Sunday 27 November 2016

Silver


24 November 2016 passed in chaos for me. The Day Job went from 'super-busy' to 'hang on a minute, am I being trolled or something?'

A couple of times during the day, I thought 'merciful Jaysus, it's Freddie Mercury's anniversary today'.

I was too busy to say a word, let alone blog about it. The day after, despite having a half-day of leave, was much the same. I was so busy Friday that i even forgot to press 'pause' on my iPod and found it still running through shuffle mode - it went from track 7 or 8 to 120 or so, without me being anywhere near it. So much for the battery life, amirite?

Saturday dawned and I stumbled from my warm bed to the frigid November morning. It took 20 minutes to get to Finsbury Park, where I sat a Nutrition exam, completed an 'Introduction to Teaching Kettlebells' module, bashed my head on a wall at Starbucks and stared at my reworded literary agent query letter as if extra eyeball time would make it magically better.

That wasn't in strict chronological order, but you get the idea, which is likely a notion that my life consists of semi-regular head injuries, procrastination and a willingness (if not happiness) to give multinational tax dodgers a chunk of my hard-earned spondoolicks in return for soya milk and bad coffee.

Anyway, I ended up heading from Finsbury Park to Tottenham rather than home, to visit my mummy and daddy. I was hoping I'd get sympathy for being hurty. Fat chance. But I did get to check out the Amazon-delivered Crimboid presents for my niece. And yes, more multinational tax dodgers.

I don't like capitalism, but I do rather have to live within it, and my niece needs her toy doctor kit, damn you.

None of the above is remotely relevant to the subject matter at hand, but it does provide some context to the wearying grind I currently find myself within.

On the bus from one part of North London to another, my iPod ticked through some tracks which I listened to with the half-conscious attention of someone who has listened to all 5000+ tracks at least twice. I'm finding it difficult to focus at the moment (see above) so it was on Shuffle Mode to see what it threw up.

As I got off the bus, These Are The Days Of Our Lives by Queen pinged up... and I nearly burst into tears on Tottenham High Road.

You see, I listened to that song a lot in the winter of 1991. My daddy bought me the Double-A Side cassette of Bohemian Rhapsody/These Are The Days Of Our Lives because he is stone-cold awesome sometimes. I was nine years old then, and dealing with my first 'hero death' and the stresses of primary school (chiefly: crayon wars, trying to game the system to be first in line for lunch, gaming the system to produce a nice maths to story-writing ratio).

What I didn't know then was that other heroes had died, I just didn't know it yet.

Anyway, I listened to that tape a lot. I had neckache for weeks from the headbanging to the second half of Rhapsody as if I was Wayne and/or Garth.

Over the coming years, I returned to Queen on and off. I listened to These Are The Days Of Our Lives with a vague understanding of what it meant.

As I listened last Saturday, I wanted so badly to cry. For us living 25 years without the fabulousness of Freddie, of course, but also because I am increasingly part of the demographic for whom the song actually means something.

When I was 9, I understood what Freddie was singing about. Now, I find that I am living it. I have enough time behind me to be able to look back. To miss, to regret. To truly feel that I have lost things.

Now, we are all old enough that my friends are married, have children - increasingly more than one of both - and I bear witness to their many joys and sorrows and wonders. I am still much the same as I was in 1991, if sadder and more tired and with less hope.  

And yet, also in a position where there is fresh hope. I see it in the bright, shining face of my beloved niece, for whom the world is truly her oyster. In the newness of my dear friend Louise's brand new son.

Now, Louise is an even bigger Queen fan than I. We became friends when she moved to my primary school when we were about 7. She is a full 10 days older than me, and the only person to stick with me all this time, truly. She now lives on the other side of the world. I couldn't go to her wedding because I could afford neither time nor money, and I regret that dearly.

As I walked up Tottenham High Road, I wanted to cry. For Freddie, for the shining children we were once, with all our hopes and dreams stretching out ahead of us. And for the promise of now.

There is something we have now that we didn't have then: history. We were dear friends then, Louise and I, and the rest of the gang. Now, we are the roots of a tree. Those roots might go off in all sorts of diffeerent directions, twisting in odd ways we didn't expect, but we are still part of that tree.

Golly, that's a laboured metaphor. I do that when I'm feeling sentimental.

I wanted to cry for everyone and everything I've lost since. I wanted to cry for the self I lost and rebuilt and lost again. I wanted to cry for the friendships that have broken, for the ones that faded. For the potential I threw away with laziness and procrastination, that I never reached for through fear or lack of belief in myself.

I wanted to cry for everything I left unsaid with people I have loved, and who I will not see again. I wanted to cry for everything I said or did that I ought not to have said or done.

I wanted to cry for those shiny-shiny children we were... and I smiled for the people we have become. Louise is an even more amazing grown-up than she was a child. Smart, brilliant, beautiful. She is an outstanding human being and I'm proud she and I remain dear friends, even though I have not always put in the effort I should've.

My tears were stayed, just. I smiled for Natasha and Rachel, Ebony and Nancy and my other Louise, and Anna, and the people I have in my life now that I couldn't have dreamed of in 1991.

I smiled for my Pollyboo. When I was nine, I imagined that I could love someone as I love my niece, but I didn't know what it felt like to love someone more and more fiercely as they grow into who they are. I didn't know the steely determination to help them become their best self... I do now.

For all the dark moments I still have, for all the frustrations of not being what and who I really want o be, for all the lost potential.... for all the Awful in the world right now, I am still surrounded by outstanding human beings. My nine year old self might be irritated in some ways, but I reckon in others she'd be pretty impressed with who she became. Because that kid understood that song more than any nine year old really should...

Those really were the days of our lives, and yet, so are these.

Monday 21 November 2016

Freddie, George and the Decade that Changed Everything - From the Vault 2006

 The following piece was written ten years ago, and was concerned with a single decade, 1991-2001, five years later.

Perhaps next I should take on 2001-2011... or the entire quarter century that has now passed...

Freddie, George & The Decade That Changed Everything

I noticed a funny thing recently. Within days of each other, it will be the fifteenth anniversary of Freddie Mercury (24th Nov) and the fifth anniversary of George Harrison (29 Nov). Barely ten years separate these two events, and I find that a strange quirk of the universe. This post is less about them than it is about me.