Love to Love Me Baby

Driving to work this morning, I was listening to a compilation tape that has spent a lot of time hidden away under a bed. It was quite odd to find out it was the music from my 18th birthday party. 'Whatever happened to the Alessi Brothers?' I mused as I waited for the lights to change. Then Donna Summer started warbling 'Love to Love You Baby' (I hasten to point out this was an already an 'old' track at the point of my 18th birthday) and I remembered that this was the really, really long version. A friend of mine once recalled going to join the toilet queue when it started (remember pre en-suite toilet queues at parties?), waiting ages to go, and coming back down to hear Donna still doing her stuff. I had completely forgotten how naughty her stuff was. I had the passenger window completely open (driver's window still not mended) and was held up in traffic just level with a bus stop where several old ladies were waiting for the 131. Donna was just reaching the 'climax' (and I use the word carefully here) of the lyrics, which caused some surprise to the bus stop people, who must have thought I was doing something quite inappropriate in the car. I tried to make the window go up, but the button on the driver's side doesn't work either, so I smiled bleakly and made sure both hands were visible on the steering wheel.

The person who had made the tape for me was a one eyed ex Hell's Angel, who had quite a lot of metal bits holding his bones together. Once, while giving me and a friend a lift back from some dodgy club in London in his Triumph Spitfire, he exhibited signs of early road rage, waving a monkey wrench around on the slip road of the A3. I spent the rest of the journey thinking about the conundrum of him liking the Alessi Brothers, but ended up singing along anyway.