On 11 August 1979 I went to the Royal Albert Hall for the first time, for a “Promenade Concert”, or Prom. A schoolfriend invited me. His father was a senior management figure at a local brewery. The brewery, or their parent company, had a box at the Albert Hall, so that was where we sat. Six of us travelled there in a car designed for five: me, my schoolfriend, his parents, his sister and a friend of hers.

I have no physical evidence of the evening, no ticket, programme or flier. I have no memory of the music performed either. My knowledge of classical music is only marginally better than it was 44 years ago. The BBC website tells me what was on the bill that night:

19:30, Prom 21, Royal Albert Hall
Programme
Béla Bartók, Dance Suite
Karol Szymanowski, Symphony No. 4, Op 60
Proms premiere
Jean Sibelius, Symphony No. 2 in D major

These days I know a little bit about Sibelius, mainly because of quizzing. He is always the answer to any question that includes the words “Finnish composer”. I can even hum a bar or two of one of his tunes, but only because it was used in the 1974 hit “Beach Baby” by First Class. From what I have just read, it was from the Fifth Symphony, and the composer’s estate filed a lawsuit for copyright infringement, settled out of court. As you may know, the music notation software Sibelius was created by twin brothers with the surname Finn. This may have prompted them to use the Finnish composer’s name for their product.

On that night in August 1979 Led Zeppelin were performing at Knebworth, 35 miles away. It would be their final UK performance with the original line-up. I had gone to the Knebworth festival a year earlier, with a friend who lived in Bushey, and the same schoolfriend who invited me to the Albert Hall. The three of us stayed in a tent overnight, the only time I have ever done so for a music festival. The Tubes and Frank Zappa were the headline acts.

All these years later I do not recall agonizing over my choice of entertainment. I didn’t really consider going to see Led Zeppelin at Knebworth although I always liked them, and they are one of the three acts I now wish that I had seen at least once. The others: Bob Marley and the Wailers and Joy Division. Imagine that as a a triple bill.

While Led Zeppelin played an hour’s drive away, our evening’s entertainment at the Albert Hall was fairly brief, all done by 9.15pm. It was the 1970s, so driving around West London and parking near the concert hall were very straightforward. We were back in the car and back on the road a few minutes after the applause had died down. We were onto the Talgarth Road and the Hammersmith flyover a few minutes later. Our host took a left a few hundred yards after the flyover and parked by the river, again without any delay or difficulty. We headed to the Old Ship pub.

I used to drink in many of the pubs along the river, and in other parts of Hammersmith, but rarely went into this one. Too many of our teachers drank there. They might have turned a blind eye to our occasional lunch-time pints but it seemed more advisable to go slightly further afield, where we had never seen any of our teachers having a drink.

That evening, unsurprisingly, we did meet one of them, my Maths teacher who was a regular visitor. We chatted briefly. He had heard the Prom on Radio 3 and made intelligent comments about the works performed. Unlike me he could remember the composers whose work had featured.

Our trip to the Old Ship was rather like a works mission, to test out the beers from the brewery where our host worked, the place that had provided us with our evening’s musical entertainment. There were three different types of bitter. We sampled each one in turn. The first one was down in a couple of gulps. The second took slightly longer, maybe as much as three minutes. And the final pint might have taken as long as five minutes’ drinking time. That’s how I remember it: three pints in under 15 minutes, including the time it took for the drinks to be ordered and poured.

And then we were back in the car and my friend’s dad dropped me home. My brother barely registered that I had been out for the evening.

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