Looking back, looking forwards…
In December 1989, Neil Tennant was yet to write the lyrics to the song that he felt, in 2020, remains the Pet Shops best song, Being Boring. And it was still to come as I wrote those words above in my diary, and yet, for me, it sums up those days, as we entered the nineties, so perfectly.
Now I sit with different faces
In rented rooms and foreign places
All the people I was kissing
Some are here and some are missing
In the nineteen-nineties
I never dreamt that I would get to be
The creature that I always meant to be
But I thought in spite of dreams
You’d be sitting somewhere here with me
‘Cause we were never being boring
We had too much time to find for ourselves
And we were never being boring
We dressed up and fought, then thought: “Make amends”
And we were never holding back or worried that
Time would come to an end
We were always hoping that, looking back
You could always rely on friends
The next decade was to be, at times, equally as hard as the eighties had been on us all, in our communities. My first entry of the new decade had bad news straight away:
Tuesday 2nd January 1990
Nothing seems to have changed very much. Somehow there is an expectation that a new decade, 1990 will magically change everything. But of course nothing happens. New Years Eve at the Bell was a little bit of letdown; no one there I knew really, except Joe. Its changing I guess, new faces, new crowds, new banter. And my thoughts returned to death today, as I heard that three people had died of AIDS. Two friends of friends, the other the actor Ian Charleston: a sort of semi hero of mine, who played one of the brothers in Derek’s film Jubilee back in 1978. It feels that so many people have died already of AIDS sometimes,that it is impossible that I haven’t too. It’s almost like we take an HIV positive status for granted, as the norm nowadays. It’s difficult not to get mad or upset over the situation at work, where 85 % of the budget goes towards heterosexual prevention. So many people have already made so many sacrifices. All those lives taken by mis education in my life alone.. the suicides in the fifties, sixties, even now continue. People having to give up their fullest lives because of societies predudices and now in the last five years at the mercy of an illness we still know so little about. It is difficult to see bright chinks of light sometimes. How many more sacrifices will we need to make in the nineties?
But I really mustn’t get too depressed now. It‘s a new year, a new decade with all the possibilities it holds– and surely that has to be quite exciting?
Looking forwards to the nineteen nineties:
In the nineties it was going to get tougher in some respects. The challenges were going to remain, the pain and the loss was going to continue. The arguments were going to intensify, the doubt was going to go on, divisions would open up – and some things were going to fail. But new organisations were going to be set up, a new generation was going to come onboard and we were still going to have at least some time to party. It was all still to come:
I’d sit with different faces,
In rented rooms and foreign places,
And of all the people I’d been kissing
Some would be there and some would be missing,
In my nineteen-nineties
Your insights and experiences concerning the topics discussed in this section are incredibly valuable. I warmly invite you to share your thoughts to help add to the conversation.
