Soundtrack To My Life - Suzanne

Suzanne is a writer and it's taken her fourteen years to admit that! She has relocated from London to Scotland with her family and has a really bizarre tale about the reason her blog is named so (check it out on the link below!).  However, for now, it's over to Suzanne for her Soundtrack To My Life choices...

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Del Amitri - Driving With The Brakes On 

This was my coming of age track. The song I broke my heart to and wondered if I'd stay single forever. I used to lie on my bed, in the dark and play it as loud as I dared without my flatmates staging an intervention. I was also head over heels in love with Justin Curry, the singer/songwriter from Del Amitri. At the same time, I was reading The Crow Road by Ian Banks, so the whole Glasgow scene seemed achingly romantic to me. I wanted to live a life somewhere between this song and The Crow Road - dark, brooding, exciting, men desperately in love with me, squabbling over my affections while I pursued my true love in vain. Eventually of course, my true love would notice me and know, just know, that I was the only woman for him. I was a hopeless romantic, even then. Rather odd, that I ended up moving to Croydon of all places!

Mark Knopfler - Romeo and Juliet 

This is really my husband's track. He introduced me, against my will, to the likes of BB King, Buddy Guy and Eric Clapton. He would drag me along to these concerts in the Albert Hall or the Royal Festival Hall and I'd be so bored. His music, just wasn't my music. But then he played me this track...and the world stopped. Finally, I was in the novel I'd dreamed about while listening to Del Amitri in the dark. I'd found my knight in shining armour/hero/soulmate. He was right under my nose all along, but I was too busy with my romantic notions to notice.

We married in 2004 in a rain storm*, in an abandoned church** in Scotland. I wore fairy wings (yes really).

*in the drizzle
**the church was converted into a B&B

Deacon Blue - Fergus Sings the Blues 

This track reminds me of one of the first concerts I ever went to. Unfortunately, I was such a square as a teenager that I went with my mum and dad and their friends. That alone should have told me that there were maybe 'cooler' bands I should be listening to. But to be honest, even now, I love this track. It reminds me of carefree days, the promise of university just round the corner and a summer of freedom stretching on forever.

This is also the track that I insisted on playing as we crossed the border into Scotland, after 14 years living in Croydon. We played Deacon Blue all the way up the A9 and it really did feel like we were coming home at long last.

ABBA - Dancing Queen 

Every summer when I was a student, I went back home and worked sometimes 2 or 3 jobs to make money to survive on for the rest of the year. Saturday night was Going Out Night. I'd go round to my friends house and we'd drink vodka & orange while getting ready. Then, before hitting the pubs, we'd stick some ABBA on the stereo and dance about like fools with her sister and all her mates. Our skirts were so short that on cooler nights when we wore jackets (we were sensible like that), you couldn't even tell we had skirts on. Scandalous.

Rusted Root - Send Me On My Way 

This track featured in the film Matilda (when she's discovering her talent) and has been our 'happy song' ever since. If I'm being grumpy, or the boys are bickering, we play this song full volume and pretend that we're Matilda, moving things and making them fly across the room. It never fails to have falling on the floor giggling, all previous grumbles forgotten.



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You can find Suzanne practicing all her writing stuff and talking about her family life in Scotland on her blog and you can follow her on Twitter.

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