Count Your Blessings #100 – Portable Music

As a young teenager I earned some much needed money doing a paper-round. It meant getting up early in the morning and dashing around a set of houses on my bike. One of the first things I did with the money that I had earned was to buy a mobile cassette player. I can’t remember what make the first one was, but I can remember what it wasn’t. I wanted a proper Sony Walkman, but I couldn’t afford a proper Walkman, I had to settle for something more affordable.

(For anyone out there who is younger than 20, the original Sony Walkman had nothing to do with phones or MP3 players, it played cassettes. If you don’t know what a cassette is then I’m sorry, it’s not my problem that your education has been so incomplete.)

Every morning (except Sunday, because that was someone elses problem) I would get up, reach for the portable cassette player, select a fresh tape from the pile in my room, stick the headphones on and set off. It wasn’t the safest thing to do, but the music on those tapes made a tough job enjoyable. One day I would be joining U2 at the live Under a Blood Red Sky concert. The next day I would be taken to the strange world of Talking Heads. On another day it would be OMD. Listening to the music took me to another place where my fingers weren’t frozen to the handlebars, or where the rain wasn’t seeping down my back.

I probably spent a disproportionate amount of my paper-round money on batteries keeping the portable cassette player and bike lights running.

There were a number of portable cassette players that joined me on that journey. Each of them would eventually buckle under the strain. The first one was probably the size of 3 or 4 cassettes, eventually I worked myself to a tiny player (JVC I think), that was bright red and only just the size of a cassette box. I thought it was tiny.

As the years passed I changed my job. My brother got a job as a Chef in a Hotel near Scarborough. I could earn more working in the kitchens at weekends and holidays than I could on the paper-round. Scarborough was a 40 minute train journey from home so I would travel up, work, stay over work and then travel back. The train journeyed through some fabulous countryside, but the travelling was made even more enjoyable by the accompaniment of Bob Dylan and Depeche Mode.

I never had a portable CD player. Not sure why, I think that portable CD players became the accessory of choice during the time Sue and I spent every waking hour together, so there was no need.

Then I learnt to drive and a new type of portable music came into my life. Having money meant that I could experiment with all sorts of music, it was at this time that I discovered Bruce Cockburn whose songs still speak volumes to me.

My portable music is now on my phone, 2GB of it. I can’t imaging how many cassettes I would have to carry around to have access to that much music. I’ve started appreciating my portable music again. Most mornings I try to go to the gym or take a walk for exercise, I take my music along with me. There are times in the gym that I would stop and give it up, but the music keeps me going. I’m currently listening to all sorts of music, the newest is probably Delirious?.

Music plays such a huge part in my life, it fires my imagination, it takes me to other places, it lifts me up, it spurs me on, it calms me down. Being able to take it with me is such a blessing.