Our flight was delayed coming back on Sunday night and we were in a taxi sometime around 11pm when Drake's 'One Dance' came on the radio with its sample of 'Do You Mind'.
We were living in a 5th floor flat, our second London flat after the one with the oddly shaped rooms and the small windows. This flat had five flights of stairs to walk up and there was a strange, slightly sweet, smell that we never managed to identify near the front door. It had a tiny kitchen and two uncomfortable blue sofas. But those five flights of stairs meant it was light, so light it bleached the spines of our books, and it had a balcony, that I once described as functional, that was just the right size for two.
Quite often though it was just me. Chris was working in retail at the time which meant him getting home later than me in the evenings and working at least one day every weekend. On a nice day I would sit with a book, my feet propped up on the railings, popping in and out for cold drinks. I would look at the view and listen to the sounds floating up from the street.
That summer the sounds that made me happiest were the songs that seemed to be everywhere in London at the time. A time when we would tune into pirate radio stations, the soundtrack almost inevitably something bouncy, the DJs would talk over it, rewind it, play it again. We would listen to 'Heads, Shoulders, Knees N Toes', 'In the Morning', 'Do You Mind', songs that made me smile, still make me smile, we would dance to them in our tiny kitchen.
So, now, hearing one song play in a taxi in Edinburgh I think of another one that played so frequently that summer. I think about sitting on the balcony in the sun hearing it blaring from a car on Stoke Newington Church Street. It still makes me smile, it still makes us dance in the kitchen.
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