Counting Down to 30: 1993-98
(sorry, big gap between entries again - anyway, I have been finding so many random things doing this I’m now viewing the entries so far as just a coat hanger which I’ll return to and add to in the future - maybe it’s just me, but piecing so much time together is kinda fun and why not do it in public? hehe)
Okay I kind of touched on things at the end of my time at the second school in 1993 in the last post so I’m gonna take this from September that year when I started school at what we might as well call - if I called the last school the “best” school I went to - the worst school I went to. Actually, I think I said it all, as I’m digging through the archives I found a letter I wrote to my best friend from the previous school, when I wrote, “It’s alright at this school but I think I actually liked D. of K. more…”* Having said that, I can’t deny it played just as big a part in making me who I am.
(god, if there’s one pic of me that makes me think “poor kid” and want to travel back in time and tell myself a few things, then it’s that one)
*I have a scan of that letter but I can’t crop it suitably for public display. I did find this however, a postcard sent to my best friend from America in 1997:
Just in case you wanted a visual of my handwriting lol (I need to add some scans of my school books to previous entries, actually, hehe). I love the “ATTENTION! just bought the Exorcist!” part at the top. But, getting ahead of myself again…
I started at “senior school” as I left the last place, a big fat friendless smarty pants… okay I exaggerate but that’s how it felt, really. I remember being introduced with the people I’d be in the same year/class/dorm with (it was, again, a boarding school, though much closer to home; I’d end up going home almost every weekend), and somebody made a gesture and that was it, I pretty much gave up the notion of making friends for life, lol.
I would have no even remotely reciprocated love interests in the whole five years at this place - more a serious of crushes that finished with people thinking me even weirder than before. Well, I did have a scrapbook full of tiny Christina Ricci clippings, lol, can’t deny my part in that…
Yes, this was the time of the gigantic Christina Ricci Crush. I have a feeling it began with Addams Family Values (I have always blamed a combination of Arnie in Terminator 2 and Wednesday in those movies for my face’s naturally stern demeanour; I spent way too long mimicking them at this time ‘cos I thought it was cool lol), but really blossomed in Casper, which I went to see at the cinema 5 times because I loved it so much. That pic above I remember was one of the first things I *ever* found on the internet. We didn’t have the net at home so I had to either use it at school or, when I was home, wait for my stepdad to take me into town where there was like one single internet cafe. I’d go in there, Google (Altavista?) ”Christina Ricci”, and be amazed by JPEGs LOL.
Actually, now I realise why I didn’t do this entry finishing in ‘98 yesterday, because if I had, the rest of it would probably literally have just been about her, ‘cos that’s how I spent most of the mid-Nineties: thinking about Christina Ricci :)
Here I am in front of a prop from Casper at Universal Studios in 1997. I think the T-Shirt perfectly balances my own romanticising of my “thing” for Christina with the reality of what everyone else is thinking :-P
God, skinny!
Okay but I’m getting ahead again. Before doing all the Orlando touristy stuff in ‘97, in 1995 we went to Disneyland Paris. I mentioned listening to Disney music in the last post but I look at Pocahontas and Toy Story of that year as when I really started to think of Disney the way I still do today. That scene at the end of Pocahontas when she runs through the trees, Alan Menken’s music cue alone (“Farewell”) still chokes me up badly to this day, it’s very similar to the “My Girl” feeling I had 5 years before, only this time it was making me realise what *animated* movies could do to me.
