Is this the way to Amarillo....

At a kid's party on Sunday - amazing, 40 kids, old-fashioned magician, tea followed by a disco - dancing to Is this the way to Amarillo (not this version), I realised that, probably, I was the only person in the room who remembered the 1970 original by Neil Sedaka.

Sure, now there are ironic remakes - Peter Kay / Comic Relief and all subsequent spin-offs, as far as I can tell from Wikipedia - but if you had middle-class Jewish parents in the 1970s, then you were totally up with all Neil Sedaka albums, and this was, practically our theme tune.

Seeing my little boy dancing it felt like it was only twenty minutes ago that my parents were putting all their 45s in their hired juke box, taking up the carpet, preparing ironic seventies food (OK, cocktail sticks with pineapple and cheese cubes didn't get ironic till afterwards) and throwing the most amazing parties.

Of course we were kids, and had to (rightly) go to bed, but the best thing about the parties was that for a few days or weeks later, we still had a jukebox (which was kinda like a 1970s precursor - except no-one had one - to an iPod), and we'd all dance and sing. I learned all my best dance moves, which I'm still using, then, and used to love jiving with my Dad and my brother, and watching my parents dance (pretty amazingly), as we swirled about the purple furniture (we had a purple, rather than brown seventies, which I think I've mentioned before). Now that I'm renovating our own house, I see how influenced I was by the purple seventies thing.

All this... nostalgia brought to you by kids' parties, YouTube and a sunny day.

Our house, since you ask, is doing fine. The structural engineer is back today to advise on (much reduced) additional underpinning of one internal wall. We are properly roofless. Things moving on apace. Meanwhile, I am seeking out retro lightfittings on eBay.