Counting Down to 30: 1987-92
Okay, I neglected this a little too long but it turns out this is actually quite a good 5 year chunk to cover in one go. I thought of just one thing I forgot from the last entry and that was, in the midst of all the fictional crushes lol, my first kinda sorta “real” girlfriend, of which there have been so few (and all have only ever been “kinda sorta” lol) that I might as well mention them all. Katy J was my real love of the 80s and unless my memory has totally warped everything which is certainly a possibility, I think it was as mutual as it’s possible to be at that age. We definitely used to go to each other’s houses a lot anyway. ‘Twas sweet, or something.
However, in 1988 I had to leave her behind as I followed my brother to my second school, this one:
It was a boarding school, but let me tell you something: in almost every way imaginable this was the best place anybody could spend ages 8-13 at. When I read the first couple of Harry Potter books 10 years later, I’m not exaggerating when I say that the feel of school being a “second family” JK Rowling put into the Hogwarts passages completely reminded me of this place. We would even go for walks to the nearby village to buy sweets and down the hill for a snack at one of the resident teacher’s houses. There were of course not so great teachers, lonely moments, and all the other bad stuff that comes with school at that age… but there is no doubt in my mind that of the three schools I went to, this one formed me the most.
I was a major swot. But, here’s a curious thing, I remember for the first couple of years also being relatively popular too. Like, I was even the lead, Mr. A, in our junior play “Tarmac and Turmoil” (I had some major speech about prize marrows, I wish I could remember it LOL). My brother was still there 3 years above me so I’m convinced this was the reason. He would take me along with his friends to do various amusing mischiefs, the only one of which I can ever remember is lifting a teacher’s car up from its bumper. What can I say, you had to be there, lol: I seem to remember having the giggles so bad I almost needed pullups for a week.
As I moved into the “senior end” (the school had 5 years - when we got there, at least… they would go on to add a preschool - with 1-2 being “junior” and 3-5 being “senior”) my brother left and I pretty much began to keep myself to myself more, hence becoming even more of a swot than ever. My maths teacher once exasperatedly told my parents that he was giving me GCSE problems in class at age 10 ‘cos I was always finishing set tasks early, but he was actually running out of stuff to give me lol.
NHS specs and prizes = spod.
My music tastes during this time were pretty darn narrow but certainly passionate. 99% of the time you could be practically certain my walkman was playing either Andrew Lloyd Webber or Disney music. In 1988 I saw Joseph for the first time at the local theatre for my 8th birthday. The following pic is of me getting tickets for the Jason Donovan West End production one Christmas:
That would be my first West End experience and a few years later I saw “The New” Starlight Express on a school trip, too :) I went to France with that school, too, hehe… it really was quite an awesome education :) But I’m getting ahead of myself!
In 1989 I went to France for the first time…
… Eurocamp!
I didn’t even really have a “kinda sorta” girlfriend at this time, but I did have my first kiss, with Gemma C, who also so my “thing” when the changing room door was left open one Sunday after swimming lol; and I remember dancing with Harriet D in I think the 3rd year shortly before she left. My major crushes there however were Vicky C and Sara B, the latter of whom I remember having eskimo kisses in the middle corridor one time lol. It’s the little things, right?
As far as celeb/fictional crushes, however, I was really starting to be quite promiscuous, heh. This is what my room looked like in 1990, btw:
So Kylie was still a big deal with me, lol. Anna Chlumsky was probably the major one for this time though (remember, I was her age hehe… I didn’t get “questionable” about my crushes till later :-P)
Seeing My Girl for the first time was a major experience for me, not just ‘cos I fell in love with the girl. It was the first time I remember a movie really affecting me deeply. That moment when she finds out Macauley Culkin is dead and runs to her teacher, that shot of her running down the road, it took my heart so much by surprise which such absurdly foreign extreme of emotion, I was actually afraid I was gonna die in the cinema. So you could say it was the day I understood how powerful movies could be.
Another movie and another crush I have really vivid memories of is Curly Sue’s Alisan Porter. I loved this movie, and I still do, in fact the last time I saw it I loved it more than ever and found stuff in it that I’d never considered before.
I remember the whole screening the first time I saw it. My youngest cousin (at the time) came with my family to see it and stood up in the aisle the whole time, I think it may have been her first cinema experience or something. Also the sound wasn’t working at the start so we missed out on the beautiful opening music. I don’t know, like I said, it’s the little things lol, I find it weird that I remember things like that sometimes.
Nicola Stapleton didn’t start in Eastenders until 1992 according to Wikipedia, so doesn’t quite fit into this time period, but I have a feeling I may have already been crushing on her in Simon and the Witch which was a show I really loved too (above pic is from Courage Mountain, which I didn’t see till years later)
Six, I mean, Jenna Von Oy, is another who probably came at best towards the end of this time period for me ‘cos it probably didn’t air in the UK till long after the US. Anyway, this was certainly love at first sight too :)
OK I think that’s enough frivolous crush stuff, lol. Movies I loved at this time: Blind Date (hell, there’s a crush I forgot: Kim Basinger… loved My Stepmother is an Alien too), Baby Boom, Robocop (one of my first, if not the first, ‘18’ movies lol), Bigfoot and the Hendersons (as it was called here), Masters of the Universe (I still get that keyboard melody stuck in my head sometimes), Who Framed Roger Rabbit? Holy hell, that really calls for a pause in the proceedings. I had a MAJOR crush on Jessica Rabbit!
Which reminds me of another Kim Basinger role which I had a rawther specific crush on too LOL:
Holli Would :)
OK where was I? Movies. I’m wondering if my brother and I had started sneakily watching the Nightmare on Elm Street series and such on video yet at this point. Probably. I loved Michael Jackson’s Moonwalker. 1989 brought The Little Mermaid which I didn’t actually want to see at the time, but then my little sister got it on video and I watched it and fell in love with Ariel and the music :) Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles was a HUGE favourite of mine in 1990, me and a million other 10 year olds I guess lol. Bill and Ted and its sequel was awesome too, as was Wayne’s World. My fave movies from these years now however are as follows: 4 Aventures de Reinette et Mirabelle [1987], The Last Temptation of Christ [1988], Cinema Paradiso [1989], Edward Scissorhands [1990], The Fisher King [1991] and Unforgiven [1992].
OK I am sure I’ve missed out tons by covering so much at once but I have had enough for today lol. I will try to do the next ones more regularly :)
