- Robin Beck: First Time
- Yazz: Stand Up for Your Love Rights
- Kylie Minogue: Je ne sais pas pourquoi
- INXS: Need You Tonight
- Enya: Orinoco Flow
- Brother Beyond: He Ain't No Competition
- Milli Vanilli: Girl You Know It's True
- Chris de Burgh: Missing You
- Robert Palmer: She Makes My Day
- Deacon Blue: Real Gone Kid
- Gloria Estefan & Miami Sound Machine: 1-2-3
- Salt 'n' Pepa: Twist and Shout
- Iron Maiden: The Clairvoyant
- Bryan Ferry: Let's Stick Together '88
- The Art of Noise featuring Tom Jones: Kiss
- Barbara Streisand & Don Johnson: Till I Loved You
- D Mob featuring Gary Haisman: We Call It Acieed
- Royal House: Can You Party
- Whitney Houston: One Moment in Time
- Erasure: A Little Respect
- Traveling Wilburys: Handle with Care
- Tanita Tikaram: Twist in My Sobriety
- Kim Wilde: Never Trust a Stranger
- Prince: I Wish U Heaven
- Bobby McFerrin: Don't Worry Be Happy
- The Christians: Harvest for the World
- Wee Papa Girl Rappers: Wee Rule
- Mica Paris: Breathe Life Into Me
- All About Eve: What Kind of Fool
- Bananarama: Nathan Jones
- Sigue Sigue Sputnik: Success
- Tiffany: Radio Romance
- Womack & Womack: Life's Just a Ballgame
- Guns N' Roses: Welcome to the Jungle / Nightrain
- Jolly Roger: Acid Man
- Inner City: Big Fun
- Phil Collins: Groovy Kind of Love
- Hithouse: Jack to the Sound of the Underground
- The Bangles: In Your Room
- Womack & Womack: Teardrops
~~~~~
Be careful what you wish for. After three long weeks of holding Enya in contempt, the Irish songstress was finally dethroned. I'd been waiting to see Kylie wind up higher on the chart but slipping fewer spots was not exactly what I had in mind. And the new number one almost had me wishing for more Enya.
First Time by Robin Beck is one of those songs that gets to the top in spite of the fact that no one seemed to like it. It would be easy and understandable to dismiss it here in 2016 as "dated" or a "throwback to a different time" but those claims seem to imply that it had a standard of quality at the time. But it was the power ballad from hell, the kind of soft metal smoocher that is clearly a cynical cash-in. The fact that it was used in a Coke commercial only underscored how formulaic and cheesy it was. (The average British music listener seems to have a soft spot for tunes that soundtrack adverts although at least they typically opt for reissues that have some merit; according to Freaky Trigger, this isn't even the first chart topper to be used in a commercial during our year; while largely mundane, there's something to The Joker and Should I Stay or Should I Go: and, afterall, pop and jeans just don't sell themselves, you know) Up to this point every number one had had its backers: one of my friends was really into Groovy Kind of Love by Phil Collins and another quite liked my bête noire Orinoco Flow - I was even kind of into Whitney Houston's One Moment in Time, a guilty pleasure if I ever believed such a concept to exist. But First Time was disliked by everyone: at school it was simply a matter of the extent, ranging from mild dislike to outright hostility. I fell somewhat closer to the latter. Most galling was seeing Robin Beck perform it on Top of the Pops: this was a song that was clearly meant for adults and yet here she was acting as if she could ham it up for the kids. It was a huge con and I could see right through it.
I was never much of a soccer player. Always tall for my age, I was never able to handle the ball with any competence, I ran awkwardly and my eyes and feet just couldn't find a groove. I improved enough in other sports to be reasonable (swimming), half-way decent (basketball) or just barely adequate (baseball) but soccer was something I could never make any progress in. I sucked something awful, as they say.
"Well, at least I might be able to improve in soccer," I said to my dad at some point during the build-up to our move to England. (My wife recently pointed out that I have a knack for looking at the bright side of a bad situation, something I never realised I do; given the above example, I wonder if it's something I've always done) I was looking forward to P.E. class and figured the British instructors would be able to offer me some tips.
"You've all played enough football," said Mr Pugh forcefully during one of our first P.E. lessons, "this term you're going to play rugby." I suppose the rugby kit we picked out the week before school started should have tipped me off. Had a been a few years older I might also have guessed based on the Welshness of Pugh and his colleague Mr Bassett. Improve at soccer? I'm edging close to forty and I'm still no bloody good.
We didn't start the term off with rugby, however. September and October were spent in one of Mayflower's auxiliary gyms doing various exercises and drills or in the pool swimming laps. (Another moment when I looked on the bright side of attending an English school was having a pool, something I boasted of in the rare letters I sent to Grandpa Bill and my old chums at Highwood Elementary back in Calgary; the constant laps in P.E. and in the swim club I joined kind of dulled my interest in swimming for a time - again, careful what you wish for) With November, though, it was time to put on our red rugby shirts and cleats and head outside.
