So Tong, then.

In a typical Friday style, I’ve been in the studio for a while. So long, in fact, that I have removed the empty cafetiere and mug from the little table in the window and replaced them with a full bottle of Burgundy Pinot Noir and a glass.

So it’s a year since we were braving mudslides at Robin Hill country park, over on the island for Bestival. It’s begun again over there now and they’re forecasting great weather. And Kraftwerk. And stupid sci-fi costumes.

..What am I doing here, again?

Pouring a glass and saying cheers, actually. Turns out it’s Pete Tong’s last ‘welcome to the weekend’ tonight.

Yep, it’s come around already. And it turns out too that the Essential Selection is as old as our marriage. Eighteen years.

I feel a genuine sadness. This news just makes me feel that little bit more sad than I did already.

—

How many Fridays felt that bit better because of this show? I don’t want to overstate it – wait ‘ill I’ve polished off the glass – but whether we were cooking damn fine chile or driving somewhere to meet chums, watching the sun go down in the Arnewood kitchen window or watching the countryside slip past the windscreen on some evening A-road somewhere, this was how we knew it was the weekend.

When I think back to these years and this little joyful detail of our average week, I shall probably think of listening to a live version of World Hold On from one of Pete’s Ibiza shows one summer, while we were stuck in a stationary traffic jam in North London one sunny summer evening. What a strangely nice memory.

Still, sentimentality never built the future, eh.

Think I might keep this cork on my desk, though.

One more tune, mate – it’s three minutes to the end of the show.

..Finally it’s happened to me? From 1991? The year it started; the year we were married.

Good choice.

Somehow, we shall keep dancing.

Cheers.