- Madonna: Like a Prayer
- Jason Donovan: Too Many Broken Hearts
- Paula Abdul: Straight Up
- Donna Summer: This Time I Know It's for Real
- The Bangles: Eternal Flame
- Soul II Soul featuring Caron Wheeler: Keep on Movin'
- Guns 'N Roses: Paradise City
- Kon Kan: I Beg Your Pardon
- Pat & Mick: I Haven't Stopped Dancing Yet
- The Reynolds Girls: I'd Rather Jack
- Fuzzbox: International Rescue
- Coldcut featuring Lisa Stansfield: People Hold On
- Bobby Brown: Don't Be Cruel
- Holly Johnson: Americanos
- The Cult: Fire Woman
- Transvision Vamp: Baby I Don't Care
- Gloria Estefan & Miami Sound Machine: Can't Stay Away from You
- The The: The Beat(en) Generation
- Simply Red: If You Don't Know Me by Now
- Alyson Williams: Sleep Talk
- INXS: Mystify
- Brother Beyond: Can You Keep a Secret?
- Chanelle: One Man
- Bananarama/Lananeeneenoonoo: Help!
- Paul Simpson featuring Adeva: Musical Freedom (Moving on Up)
- Sam Brown: Stop!
- Roy Orbison: She's a Mystery to Me
- New Order: Round and Round
- Roachford: Family Man
- Michael Ball: Love Changes Everything
- Michael Jackson: Leave Me Alone
- Yello: Of Course I'm Lying
- S'Express: Hey Music Lover
- T'Pau: Only the Lonely
- Kym Mazell: Got to Get You Back
- Living in a Box: Blow the House Down
- Cookie Crew: Got to Keep On
- Then Jerico: What Does It Take?
- Ten City: Devotion
- Aswad: Beauty's Only Skin Deep
~~~~~
April's only just getting kicked off and I'm already looking ahead to heading back home. I mean, looking back now I can certainly see the signs that things were beginning to wrap up, even if I wasn't especially aware of it at the time. Dave headed back to Calgary and so we saw off our final visitor (even though both he and Grandma Ella and Grandpa Bill paid second visits in the summer it wasn't quite the same as I'll probably get to eventually). There was also increasing talk of booking our plane tickets home (Mum was all for us leaving the day after school finished, I was keen on extending our stay indefinitely). Finally, the weather was looking up as we were slowly entering an early and prolonged summer.
There's also a feel of coming to the autumn of our year in England in the charts. Though I recollect the vast majority of this week's Top 40 - hard cheese, Paul Simpson featuring Adeva - I must confess that I've misremembered when they came out. Take Transvision Vamp, a pop group posing as punk metallers led by raspily, nasily voiced Wendy James. They had their first run of hits just as we arrived in Laindon the previous summer and I assumed their second (and final, as it would turn out) burst of success took place just as we were on our way out the door. Yet here they are, winter barely in the can, belting out the simple and laughable but nonetheless charming Baby I Don't Care. James isn't the singer - nor the pinup - that she thinks she is, her band aren't the rockers they think they are but it works, possibly in part because she honestly doesn't care. Of course it just seems silly next to the real ale rock of Guns 'N Roses but that's precisely the point. GNR's Paradise City rocks it's balls off and is accompanied by your typical heavy metal video of the group pretending to perform the song in front of thousands of head banger fans (of all the things that irked me about metal - the dirt bags, the t-shirts, the cliches - nothing bothered me more than their boring and pointless videos, so wonderfully spoofed by New Order) but the group are so caught up in their ludicrous mythology of hard rockin', hard partyin' dudes who live for life on the road that it's impossible to take seriously.
"GET OFF MY GRASS!" Hopey shouted. He wasn't so much angry as hysterical. His voice was piercing and could shake the windows. He shouted it every day, he shouted it long before I came to Mayflower and he no doubt continued to shout it long after I left but it never failed to rattle me. If we all sniggered as Hopey galloped away then at least he we all feared him as he approached. And, yes, we ridiculed old Hopey. I always imagined him being a John Cleese character come to life: his upright gait and prance-like march, coupled with the ever-present basket he carried around, made him a comical sight.
"What was their problem?" I used to ask myself whenever I would think back to the staff at Mayflower Comprehensive. They constantly seemed pissed about things that didn't matter. Who the hell cared if a few third years had cut across part of the lawn behind the library as a shortcut - and, thus, giving birth to Hopey's catchphrase? What did it matter to Mr Lawrence if some boys were playing football on the playground? (And, speaking of which, considering there wasn't any playground equipment and playing was looked down upon, why was it even called the playground to begin with?) What was Mr Shaw going on about during his moralistic assembly rants? Why did my classmate Francis have to be pulled out of French class because he was wearing a jean jacket? Who could possibly care?
There were two kinds of teachers at Mayflower: those who taught classes and those who made their presence felt elsewhere. It was impossible to imagine Hopey or Lawrence or Shaw in the classroom, their world was in the hallways, on the playground or in the assemblies. Lawrence was the first teacher I ever encountered who walked with a swagger: I was never completely sure if I was afraid or in awe of him. We never saw Shaw except for when he'd emerge for assembly. His lectures never ceased to be dull and rambling but he always acted as if what he had to say was of the utmost importance.
My own teachers were more of a mixed bag. Pountney seemed perpetually cheesed off - some second years had pushed a pile of books behind a bookshelf during playtime one Friday afternoon and he spent our entire Library class in an especially pissy mood - while Larkin and Wickens just threw themselves into fits of rage whenever something didn't go quite as planned. Templeton seemed to take it as an insult that we weren't as into art as she was - while doing as little as possible to get us to appreciate the subject. The rest were actually pretty level headed but my thin skin took minor clashes with my Science and P.E. teachers as major personal vendettas that took ages for me to recover from.
This experience was hardly a Dickensian nightmare but I was genuinely intimidated by the staff at Mayflower. Coming from the largely happy-go-lucky halls of Highwood Elementary School in Calgary, I'd grown accustomed to kindly, nuturing types in the classroom. Prior to England I would never have given thought to disliking or being afraid of a teacher, it was simply a matter of how much I liked them. So to then be thrown into this environment of bitterness and intimidation was a change that I needed to get accustomed to but never really did. This is a pity since Mayflower was a bastion of old school English eccentricity. One of my favourite TV programs of the time was Grange Hill, a venerable series about a north London school. While I enjoyed the antics of Gonch and Ziggy and their chums, I also guffawed at the crazed, oddball staff, especially the maniacal Bronco. Strange, then, that I couldn't enjoy Mayflower for similar reasons.
~~~~~
young Paul's favourite: This Time I Know It's for Real
older Paul's retro pick: Keep on Movin'
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