'Really Blagg? After 14 years?' I hear you cry. Well, yes, I know but listen...
Firstly there is a brand new Official Animated Video to go with the song which is really worth watching and, I think, even adds a bit of long-forgotten sparkle to a chestnut so old we've forgotten why it was great in the first place, and secondly, in this particular year I have a strange tale to tell.
It will take some time so - if you have other things to do - I'll understand and I'm happy for you to leave. However, if you want to help me get to the bottom of a puzzle that has fuddling my brain since July then stick around.
To begin with I need to explain that I have been fastidious in looking after my records since I bought my first 45rpm back when the world was black and white. I regard my record collection as I would an old photograph album, a diary or an almanac. I can chart my life through my vinyl and I have never thought of it as less than a valued collection. When I left my first marriage it was the only thing I took with me. It has never been in the loft or the garage; always in my lounge but usually hidden behind a tasteful Ikea cabinet. Bowed shelves open to dust don't figure in my world.
The next thing to understand is I put the A into Anal. All the albums are filed alphabetically but the singles are in boxes in the order in which I bought them. If you asked me if I have, say, Bowie's 'Starman', I can pull out the appropriate box and go to roughly where it is in the box and locate it immediately because I know what label it's on and what colour the sleeve is.
Yea, I'm THAT bloke! *Back behind the velvet rope please, Ladies*
When lockdown was announced in March I decided what I would do is work my way through my albums, playing them all in order. I started with ABC's 'Lexicon of Love' on 16th March and, by complete coincidence, played The Zombies 'Odessey & Oracle' on July 4th. I can't say for certain what it was that made me feel uncomfortable after I'd finished this little trial, but I couldn't shrug off the idea that I'd missed something out. Then later in July it struck me.
'The Roy Wood Story' is a double album on the Harvest label that charts the man's musical career from his days with the Mike Sheridan Lot through The Move and onto ELO, Wizzard and a solo career. To be honest, it's an album of diminishing returns with all The Move stuff being great, some good singles from ELO and Wizzard and some solo stuff of dubious quality.
On the third side however is the ubiquitous 'I Wish It Could Be Christmas Every Day' which meant that, if nothing else, the LP came out at least once a year every December. However, I now realised that this album was missing. It was certainly played at Christmas 2017, I can actually remember playing it late one evening, but following the passing of Lady B I certainly didn't feel the sentiments of the song and didn't pull it out in 2018 or 2019.
Now this is a vinyl album here; it's not a set of keys tossed in a drawer or a mislaid pen or pair of glasses. It can only be in one place and that is in my record cabinet. Except it's not. I'd played everything in order anyway so I knew I hadn't misfiled it but, of course, I pulled the whole lot out again and checked. Twice. Three times...Four - aw hell, you know don't you?
The fact is it's not there and there's no-one been in this house to take it. So bad did it get, I eventually decided I needed to replace it. Fortunately, buying a pristine copy on eBay from a bloke who obviously loves his vinyl as I do (except he sells his, of course) got me over the worst of the shakes, but it's still not dispelled the notion that there is something very odd here because I can come to only one conclusion and it's something I will never be able to check.
I have to assume for one reason or another, Lady B did something with it. Why? What for? And where is it? Even as I write it, it sounds preposterous - she never showed the slightest interest in my interest and I wouldn't have thought, had anyone asked, she'd even had known I owned it. But there's a nagging feeling I'm missing something beyond the actual album here and I fear I'll never know what it is. Help please!
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