Oh my. That just reminded me of another first of ‘95. ‘96, I guess: they were the first Oscars I stayed up and watched. I had hardly seen any of the movies, I hardly understood any of the jokes, but it made me somehow feel closer to movies than I ever had before. Since then, I’ve only ever missed one telecast, in 2002 or 3 (I forget), when we were without Sky TV.
lol, this entry feels like it’s all over the place. Like I said I’m gonna come back and add things at some point or something. OK. 1997. 1997 was a big year, I’ve already mentioned America. For me, though I was excited about the Disney stuff and everything, that part of the trip was more for my sister who was 10 at the time. For me, what I’ll remember about America is that it was where I really started seeking out - or rather, where I was for the first time *able* to seek out - movies I “wasn’t supposed to see”. At this time, “The Exorcist” was still banned in the UK. Finding it sitting without ceremony in a little video store at the Florida Mall was one of the strangest moments of my life up to that point, lol. I bought it immediately, along with “Natural Born Killers” and the sound track to that movie. I remember the guy behind the counter telling me how great the sound track was, “like watching the movie”. I still think it’s one of the best sound tracks ever. When I got home, I had to buy a new video player to play the NTSC tapes. This gave me cause to import more NTSC tapes :) Soon I had Texas Chainsaw, Lolita (Kubrick’s, which wasn’t banned but was hard to find), and I was off. It’d only be a few years later that most of these bans were lifted, but it definitely got me started on a lifelong interest in just about anything on the sidelines, I have a ridiculously huge collection of rare movies now thanks to the internet.
Another enduring memory of America is a kind of odd one since it has little to do with the place. It was the music we had in the rental car for almost the whole trip. Must have been a month or so before we went, I had seen these two girls on a daytime show singing and they’d really made an impression on me in that I still remembered their name when I saw Alisha’s Attic’s first album Alisha Rules the World on cassette at the airport WHSmith. I spent I believe a good chunk of my holiday spending money on the cassette, my mum behind my back asking “Are you sure that’s what you want?” lol, and it was the soundtrack to America for me, and still one of my favourite albums, which really pretty much changed my entire concept of music for life (remember, I was almost literally only listening to Disney and movie scores up to this point!)
Later in ‘97 (at least, I think it was later), I must have seen the movie The Doors. I loved it so much that when my mum gave me some money to buy new clothes, I spent a chunk of it on their first album and bought some black jeans. This might be another of those moments that I’ve adapted and simplified over the years, but it’s the moment I look to, along with the discovery of Alisha’s Attic, where I really began to move away from the swatty kid who would do whatever teacher said. I made it through my GCSEs but picked relatively comfortable A-Level subjects - English Lit, Design & Tech, and Business Studies, all of which I really put a minimum of effort into, while doing Film Studies outside of school at a nearby sixth form college. It wasn’t really a conscious decision until this one day I remember a teacher of my General Studies option clamping down on people skipping class. People had always done it, I just happened to be unfortunate to have caught him on the wrong day. I forget the details but on showing up for my punishment at the staff room it was clear he’d completely forgotten about it but then he dreamt up something on the spot and there was a glee in his eyes that made me realise it wasn’t worth giving people anything but the minimum in such circumstances, ‘cos hard work is hardly ever recognised. I pretty much turned off academically at this point, and would only honestly go to college later for lack of anything better to do. You’ll notice I didn’t do music at A-Level. I was so sick of piano lessons which I had had to keep up as part of my music GSCE that I gave the whole thing up. This was the time I couldn’t even sit at a piano. Lessons really killed the spark in me. Luckily I was able to get that back later.
So that was senior school. I forgot one thing. A silly thing but something I’ll never forget. I asked a girl to dance at the end of school ball thing (we don’t have prom in the UK but that’s pretty much what it was) and she didn’t look at me like I was a psycho or anything and she actually danced with me for a full song. Rachel M, wherever you are, thanks for that.
This entry is way too long and even more scattered than the others: but as with anything I do, it’s basically either this or nothing and I know which I prefer right now. I’m gonna try and work on a single entry for 1999 to post ASAP.
Oh, just quickly, since I’ve done this with all the other entries… my current fave movies from the years: Schindler’s List [1993], Natural Born Killers [1994], A Little Princess [1995], Breaking the Waves [1996], Lawn Dogs [1997], Buffalo ‘66 [1998 - there she is lol :)]
