Write on

I am about to upload some of my old ticket stubs and flyers to the Manchester and District Music Archive website. I'm aware that this particular collection represents a very short period of my gig going life. That's partly because they were kept in a particular 'treasure box', which has miraculously survived many moves, including one to Morocco, two marriages, two divorces, three children and the rest. It set me thinking about what was missing and I realised that there were lots of years when I didn't need a ticket to get in - as one of Allan Prior's hippy dancers I got in free to concerts at Manchester and Salford Universities as well as many smaller venues. I went to the Lincoln and Bickershaw Festivals with Joe's Caff, an offshoot of On The Eighth Day. I had a boyfriend who was chef at the Roundhouse. I was in Drive In Rock. Another boyfriend was the Albertos' roadie. I worked for Alan Wise and Factory both at the PSV club in Hulme and the Hacienda. This access to musical entertainment also meant that I didn't collect autographs. I didn't need to.I also didn't take photographs, though I knew many who did, and I had a decent camera.There seemed no need to try and capture it all for posterity. It was all there in the present. Nowadays I find tickets and flyers used as bookmarks or stuffed into drawers around the house. I don't consciously keep them, but neither do I like to throw them away.I've been in this house for 20 years, so that's a lot of time to fill a few drawers. If I look round among the carefully saved bits and pieces, mostly on the kitchen noticeboard or the dresser, I can find a few pieces of evidence of mine and my children's lifelong interest in music.

Antony Hegarty was a friend of a musician friend of ours, and he sent this postcard with the lovely message to my son as a surprise. From that friendship we were on the guest list more than once when he toured England. I knew he was a big fan of Nico, and whilst I was sad to think of giving away my copy of James Young's book about her, I was prepared to pass it on to him as a thank you for his generosity. Amazingly, just before the concert I visited a local cut price bookshop, located in an old station in Derbyshire.Displayed on a bookshelf by the front door was a single book - unbelievably James Young's 'Songs They Never Play on the Radio'. So I was able to keep mine and pass one on.

As a family we all enjoyed the music of Vashti Bunyan, Vetiver, Devendra Banhart and Juana Molina. We had been to our first Green Man festival together, where Charlie, then aged about 11, had listened to Vashti talk about her trip through England to Scotland in a horse drawn caravan. She mentioned that their horse had been shod in Bakewell,where we live, and at the time he was keen to be a blacksmith. So she wrote these words of encouragement for him.

And then there was the special occasion when Charlie and I got to meet Jackson Browne after one of his Sheffield concerts. He mentioned having visited the wonderful Martin Simpson for lunch whilst he was in Sheffield during the concert, and that gave us a shared topic of conversation as we had just been to see him do a lovely performance in a small club in Sheffield.

It seemed an imposition to ask for a photo. He was busy signing someone's whole album collection for them. I hoped they would be treasured, rather than advertised on ebay. So, not many tickets, photos or autographs, but lots of good memories.