5 March 1989: I'll Give You Ten Good Reasons to Stay

1. Jason Donovan: Too Many Broken Hearts
2. Michael Ball: Love Changes Everything
3. Bananarama/Lananeeneenoonoo: Help!
4. Sam Brown: Stop!
5. Michael Jackson: Leave Me Alone
6. Simple Minds: Belfast Child
7. S'Express: Hey Music Lover
8. Gloria Estefan & Miami Sound Machine: Can't Stay Away from You
9. Texas: I Don't Want a Lover
10. Living in a Box: Blow the House Down
11. Donna Summer: This Time I Know It's for Real
12. Tyree featuring Kool Rock Steady: Turn Up the Bass
13. Poison: Every Rose Has Its Thorn
14. Bobby Brown: My Prerogative
15. Paula Abdul: Straight Up
16. Dusty Springfield: Nothing Has Been Proved
17. The Reynolds Girls: I'd Rather Jack
18. Deacon Blue: Wages Day
19. Rick Astley: Hold Me in Your Arms
20. Marc Almond featuring Gene Pitney: Something's Gotten Hold of My Heart
21. WASP: Mean Man
22. Depeche Mode: Everything Counts [live]
23. Hue & Cry: Looking for Linda
24. Womack & Womack: Celebrate the World
25. Tone Loc: Wild Thing / Loc'ed After Dark
26. Holly Johnson: Love Train
27. Vixen: Cryin'
28. The Wonder Stuff: Who Wants to Be the Disco King?
29. Mike + The Mechanics: The Living Years
30. Fuzzbox: International Rescue
31. Yazz: Fine Time
32. New Order: Round and Round
33. Def Leppard: Rocket
34. Edie Brickell & The New Bohemians: What I Am
35. Roy Orbison: You Got It
36. Chanelle: One Man
37. Ten City: That's the Way Love Is
38. Elvis Costello: Veronica
39. Alyson Williams: Sleep Talk
40. New Model Army: Vagabonds

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The night of March 5, 1989 saw our own little Beatles-Stones, Blur-Oasis chart battle. We had just finished dinner and Bruno Brooks was getting down to the nitty gritty of his weekly Top 40 rundown. Simple Minds were at number six and, thus, we knew there would be a brand new chart topper. Michael Jackson was also falling and Sam Brown was standing pat in fourth place. Radio 1's Bruno Brookes then announced that Bananarama and their comedic doppelgängers Lananeeneenoonoo were up to number three with their cover of Help! It was an appropriate number to get the bronze medal since it was one both sides could agree on: my sister and I liked the 'Narns' distinctive in unison vocals and the amusing touches courtesy of French and Saunders, my mum appreciated a Beatles cover that wasn't utterly wretched.

Help! began to come to a close and we waited. We all knew the next two singles but we didn't know who would hit number one. Mum was convinced it was Michael Ball's Love Changes Everything that had the top spot sown up; Julie and I were equally sure that Jason Donovan's Too Many Broken Hearts was destined for number one. No one placed a bet on the result, no one thought to do so; all that mattered was who would coming in first. Finally, Brookes came back on to resolve our little household impasse: Michael Ball was at number two. My sister and I enjoyed a satisfactory bout of gloating while Mum looked severely annoyed.

This all seems so wonderfully quaint now, doesn't it? A tedious and overly lush Andrew Lloyd Weber tune from the already massive flop musical Aspects of Love competing with a catchy yet moronic piece of fluff by a heartthrob Aussie soap star. Hardly what one would call a murderer's row of classic pop. But I love the fact that my mum cared so much about that week's UK number one and that we were all so invested in it. (For his part, my dad didn't try to ignore all the hullabaloo even if he did fire off a few cynical remarks our way) Does anyone these days care about the charts the way we did on that Sunday night in March? (Fond as I am of that little anecdote it's also a sad reminder of how I now live at a time when hardly anyone cares about music anymore)

Windsor was just another town in a country and in a year filled with towns. The B&B was crap, the weather wasn't especially good and even browsing the records at WH Smiths tiresome. Sunday morning in the drizzle wandering around the park adjacent to the Castle (and, I gather, oh so close to the hallowed halls of Eton; not that I cared at the time seeing as how we were already surrogate Old Harrovians) was nice but I spoiled the mood by trying to look clever in the photos taken by my dad. Okay, the Safari Park was pretty good, I definitely enjoyed that, even though I can't help but look back on it knowing that it was soon to become a Legoland.

This week's entry features a double dose of torpor. At the time I was getting sick of spending damn-near every weekend away and now I look back on places like Windsor with ennui. A rot was beginning to set in during these mid-period months of our year in England. This may have been the time to have dialed back on the weekend day and overnight trips since the novelty had definitely worn off. It's also the point where blogging about such trips gets to be too much. What more can be said?

Well, one thing actually. The trip to Windsor concluded with an impromptu decision of Dad's. Perhaps also feeling the mundanity of all this travel, he got in the car and announced that he fancied cutting through London on the way home rather than taking the mammoth M25. As if justifying it to himself as much as the rest of us, he claimed that it might be our last chance to do so. He was talking as if we had only a few days left in our trip, not several more months. But it triggered something in me: we now had more time behind us than ahead and our return to Canada was on the horizon. Our car edged slowly through the north of London and I began to think about how much I wanted to stay.

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young Paul's favourite: Too Many Broken Hearts
older Paul's retro pick: Who Wants to Be the Disco King?