Just a couple more to go now. So far, we’ve had California Dreamin’ , Moonlight Shadow, The Smurf Song, The Clapping Song, Chiquitita, Lady in Red, Girls Just Want to Have Fun and Rock Me Amadeus. This week, we turn to Ride on Time.
I’m still on really good terms with my ex-mother-in-law. She recently started talking about how I used to wear mini-skirts when she first met me. I thought she must be going mad. Did I really?
But I dug out a few photos and I clearly did, so she’s not mad at all. There I am, wearing a short skirt, together with a ‘fetching’ perm. Perms were all the rage in the 80s and 90s (my 24-year-old daughter doesn’t believe that everyone had them, but they did, didn’t they?!) What’s more, it was glued rigid with Shockwaves hairspray so not a hair moved out of place. I remember a young girl watching me in the street one day and pointing at me. ‘Mum, her hair isn’t moving,’ she said in wonder, as gale force winds whipped up a frenzy all around us and slapped her hair from one side of her face to the other. Not mine.
I was 18 in the photos and had just discovered the joys of nightclubbing. On a Friday or Saturday night, I would get ready, while listening to my vinyl records. My favourite song was Black Box’s Ride on Time which I listened to again and again, sometimes interspersed with Beats International’s Dub Be Good to Me and Technotronic’s Pump Up the Jam. Dad didn’t mind club music (I think he liked to think he was ‘cool’ as he put it), but Mum hated it and was always relieved when I turned ‘that racket off’.
So, off I’d go, dressed in a thin top and mini-skirt, with no jacket (why, I have no idea as we always had to queue for ages outside the nightclub, come cold, rain, snow…) to spend the night dancing, to said tunes above and many others of a similar nature, and drinking. My favourite tipple was Malibu and Coke. I’m still quite partial to the odd Malibu and Coke, but as for Ride on Time, Dub Be Good to Me and Pump Up the Jam? Thankfully my love affair with clubs and club music was quite short-lived.
Esther Chilton 
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