Dear imaginary Olivia,
Happy birthday the first you will not know just like you do not know me yet we met in 1972 in my bedroom as the radio chart was counted down and your hit was moving up.
To be honest it was the smile and the hairstyle as much as the song and of course the image of the girl next door from Cambridge via down under.
I only bought five of your discs three singles and two albums but I threw one long player away because the songs were shite as I think you might agree from the rumours that I heard and when the track the public liked best was defeated by Waterloo.
The other album I still play even though I pretend to be a prog or, more rustically, folk rocker. The songs are middle of the country road but that’s a cool place to be if you are the company. My favourite is the one penned by you. Rosewater. A lament for a time and place a space you implore to not forget you.
I was never deluded that you were anything that I did not make you be. All that you ever were was fancy and that fantasy was always pure hard to believe I know but true for at that time it seemed more real if the girl next door never unlatched it.
Despite the distance my picture of you got me through many a summer night and spring, and fall, and winter too until that film came along in which I felt neither persona was the one I wanted no matter how cosily or tightly it was stitched.
We parted company even though we’d never been together but I always kept an eye on the one I had once hoped to hold a candle to and I was glad when things went well in your career and pained when fate turned the cards and stacked them as fate is wont to do.
Then there was new admiration for all the next doors that you opened for those who felt there were no handles left to reach for. The dignity you showed when we all knew what you and those you wanted to get physical had to get through.
Sail into tomorrow you once sang long before the future came calling If I knew the trials I must face Would I carry on at all? Sail into tomorrow Livin’ day to day That’s all I can afford to do And all I’ll ever play Is a song to sing to thank you For making me alive And a prayer to bring us comfort Lord help us to survive.
I did not date the girl next door but the one that I wanted from across the road (and nine doors down). She understood entirely my fascination for you and unbelievably today is her birthday too.
So happy birthday to the duo who both became for me the imaginary companion the boy I thought I was needed you to be.
References
Sail into Tommorow lyrics by John Farrar. It was the B side of Take Me Home Country Roads.
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