In which Eris listens to Gina G and has a flashback (From Bucks Free Press)

In which Eris listens to Gina G and has a flashback

9:22pm Wednesday 10th March 2010

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The other day, I was watching music television. Flicking idly through channels, as is my habit when the 200+ Sky channels don’t have anything I want to watch on them (ie none of the channels are currently showing Scrubs, Supernatural, Buffy, Big Bang Theory, Black Books or Arrested Development). All of a sudden, onto my screen flashed Gina G. Cue a flashback.

I was never ‘cool’ in primary school - actually, I’ll go further. I studied Classics and listen to a1, Take That and John Barrowman. I have never been cool in my life. The fact I was not one of the ‘cool’ crowd was never more apparent than at primary school discos. I used to get excited about the fact that the penny sweet stall was selling fizzy cola bottles, which I was never allowed at home. Dancing with boys never really featured for me - it wouldn’t have occurred to me that I might be asked, and I certainly wasn’t going to do the asking. I had a good time at these discos though, I’d dance like a lunatic with my friends to Gina G, and knew all the dance moves to the ‘Macarena’ and ‘Saturday Night’. Actually, I still know them. I have since added ‘Tragedy’ and ‘Prince Charming’ to my dance-routine repertoire. When the dancing became too much, it was back to the cola bottles and a glass of orange squash.

I can remember one of these discos vividly; I was around 8 or 9. The DJ decided to introduce an ‘impressions’ contest. The example he gave of the impressions was from one of the more popular TV programmes of the time, and he howled ‘Yabba dabba dooooo!’ into the microphone. Quite a few people entered, and apparently imagination was somewhat lacking in the school hall that day, because every single entry was someone screeching ‘Yabba dabba dooo!’ into the microphone. Until it came to me.

Now, we have established that I was not cool. In my brief list of musical likes above I did not mention the crucial one. The musical love that has been with me for 16 years. When I was7 years old, I got in the car to find a tape playing. I asked my Dad what it was, as I really liked it. ‘Meat Loaf,’ he answered. And so a Meat Loaf fan was born.

A year or two later therefore, when asked to do an impression, what the DJ got was an 8 year old girl with long brown hair singing the first few lines of ‘I Would Do Anything For Love’. The only person to do an original impression, I was quite impressed with myself.

Less so later in the evening, when, after getting down to the final 3 (picked by the DJ), it went to a vote of my peers; me and Marvin vs. two of the ‘in crowd’ and Fred. (x2). I came 3rd. The point of this blog is that I hadn’t thought about any of this for years. But hearing that one song brought all the memories flooding back - I remember everything about these discos so clearly, right down to the fact that one year they moved the DJ’s desk from its normal location.

Music is so incredibly evocative, that one line of a song can stir memories you thought you had forgotten, and this is something I think is just so incredibly powerful.