Strange Little Girl

When I was a teenager this was one of my favourite songs. I remember thinking it was perfect for a girl I knew at the time who looked very like the girl at the start in the video. I wonder what she ended up doing. Last I heard she had got very good grades at A-level and was studying to be a doctor. That was at least 20 years ago now! (any ideas Jo - you may well remember from Young Farmers days?)

In the video are so many images of how people looked at the tail end of the 70s early 80s, I'd almost forgotten how common it was to see people like that. Some of the people I knew well back then dressed and looked this way.



I heard this on the radio in the car a couple of days ago and suddenly it came to mind again just now thinking about my own "strange little girls".

The Stranglers were playing in Bath one evening in the summer holidays when I was about 15. At the time I lived in Northamptonshire and had gone off with a good friend from school to basically fend for ourselves in a tent. Somehow we'd ended up a hundred miles or so from home in Bath and managed to get into the outer area of the gig. We had no money and must have blagged lifts to get there from where we were camping. I remember sitting on the grass outside the gig listening and wishing I could get in, before we wandered off to find somewhere to sleep. For the life of me I don't remember where we slept that night. The next day though I remember his worried mother coming to pick us up in a VW Camper van, it was pouring with rain and we'd not eaten for a while.

How things have changed. I cannot possibly imagine letting my children do something similar these days. Thats a shame I think. I had such freedom as a child and really only realise now that I did. Thanks Mum and Dad.