Remember when photos were shiny card things we kept in albums? I found this one yesterday. Back when I was in The Boys and not long after we’d toured with The Ramones I seemed to be wanting to impersonate them with the leather jacket, T Shirt and haircut. Either that or it was a wig but I’ve never had one of those.
Liz, my then girlfriend and now wife, and I had that day arrived back from holiday on Lanzarote (hence the healthy glow) and being party animals headed off to Dingwalls in Camden https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dingwalls, a legendary venue where the DJ, pictured behind us, announced after an early Boys gig that we were the worst band ever to grace their stage. A couple of months later with our first single out they were begging us to go back.
But on this night Liz and I witnessed one of the unluckiest pick up attempts in the history of unrequited love. I had gone to the bar for a couple of drinks and returned to find a young man, about my height, similarly dressed, ernestly trying to engage Liz in conversation. “Tell him who you are” said Liz to the young man, pointing at me. So he looked at me, a flicker of doubt in his eyes and said: “Erm, I’m Kid Reid from The Boys”.
“That’s brilliant”, I said: “So am I”.
He was gone, faster than a speeding bullet. But how many people will be able to say that someone tried to pick up their girlfriend by saying they were them?
Photo albums. Wonderful things in a lockdown.