The Kids Don't Stand A Chance.

I am supposed to be packing a suitcase right now. But I hate packing more than anything else, so I'm writing this instead and listening to Vampire Weekend's self-titled.

I always overlook this album. But it was a staple for a year, in 2008 (one of my favourite of all years; this one is a close contender right now). It also made me want to live in Cape Cod for a really long time.

I have a friend who was completely my partner in crime throughout primary school. Like, I get all reminiscent when I walk through neighbourhoods where she used to live almost as much as when I walk around the suburbs I grew up in, because I spent so much of my childhood there. We always stayed close, and we may as well be sisters, such is our camaraderie. I'm trying to think of a better way to describe it, but our relationship is very similar to mine and my sister's, so I'm sticking with that. She's someone I feel totally at ease around, and I only have that with a handful of people. She is also probably the first person I'll call up if I'm feeling upset or anxious about something, and vice versa. In short, she is awesome and I love her.

She is called Lydia.

Me and Lydia, in spite of our closeness, are polar opposites in most ways. Vampire Weekend was an album with which we shared a common musical ground. The first non-Beatles album we had a mutual love for. So in Spring 2008 when I pretty much moved in with her, this album was all we listened to. She brought it in to art classes, and our diamond of an art teacher fell in love with the album and it became the soundtrack for every art lesson.

I love this album because it evokes only good memories of that Spring. It reminds me of paint, and snow melting and drawing still life portraits of the animal skulls and trumpets and violins our art teacher collected.

I played it a lot during Summer '08, too. So it also reminds me of windy beaches with piers and lighthouses, and meeting my mother's extended family really for the first time, at a formal family reunion, and being excited about how well-dressed, and well-spoken and reserved and quintessentially English they all were. My whole life, I've been in the pockets of my father's extended family, who are very outspoken and outgoing and traditionally Indian, and as much as I love them, I'm not very good at being one of them. So the novelty of meeting Mum's estranged family was greatly appreciated. Listening to M79, or Walcott kind of captures exactly what that reunion was like, and conjures up images of not-quite strangers standing around in nice clothes on Spanish Brownstone drinking Darjeeling, and catching-up.

In the morning, Lydia is picking me up at nine and we're going somewhere for a week, but I don't know where yet. I'm excited. I might make us listen to this album the entire way up (or down).