Now that's what I call haemophilia and witches

A little life music

Our house sale fell through. It had been sailing perilously close to the wind for some weeks. We coaxed it as far as we could and then watched it capsize with absolutely no surprise. We applied the healing balm of spending the weekend buying art, binge watching television (Say Nothing on Disney and Black Doves on Netflix, both excellent) and eating a lot of Wingstop, also excellent. This helped enormously. Then we agreed that we needed a break from the absolute fuckery of modern estate agency before we begin again. We are on a break.

In work news, I have had some wonderful clients this week, which has been joyful. This week at work was a lovely experience that confirmed to me that I made the right choice career wise, possibly for the first and only time in my life. I also wrote about my maternal grandparents over on my other Substack, which seemed like a good way to honour them.

The boy and I made it to Glasgow and back in a day, which nearly killed me but was worth it when he came out saying that his audition couldn’t have gone better. Now we wait. They have to get from 1500 hopefuls to 24 certains over three auditions, so we are not counting our chickens but he is as happy as he can be with what he did, which is all we want.

In amongst all this and other delightful things, like attending the launch of

Daisy Buchanan

terrific book, Read Yourself Happy, which was clearly written for me, but which is published today in case you feel it may have been written for you too, I have been writing.

I have been writing ever since I came back from the wonderful writer’s retreat at Erth last year, hosted by

Katherine May

. Much like Daisy’s book being secretly written for me, this retreat was made for me. The retreat is running again this year. There are a few places left, which you can find out about here. It was the best gift I have ever given myself. I am gifting it to myself again this year. Maybe I’ll see you there?

The writing is surprising me. I started several things but kept being drawn back to one manuscript which had started life more as a place to dump all the thoughts that were intruding into the other things. My wise friend

Laura Pashby

reminded me that it’s often the thing you don’t want to write that you need to write. Another wise friend

Caroline Donahue

reminded me that even if I never actively do anything with it, it will go on to inform and enrich my writing in so many other ways. So I keep writing the thing.

It has a mind of its own, this writing. I started off with a clear idea of what it might be and every time I think I know what it looks like, it does something else. It’s headstrong and powerful and for me at least, it feels like some of the realest, truest writing I have ever done. I am learning to accept that it will be and do what it wants. I just need to turn up and be willing to go with it.

A bit like this post, it is taking me to surprising places. I am wandering around like a tourist in my own childhood. It’s strange, hanging out with small me. I notice things like how much and how often my memory plays tricks with time. I see how often small things that happened feel emotionally protracted and that things that took a long time are in memory speak, over in a flash. I am drawn again and again to the huge discrepancy between the life I lived externally, the life I lived internally and the versions of me everyone else had. This writing sits in that matrix somewhere.

I have been drawn to re-read books that were meaningful to me as a child and re-examine why they became so totemic to me. I have also been listening to a lot of the music of my childhood.

I was born in 1972, but music didn’t become really important to me until the Eighties. This is partly because I spent a large portion of the Seventies roaming about like a cross between Nancy Blackett from Swallows and Amazons and a Tasmanian Devil. Also, my mum was in charge of the radio, which was only tuned in to Radio Four. My dad was in charge of the telly and the stereo, which was German and none of us could understand what any of the buttons were, so there was quite a lot of gatekeeping taking place regarding how much and what kind of music was allowed.

I was well versed in the comings and goings of the Archers and the musical works of Peter Skellern. I am still haunted by the line: ‘Psychedelia, haemophilia, nakedness and witches,’ from his song Unexpected Visitation. It’s a great line, but it needed a lot of explaining then and now.

Musically speaking the Seventies were all about glam rock and punk, and Peter Skellern didn’t really fit into either of those categories. Nor did I. Nobody could be glam in a hand me down anorak and unisex dungarees covered in burns from the thing I last set fire to. I had a punk core, hence the setting fire to things, but was also overburdened with Catholic guilt and raging anxiety. This caused me to a) burn things down and then b) apologise profusely and c) cry about the fact that I might have accidentally scorched a hedgehog to death. It was all very confusing.

The Eighties were much more coherent due to the fact that my dad had finally caved in and allowed Top of the Pops to be shown on the colour telly in the lounge. He had also invested in a transistor radio, a small black and white portable telly where I was sent to watch the things he really couldn’t stand, a portable Dansette record player and best of all, a knock off Sony Walkman from down the market. I could finally get involved in stuff instead of pretending I knew how to tape the Top Forty on Sunday afternoon and which one of Duran Duran I fancied most (John Taylor).

