4 June 1989: Where Do We Go Now?

1. Jason Donovan: Sealed with a Kiss
2. Cliff Richard: The Best of Me
3. Gerry Marsden, Paul McCartney, Holly Johnson & The Christians: Ferry Cross the Mersey
4. Natalie Cole: Miss You Like Crazy
5. Madonna: Express Yourself
6. Sinitta: Right Back Where We Started From
7. Lynne Hamilton: On the Inside
8. Guns 'N Roses: Sweet Child o' Mind [remix]
9. Neneh Cherry: Manchild
10. Donna Summer: I Don't Wanna Get Hurt
11. Kylie Minogue: Hand on Your Heart
12. Soul II Soul featuring Caron Wheeler: Back to Life (However Do You Want Me)
13. London Boys: Requiem
14. Bobby Brown: Every Little Step
15. Edelweiss: Bring Me Edelweiss
16. Tone Loc: Funky Cold Medina / On Fire
17. Cyndi Lauper: I Drove All Night
18. Double Trouble & The Rebel MC: Just Keep Rockin'
19. D Mob featuring LRS: It Is Time to Get Funky
20. Cappella: Helyom Halib
21. Sam Brown: Can I Get a Witness?
22. Fuzzbox: Pink Sunshine
23. The Beautiful South: Song for Whoever
24. Roxette: The Look
25. Transvision Vamp: The Only One
26. Paula Abdul: Forever Your Girl
27. The Bangles: Eternal Flame
28. Deacon Blue: Fergus Sings the Blues
29. W.A.S.P.: The Real Me
30. Stefan Dennis: Don't It Make You Feel Good
31. Queen: I Want It All
32. Chaka Khan: I'm Every Woman '89
33. Bananarama: Cruel Summer '89
34. Robert Palmer: Change His Ways
35. Tom Petty: I Won't Back Down
36. Vixen: Love Made Me
37. New Model Army: Green and Grey
38. Donna Allen: Joy and Pain
39. R.E.M.: Orange Crush
40. The Jacksons: Nothin' (That Compares 2 U)

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I didn't think about it at the time but Jason Donovan was the king of number one chart battles. He and his on and off screen love interest Kylie Minogue lost out on the Christmas number one to Cliff Richard, he then beat out Michael Ball and Andrew Lloyd Weber in March and now here he is taking out revenge on his nemesis from the previous December by copping the top spot. I've written before that I admired Donovan at the time due to his looks, his nice guy image and way with the ladies but what I neglected to mention was that he was always being thrust into the position of taking on the purveyors of music that I loathed. He was, therefore, easy to root for.

Sealed with a Kiss, however, tests one's loyalty. An already limp song when it was first made popular back in the sixties, Donovan's sluggish vocal does the slight material no favours. Now, his previous hits weren't exactly examples of classic pop but there was something to Especially for You and Too Many Broken Hearts that seemed exciting and cool, even if I can't possibly fathom why or how when I hear them today; Sealed with a Kiss was boring and made worse by its creepy video that managed to make the singer look like an eighties computer graphic.

Poor now and even blasse then, Sealed with a Kiss was still a marked improvement on The Best of Me, the pretender from Cliff Richard. Hyped as his one hundredth single, it seemed like a foregone conclusion that it would be taking the top spot. Curious then that I have no memory of it and it makes me wonder if I tried to go out of my way to avoid it. Much as I tried, as I always have, being open minded about music, this was a record that I knew I'd despise and had no desire whatsoever to have anything to do with. Listening to it today I can see why I was so keen to boycott it, the song being little more than a twee country-ish ballad

Of course if it was quality you were looking for then you had to go just outside the top ten for a new entry that wasn't drawing too much attention but was soon to be unavoidable. Soul II Soul's Back to Life (However Do You Want Me) built upon the success of their previous hit Keep on Movin' - to the extent that that it was easy to assume that the former was nothing but a copy of the latter. They certainly are similar - both feature Caron Wheeler on vocals, as well as some gently unobtrusive strings which may or may not have been sampled - but in terms of spirit that couldn't be more different. Keep on Movin' was appreciated by many of us at the time - and still is - but it's hard to see it as anything but a message to their own crowd; Back to Life, by contrast, was something that they seemed to be trying to communicate to the world. And, yet, when people look back on the music of '89 they'll mention The Stone Roses, Pixies, De La Soul and Madonna but few acknowledge the merits of Soul II Soul and their two great singles and excellent debut album.

We're now just two months away from our departure from the UK - a moment that couldn't come quick enough for some members of my family (though not me). You might think that my memories of these waning weeks would be much more vivid than earlier times but I've been drawing a blank on the first week of June following our return from our week in Paris and Amsterdam. It could be explained away by a lull in our quest to visit every scrap of British soil but there were things still going on. The big news that week was that my grandparents were back for their second visit. Trouble was, we didn't see them so much this time round. I recall them showing up at our place on the Sunday, we chatted with them for a while and then my mum and dad took them up to the north part of Essex to see some relations. We would see them on an occasional basis over the next three weeks but it wasn't quite the same as their October visit.

The following Saturday we were back on the road for a day trip to Bath. It had been a while since we'd checked out a new city or town in England and my parents couldn't have chosen a better place. I wasn't in much of a mood at first and prefered to spend the day happily in front of the telly, however, and this would remain a blot on my memories of our last few weeks in Britain. The drive was long which did little to arouse my interest but the destination was well worth all the time and reluctance. The Roman baths were fascinating and not so big that I eventually grew tired of them. From there, we moved on to a short Avon river tour before winding down the afternoon in the sleepy environs of Burnham-on-Crouch. A day, then, of water: the slime-green baths were cool but by the time we were sitting by a glorified brook in a slow moving village I was done with all this and ready to head home.

This particular day trip seemed to take its toll as I recall arguments on the way back and soon after we got home. Maybe it was a combination of things that began to do us in: the small house, the cramped car, the constant traveling. It began to feel like this year away needed to wrap itself up. We'd all just had enough. (Though, again, not so much for me: I just wanted to spend my weekends watching the telly, listening to music and having some fun outside - but I was more than happy to do so in England)

The doorbell rang just as we were finishing dinner. Some local kids were at our door asking if I could come out. I didn't especially want to join them but Dad prodded me and I was soon outside kicking a football around with two boys and a girl I'd never spoken to. I'd seen them many times and they were among the urchins who stared at us the previous August when we wearily moved into our place at 44 Mellow Purgess. (During that interregnum prior to school starting it seemed like I saw them out of the corner of my eye virtually every day) Maybe they'd been plotting a course of action to strike up a conversation with me for months. Maybe they'd been knocking at our orange-coloured front door during every weekend and holiday in which we happened to be away. Or maybe they just decided that ten months' silence was more than sufficient and that they should finally break the ice - and, indeed they figured I was not about to do so.

So there I was on the field behind our place playing football and chatting with the local kids. Doing what I wanted to be doing on weekends. In England, where I wanted to be.

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young Paul's favourite: Sweet Child o' Mine
older Paul's retro pick: Back to Life