The boys joined us too, and we drank pints of snakebite, courtesy of the management and in lieu of actual payment, while Samantha went around the whole pub garden exhorting the punters to ‘come check them out, they’re awesome’. I watched her gesticulate towards us, pushing her wavy hair impatiently back from her freckled face, and at that moment felt completely content with my odd life and the unexpected direction it had taken the second I met her. She was wearing a 1940s nipped-waist navy-blue dress with white polka dots and the ubiquitous DMs, and she looked amazing, particularly in contrast with all the sartorial Goth gloom surrounding her.

Her gang of friends who’d bundled in during the first set was still in the function room, leaning against the walls, smoking and chatting when we returned for the second round. I noticed her black-haired pal eyeing me up in a not entirely friendly way as I climbed back up onto the little stage and adjusted my mike on the stand. Halfway through the first song I turned my back on the audience – swelled now to around twenty – windmilling my arms and stomping my DMs in time with the drums in the instrumental break. When I turned back, Samantha and the black-haired girl had left the room. I didn’t think anything of it at the time, particularly not when the door opened and a familiar tousled head peered around it. Pete!

I broke into a wide beam that made everyone turn to see who I was looking at, and sang with renewed joy, shrieking out the lyrics of our song ‘Flare’, about what the world would look like after the next huge set of solar flares: ‘Scorched earth, no TV, no need for microwaves, all your food already fried…’

Pete beamed back at me from the doorway, spreading his hands wide and shyly inclining his head as I moved my hips, pointing at him with both forefingers. He edged inside, slid off the straps of his rucksack – the same one Samantha had rescued from Greenham for me – and leaned against the wall, sipping at a half. A half! What a wuss, I thought affectionately, suddenly beyond happy that he was there to witness this fantastic evening.

Fuelled by alcohol and spliff, our small audience’s inhibitions gradually dispersed like the threads of blue smoke caught in the lights, and one by one they all began to dance. I’d never imagined what a buzz it would be to write and sing songs that people were dancing to! Fantastic, I thought from the stage, raising my pint glass high in triumph.