Go back one for the Sampras-a-like of the day!
Well, this is entry number 100. And coincidentally, tonight I start writing book 100. 94 of them were written between 1996 and 1999, and the last few have been written finally after a 4 year hiatus. And this entry.... This entry is taking me right back to near the begining of all that.
I've had this entry, and my next two, planned for so long. Ever since I started sorting through all that old stuff and the Bugs obsession started to come back. Every sinced I stopped linking 'him' to every last event of 1998. Ever since I was able to look back at 1997 without hurting because I longed so badly to be back there, in the final year before it happened. Ever since this change, I've wanted to write out details of three important summers of my life. This is for my own indulgence - I can't think many of the details would be of any interest to anyone else - but while I am able I want to write about 1997, 1998 and 1999. I will talk about the bad, but only in terms of placing dates. And I am starting with 1997.
To set the scene, the previous year had been hellish. I'd had a terrible year at college because of a foul tutor who made my life hell. He almost made me give up art for good. I had no faith left in my art by the time we broke up for the summer holidays.
The next 10 weeks, however, were going to be good. Ten weeks of summer, with my favourite programme in the world coming back after just a couple of them. I had high hopes for the summer.
Wimbledon was of course on at the start of the summer and I had intended to spend the afternoon of my first day of summer holidays watching it. However, it was rained off. Typical. This was the year that I started writing down quotes from the commentators at the top of the pages in my books. One day my parents were watching the tennis on TV with me and Greg Rusedski was playing. My mum had never seen him play before, and we were halfway through the second set before she realised she'd been supporting the wrong player! Believe me, we've never let her forget that!
One week in to my summer holidays came an event that actually went on to change my entire life. One sequence of events led to so much. It was the end of my first week of summer holidays, a friday night, and I was sitting on my bed whilst writing book 15 and watching Harry Hill. All of a sudden, I came down with a headache. A most awful, skull-crushing headache. It came from no-where. It just appeared. When I tried to get to sleep I had hallucinations all night, like I'd got the strangest kind of 24 hour virus. The next morning I woke up at about 6 am and felt so awful I couldn't go back to sleep. I ended up watching some awful channel 4 kid's programme called The Keeper.
As the morning went on I felt a little better, but still poorly. It was most bizarre. I felt too ill to move, but too well to sleep. I couldn't even write properly. Bored stiff, I started to go through every number on every teletext service on every channel to look for hidden pages I'd never found before.
We didn't have Paramount Comedy at the time, only Nickelodeon, but by chance that day I found Paramount's text service hidden away well beyond Nickelodeon's numbers. I found a bizarre letters page called Mailbox that went on and on. I read every last part of it. I loved it. It was the one thing that cheered me up all day. I knew that I desperately wanted to be a part of it, but it was another 7 and a half months before I got up the courage to call up. And it was another 2 years after that that I met Y on that very same text service. And the rest, as they say, was history :)
Later that evening, I was feeling better and slipped away upstairs to write while my mum was watching Night Fever on channel 5 downstairs :/ Scarier stuff by far came on BBC1 though - a repeat of Morcambe and Wise.... I know they are supposed to be classic comedians but I surely am not the only person in the world who's never found them funny?! I sat and wrote the end of book 15 - a chapter which oddly involved the now defunct Channel 5 quiz Whittle, and by the time I went to bed I didn't feel as though I'd been ill at all. It was the most bizarre thing.
Every day that summer, I watched Seaside Rock on VH1 during which they were supposed to show lots of music videos about summer and beaches, but I recall it most for being the first time I saw the video to The King Of Rock & Roll by Prefab Sprout, which became one of the songs of the summer to me.
# All my lazy teenage boasts are now high precision ghosts
And they're coming round the track to haunt me.
When she looks at me and laughs
I remind her of the facts
I'm the king of rock'n roll completely
Up from suede shoes to my baby blues
Hot dog, jumping frog, Albuquerque
Hot dog, jumping frog, Albuquerque.... #
However, the show was a dead loss every day and caused my mum and I to go into hysterics. During one week, Jules Carling and Bridsley were supposed to be finding holiday makers on a beach but the weather was so bad that they couldn't find anyone. I think we were amused by the show for the wrong reasons.
Another song of the summer for me was Africa by Toto. The song had haunted me for months until finally it came on the radio and I was able to find out who it was by and therefore get a copy so that it didn't annoy me any more! I absolutely loved that song and played it loudly to J and H who liked it too. The song always reminds me of that summer, but for years I've been unable to listen to it because it just made me yearn to get back to that summer, an impossible journey to make.
# hear the drums echoing tonight
She hears only whispers of some quiet conversation
She's coming in 12:30 flight
Moonlit wings reflect the stars that guide her towards salvation
I stopped an old man along the way
Hoping to find some long forgotten words or ancient melodies
He turned to me as if to say, "Hurry boy, it's waiting there for you"....#
Near the start of the summer, a personal dream came true for me when I finally got to go to Canary Wharf. I'd had a fascination with that building since I was a kid and I saw it on the news every time money ran out while they were building it. Then I was a huge fan of L!ve TV and as it ran from there my fascination grew. Then of course there's the Bugs connection as the Docklands were used so often. I finally got the chance to go and see all of it one day that summer. However, so many things went wrong that day. It was hilarious :) As with so many things in my life, all the events of that day went into a book. It didn't matter to me how many things went wrong anyway. It was the first of many.... many... trips to London and the first of many packets of photographs.
