45 years ago | Rectory Lane, Standish, UK | 25th December 1978

Forty-five years ago, I posed for this photograph. I have no memory of it. To the best of my knowledge, it’s from 1978 and, for reasons I’ll explain below, it’s very definitely on Christmas Day. And it’s of me and Martin ‘playing’ a pair of matching guitars.

I’ve been doing a lot of photo archival, recently; attempting to build a complete record of family photos and videos over the last fifty years or more. In the process of sifting through boxes of old pictures, one of them stood out.

I have no memory of ever owning, let alone attempting to play this particular instrument. I’m not even sure if it was a proper, strung version or some sort of toy facsimile. Obviously, the left hand position has all the hallmarks of ‘I’m pretending to play this and don’t even know how to make it look even slightly authentic’ and don’t get me started on the strap position.

In all probability, it would have been a toy version; not a proper guitar. The main evidence for this is that it was a present because it was clearly Christmas Day. I’m kind of glad it wasn’t a real one because if it was, I’d be gutted that I’d have missed the chance to have a go at learning it, many years before I finally did start to teach myself, in about 1990.

How do I know it was Christmas? Well, the picture was taken at my Grandparents’ house in Standish but more particularly in their ‘parlour’ living room, which was only used for very special occasions. In my sixteen years of knowing that room, I can only remember various Christmases and their 40th wedding anniversary as being deemed important enough to go in there. Very probably, we’ll have been standing on their leaf-folded dining table, which now lives in my garage and is still used, several times a year, as our ’emergency’ table extension for when we’re cooking for more that eight people.

The reason I’m quite surprised by my lack of memory of this event was that I’ve always harboured a deep affinity for guitars, their look and, of course, their sound. I’ve been enamoured by them since I was – well, probably a bit older than I was here, clearly.

I then spent most of the 1980s thinking that music wasn’t something I could just ‘do’, despite the combined might of Mark Knopfler, Eric Clapton, Brian May, Andy Summers, Eddie Van Halen, Rick Parfitt, Joe Perry, The Edge and Slash to turn my affinity into an obsession. As the 80’s came to a close, I borrowed an acoustic and a tattered songbook and I began to teach myself a few things.

Despite the sore fingers, I was hooked and the first chance I got, I was able to own my own acoustic. And then, within a couple of years, my own electric. For a short while, I thought they would be all the guitars I’d ever need.

In the years since then, I’ve learnt countless other pieces, including well-known numbers by some of the above that I always wanted to be able to play but never saw myself as able to do it. Annoyingly, I’ve also forgotten a few along the way. And, not always to universal approval, I’ve managed to acquire several more guitars along the way – each for a good reason, you understand.

I’ll continue to learn more, I’ll try not to forget that which I’ve already learned – and I’m making no promises about not acquiring any more guitars…