thrilla in Manila. Muhammad Ali defeated Joe Frazier in Manila, Philippines.
• On 11 October, the first episode of Saturday Night Live aired with host George Carlin.
• On 29 December, a bomb exploded at LaGuardia Airport, NY, killing 11.

Albums released in 1975:

• Bob Dylan, Blood on the Tracks
• Rush, Fly by Night
• Led Zeppelin, Physical Graffiti
• David Bowie, Young Americans
• Jeff Beck, Blow by Blow
• Steely Dan, Katy Lied
• Hatfield and the North, The Rotter’s Club
• Alice Cooper, Welcome to My Nightmare
• Aerosmith, Toys in the Attic
• ZZ Top, Fandango!
• Parliament, Chocolate City
• Keith Jarrett, The Köln Concert
• Willie Nelson, Red Headed Stranger
• Neil Young, Tonight’s the Night
• Frank Zappa and The Mothers of Invention, One Size Fits All
• Bruce Springsteen, Born to Run
• Grateful Dead, Blues for Allah
• Kiss, Alive!
• Rush, Caress of Steel
• Pink Floyd, Wish You Were Here
• Frank Zappa & Captain Beefheart, Bongo Fury
• The Who, The Who by Numbers
• Paul Simon, Still Crazy After All These Years
• Queen, A Night at the Opera
• King Crimson, USA

Literature’s stars of 1975:

• Ruth Prawer Jhabvala’s Heat and Dust won the Booker Prize
• Ursula K. Le Guin’s The Dispossessed won the Hugo Award
• Joe Haldeman’s The Forever War won the Nebula Award
• Eugenio Montale won the Nobel Prize for Literature
• Michael Shaara’s The Killer Angels won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction

My old college roommate, Jo, chunneled in from England today; haven’t seen him for over five years . . . funnily enough that was in France, too . . . Provence 2003. Having a great time catching up with a dear old friend who’s done bloody well for himself . . .

Spent part of the afternoon at La Cloche des Halles and then at Willi’s Wine Bar before a very lovely meal at La Ferrandaise. Jo and I had the candied lamb shoulder which was meltingly tender and properly gamey; The Wife had langoustines with coco beans; but the veal for two (shared by the table next to us) looked like the real winner. A monumental cut of beautifully roasted veal.

Came back home and logged in to see that England could only manage two goals against lowly Andorra. Once again, I’m so proud to be English.

The Times offers their top fifty “wish you’d been there” moments in football.

What if you had a time machine and could set it to take you back to any point in football history? Which matches, which moments, would you choose—so you could proudly say, years later, “I was there”?

For me, No. 2, “The miracle of Istanbul, 2005,” will always be No. 1 (until, of course, Liverpool wins No. 6 or No. 19; or England wins No. 2). 

On our way home tonight from a relatively impromtu dinner with Dave, Robyn, Karl & Baby Finn in Redondo Beach, side one of Rush’s 2112 shuffled its way to the front of my iPod.

Racing down the 405, The Wife and I sang our way through the entire suite at the top of our lungs.

And, yes, she knew every line, from “We are the priests” to “We have assumed control.”

Beyond cool.