But of course, the main part of my summer was Bugs. The third series that had been postponsed for months. At last, in July, the Bugs fans got their wish at last and got the programme back. The third series was, for me, the best. I actually wish the 4th had never been made. Not with the Houghton and Christa. Ugh. No, I'd rather have had it left at the 3rd season. The season which filled my summer that year.
It all started a week before the first episode when I started a trick of hanging around between every programme on BBC1 to start recording the trailors in case a trailor for Bugs came on amongst them. It was the saturday before and I'd put the TV on just in case. I'd already spent the afternoon writing solidly for 5 hours with no break, a trick I came to enjoy as time went on. And then, after the lottery, what should come on but the trailor for Bugs. Afterwards, I felt severe elation. Joy exploded inside me. I laughed hysterically and fell onto my bed to roll around in delight. I had recorded it, of course :)
All at once, the phone rang and H yelled for me outisde. On the phone was L, who I spoke to briefly before going out. They'd both seen the trailor and thought of me :) The week that followed.... I felt like I was walking on air.
The tuesday was the best. I woke up with my heart thumping. I'd had a plan for months: To race down the road on the Tuesday before Bugs began and buy all the TV magazines. Every last one of them. I raced back up the hill, the day hot but it didn't bother me. I collapsed through the front door and scattered my purchases on the floor in the hall, then read all the articles to my mum who nodded politely even though she clearly didn't give a hoot about whether or not there was a scary picture of Jan Harvey.
Of course, the appearance of Bugs back on the screens did nothing to calm my growing crush on the lovely Jaye. It made it impossible to hide. I sat there, almost dribbling over the pictures in all the magazines. I couldn't help it. And when that afternoon I was talking to H in the garden and my mum called out to me that Jaye was on CBBC.... I swear no one's ever seen me run that fast in my *life*!
The interview was duly recorded, and I watched it repeatedly that night. there were two down sides to this though, one I knew at the time and the other has only dawned on me recently. One of the people interviewing her was Kirsten, the kids presenter I have always had a strong dislike for..... the other, I have only just realised, was Dom of Dick & Dom fame! Argh, bloody hell! At least he seemed half intelligent beside Kirsten.
By the time Saturday arrived, the excitement had only grown. I ran down the road and bought one of every newspaper for every tiny clipping. It was Pop-up Video day on VH1 but I wasn't concentrating on any of it - I was wishing the day away to get to Bugs! When the evening came, I'd set up the tape downstairs, and waited upstairs until the last minute to start off the back-up tape. Imagine my delight when, just before Bugs, Jaye Griffiths came on to start the lottery draw in a gorgeous, sparkly dress.
I probably should have waited until that was over before I went downstairs because my constant blushing probably gave a lot away to my parents, but I didn't care. And after the first episode, I opened a bottle of Champagne I'd been saving since my birthday for the start of Bugs and sipped it while on the phone to H, discussing the finer points of Bugs and how horrible Channing was. I watched that day's episode again in bed that night. I went to bed and dreamed of Bugs and jaye as I did so often that summer.
The next week, I went through the same process. The build up may not have been quite as intense on the tuesday and saturday, but it was close. The next episode, The Revenge Effect, had a bank code in it: Miranda 2001. Sound familiar? :) It should do!
A few weeks down the line I found an Alison Moyet single in a bargain bin. It wasn't the title track that I had any interest in, but one of the B-sides - "Whispering Your Name". I'd loved the song since I saw the (weird) video on the box once and had been looking for it ever since. I bought it that day and took it home where I played it on repeat all night, every night, for the whole week. The song always reminds me of the summer. It always brings back the vibe of those evenings, laying on my bed, with toast and red wine and a book in my hand.
Throughout that summer I curled my hair in an attempt to stop myself from looking like Jan Harvey. I had unwittingly got a Jan Woman Haircut and lived to regret it. So I began to curl my hair, and to blonde it up a bit, to look like Alex. I worked hard on my art and my writing all summer, and spent many long, hot evenings playing hangman in the garden with H and J. I had days out shopping with L and A, I adored every saturday and I was feeling the happiest that I ever had.
One ween before the end of the summer, no one was feeling particularly happy any more.
I was woken up by my alarm one day. The theme tune from Merry Christmas Mr lawrence was playing. I thought this odd - not at all the type of thing that the local station usually played. So I left it on instead of switching it off, and a moment later the music cut out.
"This is Independent Radio News," a grim voice began, "The death of Diana, Princess of wales, has been confirmed in Paris."
I think I turned ice cold. I may have never been a particularly bright supporter of her or any of the royals but I suppose I'd always had this illogical reasoning that royalty didn't die. I was completely shocked. All day long the television showed coverage. It's easy to mock, looking back, feeling that it was public 'hysteria' and that people weren't really upset, but I don't think that was the case at all. People were shocked. I did as many people did that day and spent the day glued to the TV.
One week left of summer, and things were far more subdued. It had cast a shadow over everyone. It gave me time to reflect on the summer. I'd had such a happy time but the reality of college was approaching. How could I cope with another year like the one I'd had before?
As it turned out, I didn't have to. When I returned to college with my new, curly blonde hair and my new favourite pair of trousers - the same ones I am wearing today in fact - I found all the tutors had changed. Gone were the nasty ones. In were the nice ones. The whole of the next year was pretty good, too.
And then when the next summer came, they went into reverse.
Back tomorrow xx
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