Coffee Helps

Latvia is a nation of Take That fans.

I am always first with the breaking news stories of huge cultural significance, have you noticed that? And on this one, there can be no doubt – I am completely confident that there is no other explanation for it.

When I’d just stepped off the bus from Tallinn, I went into a little kiosk-ish shop to see if I could buy tram tickets there. As I awaited my turn (or to use the alternative phrasing of that sentence: “as I looked indignantly at an old woman who pushed her way past me and took my turn as if I wasn’t actually there at all”) I realised that I was singing along to Back For Good on the shop radio. It is always a little strange to be in a new and strange country and hear songs that you’ve known by heart for many years, and it is something that has helped me to feel a bit less alien and foreign during my travels. I remember being surprisingly comforted and unexpectedly soothed in Balaton, for example, when a group of Hungarian youths at the hostel bar started singing along to Staying Alive.

But I digress. I was explaining that Latvia is Take Thatvia. Since that initial Back For Good moment, I have heard A Million Lovesongs, Pray, and I Found Heaven – the old Take That classics that absolutely no one plays any more. (On UK radio, I mean. I’m sure there are other people like Bex, McBouncy and myself, who have occasional Greatest Hits binges behind closed doors.) This was already starting to seem a little odd, but my experience in a little café today really took the biscuit (or blueberry muffin, in my case).

There I was, enjoying a strong and hearty black coffee – as the waitress did not understand me when I asked for milk, and we were both getting too embarrassed for me to repeat myself a fourth time – and looking out at the men fishing in holes on the ice, when I found, once again, that I was humming along to the background music. Only this time I couldn’t quite place it. I screwed up my face in concentration, and the waitress looked at me in some alarm, as though she thought I was about to start screaming for ‘malt’/'mahlk’ again.

“Like a candle… like a laaaaaaalaaaaa… like a feather laalaaalaaaa…” I sang earnestly to myself, half-remembered lyrics coming seemingly from nowhere and taking me by surprise. No, I still couldn’t figure out what it was. “Like a bird high on the wind, may you fly away…” I stopped in disbelief and allowed Mark Owen to sing the chorus of his largely unknown mid-nineties single by himself. I guarantee you, few people in the world would be able to sing along with Child nowadays. I am one of those people. Confusingly, the other three seemed to be at the next table in the small back-alley coffee shop in the Baltics.

It was a little surreal – but nothing compared to the moment when the track faded out and the next song on Mark’s little-known first solo album, Green Man, started to play. And the Latvian teens next to me continued to hum along and sing the occasional lyric.

What is going on? I haven’t heard this much Take That since the 90s, and I dont think I’ve ever heard a Mark Owen solo album played in public, never mind those present actually being familiar enough with it to sing along. And this is all within the space of 48 hours, may I remind you!

Could it be magic? (Sorry.)

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