In 1987 I finally moved out of my parents' home and set-up for myself in a two-storey flat with two other guys in Preston. I also met and fell in love with my first serious girlfriend that year. I took her to see the Go Betweens play at Melbourne University. She'd never seen or heard them before, but by the end of the night, she was hooked. They played a lot of songs from their forthcoming album Tallulah, including the excellent Bye Bye Pride. I remember that night, because it was the night we really decided to be a couple.

After I bought the album, I made a compilation Go Betweens tape for my girlfriend. It had Cattle and Cain, some of the best stuff off Spring Hill Fair and Liberty Belle, and it had Bye Bye Pride. That had to be on it. It was the stand out track on Tallulah and possibly the best song Grant McLennan and Robert Forster ever wrote together. Featuring their characteristically literary and personal lyrics and the gorgeous backing vocals and soaring oboe of new member Amanda Brown, it was a big, irresistable pop song with a perfect hook that should have propelled it onto the top of the charts. But, characteristically for the 'Gobs', when it was released as a single it went nowhere.

My girlfriend took that tape with her when she went on a three month trip to Europe. Her affectionate letters home, speaking of how much she missed me, were a lifeline to me as I waited for the three months to pass. One of the letters had her travelling through Macedonia, staying at some small shepherd's village. She wrote that there in that isolated village she turned on a radio and heard, to her surprise, a Go Betweens song.  "It reminded me of you," she emphasised in her letter, pleasing me no end. I later found out that the song was Bye Bye Pride.

In her very next letter she told me about how she had met this guy and had decided, in the space of a week, that she was going to marry him.

Sitting there, reading that letter, I felt like the floor had been pulled out from under me. Later, still trying to make sense of everything, I played Tallulah. During Bye Bye Pride a line struck me with its significance: "Things change over long distance". It was something that finally made me smile - albeit, ironically. Yep, I thought to myself, you better believe it!