Things really kicked off musically speaking with the invention of a compilation album called Now That’s What I Call Music (Volume 1). Released in November 1983, it turned up in my Christmas stocking as a double cassette, perfect for my dodgy walkman, and my ears thanked the birth of baby Jesus from that day forth. It was the coolest thing I owned by a country mile. It was cool enough for me to be invited to other kids’ houses so we could all listen to it in a kind of huddled religious fervour.

The only compilation albums I’d seen up to that point were dodgy Top of the Pops cover LPs with bikini clad girls on the front that always turned up in jumble sales and which were uniformly terrible. The only albums I actually owned by the time the Eighties dawned were Abba Greatest Hits Volume 1 and the soundtrack to Grease, both of which were tricky to play due to the German stereo. I had strong feelings for Debbie Harry as soon as I saw her play Heart of Glass on Top of the Pops but it felt too dangerous to get an album by her. She seemed somehow combustible. I wasn’t ready to be that much on fire. She did things with lip gloss that the Constance Carroll display in Jaydon’s Discount Store was not prepared for.

The Dansette must have arrived in the same year as Now That’s What I Call Music because I remember saving my pocket money and sending my dad to the record shop to buy Bucks Fizz’ eponymous first album and for my wildcard choice, Adam Ant’s, Kings of the Wild Frontier. My musical tastes have always been eclectic.

The Dansette was knackered. The belt was wearing thin and the base was, not to put too fine a point on it, wavy. This meant that on occasion the records would play at a speed dictated by what the rapidly perishing rubber could stand. Sometimes things went very, very fast like Alvin and the Chipmunks and sometimes they went very slow like that time you (I) had a dodgy E and it had more hallucinogens in than you (I) were comfortable paying for. It was getting progressively more knackered because it was supposed to be portable, but not as portable as I, recently Nancy Blackett of the village, was interested in it being. I dragged it all over the place and as bits dropped off, it became less and less able to satiate what was now a hunger for pop music.

The arrival of a tape recorder you could attach to your clothing, that worked with batteries and which had headphones so you could play your music anywhere was more evidence to me of a benevolent God than any amount of water turning into wine could ever be. I was smitten. For the next ten years I never went anywhere without one and a pocket full of AA batteries. Now That’s What I Call Music was the first cassette I fed into that first machine. My eleven year old mind was well and truly blown.

I listened to it again for the first time in decades last week. I was really curious as to what it might stir up. Quite a bit is the answer. There are very strong memories attached to some of the songs. I have a crystal clear recollection of being excited that Love Cats was on there because I had seen The Cure playing it on Top of the Pops. I had been mesmerised by the height of Robert Smith’s hair and the fact that he appeared to be wearing makeup and a girl’s blouse. This seemed far more transgressive than Boy George’s shenanigans with Karma Chameleon which is also on the album. It was clear to me that Robert Smith was dangerously subversive and Boy George was about as dangerous as Widow Twankey in the local pantomime. This was borne out a few years later when my friend’s granny confessed her undying love for Culture Club. Nobody’s granny was lusting over Robert.

I remember cycling over to the house of a girl who lived in our village so we could listen to Now together. We sat in her front room, glued to her crappy tape recorder listening to UB40 with as much fervour as people recall watching the moon landings. Later, she and I would share a burgeoning obsession for Madonna. We were as likely to be able to rustle up a wedding dress with leggings and a come hither pout as sprout wings and fly, but we dreamed.

Generally I was awed by how many of the songs I still recalled. Dredged from the depths of my brain were an almost word perfect rendition of Mike Oldfield’s Moonlight Shadow, which is quite upsetting to me but also the absolute genius of Malcolm McLaren’s Double Dutch, which was so far ahead of its time, it’s eerie. There was a lot more Kajagoogoo than I remember for a band that traded mostly on the fact that their bass player looked like one of those curtains that your nan had to stop flies getting into the kitchen.

I was reminded how much I still love early Eighties Simple Minds and how teenage their songs make me feel, even now. Also how much I love every Human League song with the exception of Don’t You Want Me. I no longer love Paul Young, wherever he lays his hat. I thought he was a dream. On reflection it was a dream of a hamster eating a pillow. Nor is it any surprise to me that the Rock Steady Crew had one hit and went home to their mums’. I still hate Peabo Bryson and Roberta Flack and I still don’t understand why anyone in their right mind would call their child Peabo.

And I was right about John Taylor.