Last week I mentioned taking a walk through York on a chilly day and these cooler temperatures were becoming the norm by now. Still, nothing could have prepared me for the cold when we reluctantly trudged outside for our first rugby lesson. My bare, toothpick-thin legs were struck by the cool morning air: they wanted to get moving and not stop for a second but first we had to line up and take instructions. Being tall, I typically was selected to line up with another tall boy and we effectively picked up one of the shorter lads, their legs dangling below. We formed a scrum and the ball went elsewhere. Some boys seemed completely at ease, aware of the exact point of what we were doing; I was not one of them. I don't recall being given tips on how to improve nor any information on rugby strategy (assuming, of course, that there is any). That's not to say I didn't enjoy the lessons: the frosty ground turned into a warm and inviting bath of mud once our boots began digging into it, the chaotic nature of the game made it fun and I never got hurt, which is something of a triumph for someone as clumsy and accident prone as myself.
Jerry Seinfeld once did a bit about how every day in which you had gym was an especially weird day: you're sitting in class learning and then, suddenly, it's like Lord of the Flies, you're running around in skimpy clothes and then you go back to your normal day. But no Friday was especially normal after playing rugby outside. Having tried our best to avoid showering at all costs, we were now more than happy to rinse away the mud from our skin and hair. But a bit of that rugby pitch seemed to cling to us throughout the day. We had science class following P.E. and it was always rather awkward showing up with matted, damp hair, blackened finger nails and a vague dirtiness while the girls looked perfectly normal. Maths followed and while my hair had by then dried off I still felt unclean. It probably didn't help that I was dragging my rugby kit around with me all day. Only with lunchtime did a certain normalcy set in.
Looking back, though, I wonder if playing rugby was just the sort of thing I needed to shake up an otherwise humdrum Friday. I was never much of a science student and I found our teacher Mr McLean a bit hard to take at first (once, we were boiling water in beakers and he told us to write down our observations: for some reason he didn't appreciate my prosaic attempts at describing the boiling point). Maths was all right but by Friday it was our fourth lesson of the week and I was completely sick of it. Following lunch there was French which I could have taught and then Library which might have been okay had it not been for (a) the utter pointlessness of having such a class right on the cusp of the weekend and (b) the librarian Mr Pountney who perpetually seemed cheesed off about something (perhaps, on reflection, he was looking forward to the end of the week as much as we were). Maybe we needed a bit of rugger to get us going. You know, just as I needed Robin Beck in order to appreciate Enya. Yeah, just like that...
~~~~~
young Paul's favourite: She Makes My Day
older Paul's retro pick: Need You Tonight
We didn't start the term off with rugby, however. September and October were spent in one of Mayflower's auxiliary gyms doing various exercises and drills or in the pool swimming laps. (Another moment when I looked on the bright side of attending an English school was having a pool, something I boasted of in the rare letters I sent to Grandpa Bill and my old chums at Highwood Elementary back in Calgary; the constant laps in P.E. and in the swim club I joined kind of dulled my interest in swimming for a time - again, careful what you wish for) With November, though, it was time to put on our red rugby shirts and cleats and head outside.
Last week I mentioned taking a walk through York on a chilly day and these cooler temperatures were becoming the norm by now. Still, nothing could have prepared me for the cold when we reluctantly trudged outside for our first rugby lesson. My bare, toothpick-thin legs were struck by the cool morning air: they wanted to get moving and not stop for a second but first we had to line up and take instructions. Being tall, I typically was selected to line up with another tall boy and we effectively picked up one of the shorter lads, their legs dangling below. We formed a scrum and the ball went elsewhere. Some boys seemed completely at ease, aware of the exact point of what we were doing; I was not one of them. I don't recall being given tips on how to improve nor any information on rugby strategy (assuming, of course, that there is any). That's not to say I didn't enjoy the lessons: the frosty ground turned into a warm and inviting bath of mud once our boots began digging into it, the chaotic nature of the game made it fun and I never got hurt, which is something of a triumph for someone as clumsy and accident prone as myself.
Jerry Seinfeld once did a bit about how every day in which you had gym was an especially weird day: you're sitting in class learning and then, suddenly, it's like Lord of the Flies, you're running around in skimpy clothes and then you go back to your normal day. But no Friday was especially normal after playing rugby outside. Having tried our best to avoid showering at all costs, we were now more than happy to rinse away the mud from our skin and hair. But a bit of that rugby pitch seemed to cling to us throughout the day. We had science class following P.E. and it was always rather awkward showing up with matted, damp hair, blackened finger nails and a vague dirtiness while the girls looked perfectly normal. Maths followed and while my hair had by then dried off I still felt unclean. It probably didn't help that I was dragging my rugby kit around with me all day. Only with lunchtime did a certain normalcy set in.
Looking back, though, I wonder if playing rugby was just the sort of thing I needed to shake up an otherwise humdrum Friday. I was never much of a science student and I found our teacher Mr McLean a bit hard to take at first (once, we were boiling water in beakers and he told us to write down our observations: for some reason he didn't appreciate my prosaic attempts at describing the boiling point). Maths was all right but by Friday it was our fourth lesson of the week and I was completely sick of it. Following lunch there was French which I could have taught and then Library which might have been okay had it not been for (a) the utter pointlessness of having such a class right on the cusp of the weekend and (b) the librarian Mr Pountney who perpetually seemed cheesed off about something (perhaps, on reflection, he was looking forward to the end of the week as much as we were). Maybe we needed a bit of rugger to get us going. You know, just as I needed Robin Beck in order to appreciate Enya. Yeah, just like that...
~~~~~
young Paul's favourite: She Makes My Day
older Paul's retro pick: Need You Tonight
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