How good times struck me like a tuning fork

"Good times. These are the good times."

Nile Rogers, performing with Chic at Dalby Forest, North Yorkshire, June 2024. Photo credit: Anna Lowe

The crowd danced and sang along with Nile Rogers and Chic as they performed “Good Times”. Anna had led us to the front, her cheeky smile carrying both of us past stalwarts who’d waited for hours to a prime spot a metre from the stage barrier. I closed my eyes and moved with the music:

“Good times. These are the good times.”¹

I let the words in, felt them strike me like a tuning fork.

That moment, dancing in a Dalby forest clearing-turned-summer-music-venue: one of the good times.

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Wembley stadium, ten years earlier. Roger Waters, The Wall tour. Andy and I danced, arms wrapped around each other, somewhere around the half way line. In the early days of our relationship, living 250 miles apart, we sent each other music and Pink Floyd was one of our favourites. We threw our heads back and hollered to London’s sky:

“We’re just two lost souls swimming in a fish bowl, year after year.”²

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A few years later, in the van, adventuring. Just married. Andy was at the wheel, I was spinning the tunes. Talking Heads, one of his favourites. We sang along and he reached over and squeezed my hand:

“And you may find yourself in a beautiful house, with a beautiful wife
And you may ask yourself, "Well, how did I get here?”³

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Andy and I shared so many good times. Now he’s gone, I wish I had been better at experiencing our good times fully.

I assumed we would have many years together, an endless stream of shared good times still to come, so I didn’t cherish them in the moment, like I do now.

Countless simple moments of near-perfection: camping on Lands’ End peninsula in Cornwall, diving with cuttlefish at Babbacombe bay, barbecuing dinner on the beach after a dive at St Bride’s bay in Wales, fish and chips on the rocks in our seaside hometown. I wish, in those moments, I could have dinged myself like a tuning fork:

“Good times. These are the good times.”

I wish I had not allowed small worries to shoot a dark seam through our good times. Worries that I can’t even remember now, but could have been about my erratic freelancer’s income, or home repairs, or disagreements with family or friends, or fretting about our elderly vehicle, or waiting nervously for feedback from a theatre about a play I’d written, or a film we’d entered in a competition, or a pitch we’d made to a production company.

I wish I’d turned the volume down on my worries and cranked it up on the good times.

Photo by Alexey Ruban on Unsplash

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So a few weeks ago, as Anna and I danced our hearts out in Dalby forest, and Nile Rogers and Chic tuned me in with their wise words, I closed my eyes, pushed down my grief and worries, and turned the volume up on the good times.

Good times. These are the good times.

1. Good Times by Chic, 1979.

2. Wish You Were Here by Pink Floyd, 1975.

3. Once in a Lifetime by Talking Heads, 1981.