The Year In Music: 7th March/World Book Day

Charlotte Sometimes, The Cure (1981)

In Reception, it was Willy Wonka. He was too young for it, really – we’d seen the Gene Wilder film, skipping through the terrifying boat ride, not yet read the book, but it was a tenner in ASDA, and we hadn’t yet extracted ourselves from the ridiculous World Book Day commerce machine. Year 1: the scarecrow from the Wizard of Oz, which we’d bought him for Christmas in a lovely green and silver edition that has long gathered dust on his shelves. His school’s World Book Day celebrations were one week late that year for some reason, and by then, our trip to Hobbycraft the previous Sunday after swimming, to buy some wool to stick into his sleeves to resemble straw, seemed like an adventurous trip, something I wouldn’t risk doing with him any more. When I see those pictures of him now, four years later, – a little straw hat, a tiny charity shop shirt – I feel very melancholy knowing what was to come only a week later. Wandering up the yellow brick road that was the path to his school, our little boy wanting to find the wizard, only for the school to shut down for the spring, then the summer.