Euan McColm: Kate Bush, Robert Wyatt and Sandy Denny - music to lift my winter gloom

I’ll listen to Bush’s “Cloudbusting” and “How to be invisible” on a loop, break for Wyatt’s “Cuckooland” album, then end on Denny’s “Who knows where the time goes?” on repeat.

Interviewed for a BBC Radio 4 documentary on the creation and impact of Denny’s masterpiece, the singer-songwriter Rufus Wainwright said it was “arguably one of the saddest songs ever written”. I understand his position. It’s no “Moves like Jagger”. But I find “Who knows where the time goes?” uplifting. Much of the song concerns itself with loss but it ends with a celebration of the now and wonder at the future.

Last weekend, I broke the cocoon and left the flat to see one of my favourite bands, Dirty Three, play in Glasgow.

I went with a mate I hadn’t seen for a month so there was a lot of catching up to do, particularly on the subject of our various kids. As he drove us to the venue, we got up to speed on where they all were with work or study or love. There was good news all round.

After an unforgettably great gig, we babbled excitedly all the way back to the car and I brought things back to the earlier subject.

We’d last seen each other at a party, also attended by his 22-year-old son. Listen, I said, I know you don’t need me to tell you how proud you should be of him, but you should be really proud of him. I told my pal how impressed I was by the way his son conducts himself, with his balance of confidence and humility. His boy’s become a really fine young man.

On Thursday, there was another gig. This time, Liminanas in a heaving Glasgow basement venue.

In the late afternoon, my 17-year-old daughter was attending an event in the city, at which she’d be required to do some public speaking. So we arranged to meet after that and before I hooked up with the pal with whom I was going to the show.

I stood for 10 minutes after the agreed time, at the agreed meeting spot, before calling the girl. It rang out and went to messages. I tried again. That time it didn’t even ring

A couple of minutes later, she called back, demanding to know where I was. I told her I was precisely where we agreed to meet and asked where I might find her.

When I reacted to the revelation that she was in H&M, she urged me to calm down, total state of me.

We agreed I’d stay where I was – precisely where I was – and she’d come directly.

It was freezing and I’d forgotten my gloves.

Five minutes later, my phone rang. It was the girl, demanding to know where I was.

I am, I told her, precisely where we agreed to meet.

She informed me that I couldn’t be. I assured her I f****** well was.

If I was going to be a dick about it, she said, she was going back to her mum’s. There followed a brusque exchange of fine, thens.

My pal arrived early and, walking to the pub for a pre-gig drink, I explained that he would have seen the girl for the first time in six years but I had been a dick for standing precisely where I’d arranged to meet her.

Halfway down the first glass, the phone rang.

The girl asked if I wanted to know how it had gone. Of course.

She reckoned she'd done okay but there were others she thought were brilliant. I told her I’d bet good money she was brilliant. There followed an exchange of love yous.

I told my friend about how hard the girl’s been working and bragged that she’d already got a place to study engineering at uni.

Another friend joined us at the gig. She’d brought her 18-year-old daughter, who graciously smiled through my explanation that the last time I’d seen her she was only this big.

After the show, she told me about her own music thing. She’s got her first gig in the new year.

In her mum’s car, she tolerated stories from “before you were born” and revealed her love for the music of The Brian Jonestown Massacre.

My lift home was diverted by a closed road and what I maintain were bad early choices on my friend’s part. I don’t know why you needed the SatNav. How many times have you driven out of town?

After a half hour tour of the north of the city, we returned to our starting point and headed west, stopping at a kebab shop on Great Western Road.

My friend waited in the car while her daughter and I ordered doners. The man behind the counter asked if I was ready for Christmas. My young companion asked if he wanted to know because I looked like Santa. I stroked my white beard while the kebab shop guy and my pal’s daughter took the piss out of me. Ho, ho, ho.

At home, still elated from the gig, I ate so messily I looked liked I’d savaged a sheep.

Stuffed and happy, I thought about my mate’s charming young son, my other pal’s piss-taking daughter, and my own short-tempered-but-endlessly kind girl and how lucky we are to have them and to see them flourish.

I know where the time goes. It goes into them.