Tom Dunne's Music & Me: Five Years, and the sadness of David Bowie's death still lingers

I got to meet the great man only once, but he's been a huge part of life from my Leaving Cert right up to the present day 

 David Bowie Picture: Michael Ochs Archives/Getty Images

It was precarious, but if you got it right you could just about balance the stereo speakers on the bedroom window sill. Then you could play tennis outside and listen to Station to Station. Noticing this, a cool friend, the enigmatically named Budgie, slipped me the earlier Ziggy Stardust. I started listening to ‘Five Years’ whilst doing my homework.

This changed everything. Nobody at that age, I hope, wanted to go to their room and do Irish. But going to your room to do Irish and listen to Bowie was different. And going to your room to listen to Bowie and do English, read Henry James say, well, that was different again. A little interior world started to grow in me of books and films and music. Bowie was at its head.