...this diary entry from October 19th
1985 (age 14)
I feared the darkness as a kid
Behind the curtains terror hid
The wardrobe creaked, the floorboards cracked
The shadows ready to attack.
And then he came, The Bogeyman
His icy breath upon my palm
A whisper crawled inside my ear
Coiling, twisting pioneer
And with it came a solitude
A certainty of nothing good
A layer of frost across my skin
A thread of crimson dread was spin.
And then he’d slither out again
His tapestry left in my brain.
© Hazel Allan
Wow, I thought, that's pretty impressive, I don't remember being that cool. I must've been going through my Smiths/Joy Division phase.
Then I flipped a few pages to Tuesday 22nd October 1985. A hastily scribbled felt-tip heart leaps off the page.
Inside it reads,
"Saw A in the canteen at lunchtime. He was eating chips and custard. His hair is so gorgeous. I will die if he doesn't notice me soon."
So, not so cool after all. What's worse is I have absolutely no recollection of who A was.
This song was Number One when I wrote that diary entry. It felt like it dominated the charts for about 20 years but it was only 5 weeks - which I suppose is a lifetime for a moody 14 year old. The opening bars still bring me out in a sweat as they transport me back to those awful school discos where the aroma of Impulse spray combined with the heady scent of teenage desperation was thick enough to choke on and where geeky, awkward, misunderstood teenage girls inevitably (to paraphrase one of my favourite songs) left on their own, got home, cried and wanted to die.
