People – and by ‘people’, I mean me – are always
saying that there just isn’t enough good news in the world. It’s all bad news.
You can’t turn a page in the newspaper without reading about someone dying, or
a bomb going off. And if you read specialty magazines like The Economist, all
they talk about is wars, health epidemics and the Euro crisis.
“What’s going on with the Euro?” Saffy asked the
other morning at breakfast. She looked up from her copy of the Financial Times
and glanced around the table.
Amanda put down her copy of Vogue. “First of all,
since when did you start reading the Financial Times? And secondly…and
secondly…” Amanda hesitated and looked uncharacteristically confused.
“Actually, I don’t have a second point.”
“Well, I was at that dinner party that Bradley, my boyfriend’s boss, threw? I love saying I
have a boyfriend. It’s such a change from always talking about Sharyn! You know, I swear at one stage,
people thought we were lesb…”
“Saffy, stay on point,” Amanda snapped.
“Oh yeah, so at the dinner party, this old guy kept
looking at my boobs and I was getting bored so I had to distract him so I asked
him what he did for a living and he said he was an economist with some
think-tank what the hell is a think tank anyway and he was currently writing a
research paper on the state of the Euro and at first I thought he was talking
about Euro Disney because he kept
babbling about volatility and I thought
he said velocity so I figured he must
have been talking about the rollercoaster rides…”
Amanda later said that hell must be being stuck
next to Saffy at a dinner party.
“But we live
with her, Amanda,” I pointed out.
“Yes, but we can just walk away, go to our rooms
and shut the door!”
“The other day,” I said, gloomily, “she followed me
into the bathroom while telling me about the pimple that’s currently ripening
on her left butt. She even offered to show me.”
Amanda patted my hand in sympathy.
As it was, Saffy never finished the story about her
dinner party because just at the point where Amanda and I were ready to shoot
ourselves, a new song came on the radio and Saffy stopped mid-sentence and
whooped.
“Oh my God! Carly Rae Jepsen! ‘Call Me Maybe’! I love this song!” She clapped her hands
happily.
The beat was infectious, and the melodic hook was a
killer even before the synthesisers boomed into the chorus.
“Hey, I just
met you and this is crazy!” Saffy sang lustily. “But here’s my number, so call me maybe?”
At times, Saffy sang notes that weren’t in the song
and at others, she was singing at a pitch that only dogs could hear, but by the
end when the DJ with the fake American accent came back on, Amanda and I were
hooked.
Saffy reached for the iPad and called up the song
on YouTube.
“Oh. My. God,” Amanda whispered. “Look at the body
on this guy!”
“Amanda, please. You’re drooling. He’s young enough
to be your son!” Saffy said before taking a deep breath. “His name is Holden
Nowell. He’s an Abercrombie + Fitch model. I love him. When I make out with
Bradley, I’m imagining his head on Bradley’s body! Is that wrong? I don’t think
it’s wrong. But don’t tell him, ok? Bradley, I mean. Not Holden. Oh my God, can
you imagine?”
Amanda downloaded the song on iTunes and it’s been
more or less playing on a re-loop for days now. By the end of the first day,
we’d memorised all the lyrics. By the second, we’d break out into a spontaneous
dance in the kitchen as we did the washing up, bums wiggling in sync to the
catchy beat and singing at the top of our voices.
Our neighbour Lydia Kumarasamy came knocking to
complain about the noise, but Saffy dragged her in and showed her the video
clip. Four replays later, Lydia finally remembered she’d left her chicken
masala on the stove and jiggled off, her bangles chiming as she hummed, “Hot
night, vind vas blowin’, ware you tink you’re goin’?”
“Why don’t they write more songs like this?” Saffy
sighed later that night. “Instead of all that angst, mid-life crisis and
regret. Hello, Adele!”
“It’s why I never liked Bruce Springsteen,” I said.
“Don’t you wish you were that young again?” Amanda.
“So free, so optimistic, so happy…”
“Let’s play it again,” Saffy said, reaching for the
stereo remote.
Good songs do that to you.
No comments:
Post a Comment