The power of small gestures

To celebrate the life of the inventor of the cassette tape, Lou Ottens, The Guardian newspaper last year asked people for their memories of the mixtapes that had meant a lot to them. I submitted this story, but it didn’t make the cut. Despite that, maybe one or two friends might find this interesting – I hope so.

Without much warning, forty years ago this week, I deployed with my company and the rest of 40 Commando Royal Marines as part of the Task Force to retake the Falkland Islands, following Argentina’s invasion.?I was 23.?

So, fast forward (the only pun, I promise) to late May 1982, where my very temporary home was a turf-camouflaged and reinforced sangar that Mne Mick Ellison and I had constructed, in the hills overlooking the anchorage of San Carlos in East Falkland. We were mercifully between frequent air-raids when the mail arrived.

I received three pieces of mail. One was a letter from my mum, who had been widowed four months previously and who really should not have had to endure such worry. She was typically stoic and told me of life in Stamford, where I’d grown up, and my brother Simon and sister Laura who was still at school. The second was a Barclaycard bill....

And the third was a jiffy-bag, with familiar handwriting. It had come from my friend from my days at the University of Birmingham, Dave Randall. Dave and I had shared flats as students and went to many gigs together - everything from The Police’s first tour (Digbeth Civic Hall), Squeeze, Gong, The Tubes and the Average White Band to Mike Oldfield, ELO in all their pomp and one of the very best gigs of my life - Earth Wind and Fire at Stafford Bingley Hall in 1978.. even the police and the St John’s Ambulance folks were dancing!

Dave Randall was a hospital DJ in his spare time. Inside the jiffy bag was a cassette, which he had made for me, thinking (quite correctly) I was probably short of music. I carefully carried that cassette in my bergen for the rest of the campaign, having no means to play it, having left my trusty Walkman aboard SS Canberra.

We were flown back aboard Canberra from San Carlos at the close of hostilities at the end of June. The venerable old ship then sailed round to Port Stanley to embark the remainder of 3 Commando Brigade. As that operation concluded and as she prepared to weigh anchor to sail for home, I stood on the deserted prom deck, in the fading twilight, listening to this tape with all its 80’s upbeat-ness on my Walkman, for the first time. The wind whipped across the cold sea, and the lights of Port Stanley flickered in the distance. Many lives had been lost in the preceding two months, and I felt so sad for the thousands of families, on both sides of the conflict, who would be left grieving for years, for sons, brothers and fathers who would never come home.

Whenever I hear any of these songs, I am carried instantly back to those times...