“Earworm: What song is stuck in your head..these days? Why does it speak to you?”

The latest instalment of ‘365 Days of Writing Prompts’ provides a handy excuse for another in my occasional ‘Dawn Chorus’ posts.

This is turning out to be a rather eclectic series, because following on from the improbable ‘Lambeth Walk’ and the rather more feasible ‘Bird On The Wire’, today I bring you – from somewhere in between the two – a harmless bit of 1980 pop that I found bouncing around in my head one morning a few weeks ago.

So here is the story behind ‘Silver Dream Machine’ by that cheeky chappie David Essex, and what on earth it’s got to do with me.

Well, basically nothing. The song just happened to be running through my brain one morning. I knew it was from, or linked with, a film starring the said David Esssex, called ‘Silver Dream Racer’. This was about a happy-go-lucky young motorbike racer who, against all odds, wins an important race and quite probably the girl too. Or dies. Or something.

It left no lasting impression, either on me or the universe. Both the song and the film aspired to ordinary. But yet waking up with it in my head triggered two other, far fonder, memories:

Firstly, it recalled a song with a similar title but far more my cup of tea: ‘Silver Machine’, by the great Hawkwind. Amazingly enough, Youtube has a clip from the David Essex film with the Hawkwind song replacing the original soundtrack. Sometimes you just have to love the internet.

Secondly, it brought to mind an earlier hit by David Essex called ‘Hold Me Close’ that was number 1 in the UK charts for three weeks in September 1975. Somehow this summons up memories of eating breakfast with my beloved in our first house.

And I would just like to add that when you’ve been married to the best girl ever for less than a year, ‘Hold Me Close’ must rank as one of the most superfluous invocations ever.

It still is.