Blur - Parklife (CD 1994)

In the summer of 1994 Parklife was the album of choice for any aspiring indie kid like me. I was an effete southerner on holiday in the even further south of France staying in one of those terribly, terribly middle class camp sites where the semi-permanent tents have cookers. Oasis weren’t even on the radar then: I heard them on the John Peel show four months later on a dull winter’s evening slaving over an A-Level essay.

CDs were alien too and I only had three tapes with me and a clunky Walkman. One of the tapes was Parklife by Blur (I also had a Beatles compilation and Ingenue by KD Lang.) Parklife was by far and away the coolest album that summer and I listened to it on a regular and religious basis by the side of the pool.

As is inevitable on these campsites aged 16 you just seek out the funniest Brits and prettiest girls of any nationality. It was three weeks of swimming and exploring during the day and drinking and laughing the evenings, but not so much drinking, that the grown ups found out.

Whilst the Germans, Belgians, French and Dutch were down at the squalid little bar at the edge of the campsite, we Brits had forged a space on a verge. It doesn’t sound much but most evenings we would gather, the Brit pack, maybe 25 of us in all with a constant stream of comings and goings. We had a sofa and some hastily organised planks as benches. It was a haphazard affair but it was where we hung out and everyone knew it and we had a small battery powered tape player: Parklife was the tape of choice.

Boys and Girls was my favourite song back them. It encapsulated all the hedonistic holiday goodness we were enjoying at the time. That “grab a girl, or boy, and have a good time” idea of the holiday season. We would chant it with bemused continentals looking on sipping sheepishly on their bier pression. Tracy Jacks was the sad case escaping from his drab and wretched life that we never wanted to be. Jubilee was the guy we secretly thought we might actually become back in Blighty.

And then there are the songs that remind me of the girls. Well, one girl in particular who came from Wimbledon. I remember listening to Badhead vowing always to stay in touch, unlike the song. And the bittersweetness of To The End was never so sexy as when we snogged madly, lying in the vineyards. And we more than snogged as Graham Coxon’s mysterious ode to far away stars, Far Out, burbled from the battery powered tape player.

And then in the sun by the pool (in 1994) songs like End of Century seemed a lifetime away. And the mind gets dirty as you get close to thirty? I mean what did that mean? I know now of course, but then it seemed almost like a dirge. But we sang along, nonetheless.

My favourite song now is This is a Low. It reminds me so much of this country and how we love those things that are strangely British. What more beautiful song could be based around the shipping forecast?

But for that summer, Parklife was an anthem. The anthem. It is so deliciously British and proud and yet revelling, oddly, in squalor. It was a crowd pleaser with a deeper meaning.

I still know all the words from Parklife. I can still deliver them with all the mockney verve I did all those summers ago. But they’ve never impressed anyone as much as they did the girl I snogged in the vineyard. And every time I listen to the album it all comes back. Where is she now?

Brilliant Blur album, even better listen now that some time has passed since it's release. Allows you to enjoy the songs on their own terms without the constant radio play, and who'd have thunk it? Phil Daniels rapping style would be become very popular with Mike Skinner of the Streets.

Mockney geezers con the South: shouldn't think it sold much North of Watford though... apart from one or two humourous moments this was a real let down with hardly any decent tunes.