A few months ago a friend invited me to a show at the Albert Hall. He and I worked together on a project over 25 years ago and have stayed in touch, but have not worked together since 1999. His current employers have a box at the venue. He doesn’t entertain corporate clients in the way that a partner in the firm might, but he can apply for use of the box for certain shows if it’s not being used for client entertainment. The appearance of The Stranglers on 26 March, part of their 40th anniversary tour, was just such a show.

The previous month, when he and I went to a John Cooper Clarke book launch at the Conway Hall, he had mentioned the outside possibility that he might have use of the box for The Stranglers gig, but it slipped my mind. He confirmed it a few days before the show, and there was space for the four of us (my wife, son, daughter and me). My wife was unable to make it (and has never been much of a Stranglers fan) but I made sure that the children could come along. They weren’t too familiar with the band’s work (apart from “Golden Brown”) but I was keen for them to have the experience of sitting in a box at the Albert Hall, the same experience I had when I was younger than they are now.

The fourth seat in the box went to someone I was at school with. I had met him for the first time in over 40 years a month earlier, at the meal mentioned in this piece (“Old School Ties”). He and I had never been to a gig together before.

My subject is memory. Unsurprisingly, sat in a venue I first went to nearly 45 years earlier, and watching a band I first saw a couple of years before that, my mind went back, to previous visits to the Albert Hall, and to previous times I had seen The Stranglers. Brunel University, May 1977: that was the first time. Subsequent times were mostly at the Roundhouse, including 5 November 1977, when they were supported by The Dictators. Were they on the bill at Knebworth in 1978? I think so. I mentioned that gig in this piece, about my first visit to the Albert Hall in 1979. That was the only other time that I had sat in a box in the venue.

Other performances came to mind: a sung (rather than acted) performance of “La Traviata” in 1987. Squeeze in 1995. Or was it 1994? Willie Nelson in 2003. Rick Wakeman’s “Journey to the Centre of the Earth”. When was that? 2013? There were film screenings too. “Fantasia” in 1999, with a full orchestra. Surely I’ve been to the Albert Hall a few more times … My reminiscences were interrupted, by the music, by my children, by my friends.

Many of the boxes around us were empty. The Stranglers on a Tuesday night might not be the biggest draw for corporate clients. The box next to us contained a couple, slightly older than me. They had bought tickets for the seated area downstairs but had paid (not very much by the sound of it) to be upgraded. They had no connection to whoever usually occupied those seats. They were having a good time.

It was all, as you can probably guess, rather nostalgic. Matters of fact could be checked on our phones. When did Hugh Cornwell leave the band? (1990.) When did drummer Jet Black and keyboard player Dave Greenfield die? (December 2022 and May 2020 respectively, the latter a week after being diagnosed with Covid-19.) For everything else my mind was wandering back through 47 years’ worth of songs, performances and memories. An old schoolfriend, who has been on the staff of the Guardian for over 30 years, confidently declared that “Stranglers IV (Rattus Norvegicus)”, their 1977 debut release, was the best album ever made. I wonder if he still feels that way. And the Fabulous Poodles were the best live act he had ever seen.

And then, after a couple of encores, we were done. The Number 9 bus to Hammersmith Broadway and a train home. And, as I’d hoped, my children had experienced the same thing that I did as a teenager: sitting in a box at the Albert Hall. Maybe, unlike me, they won’t have to wait 45 years until the next time.