My Desert Island Disks

Lockdown is certainly akin to living on a desert island; we worry about food shortages, many of us have surplus time to fill, and almost all of us have, at some point, considered our own mortality. But on a lighter note, I have found lockdown to be a time of great reflection. With nowhere to go, I have found myself living vicariously through the lens of memory and nostalgia, taking voyages within my own past in the hope of filling my stagnant present. So, without further ado, let me take you on a trip through my memories, in the form of eight songs that conjure up days gone by.

1. Gershwin, Rhapsody in Blue:

This is one of the few pieces of classical music that I can actually name, and which cheers me up whenever I listen to it. As a child, I had a well-worn VHS copy of Disney’s Fantasia 2000. Alongside gems such as Mickey Mouse weaving mischief in The Sorcerer’s Apprentice, and Donald Duck embarking upon Noah’s Ark to the rousing notes of Elgar, my favourite song was one I called ‘the purple man’. Alongside Gershwin’s masterpiece, lines and pastel paintings danced across the screen, each forming a variety of characters. I would watch, enraptured, as a purple-skinned builder abandoned his post to pursue life as a jazz musician. Although I didn’t know it then, a plethora of toybox-coloured characters were breaking, challenging and fulfilling their own American Dreams, to the gorgeous, glittering, Gastby-eqsue backdrop of Gershwin’s 1920s New York. As a small child, it made my eyes grow big, and today my heart swells with nostalgia whenever I hear it.

2. Nina Simone, Ain’t Got No – I Got Life

Even all these years later, I still love Nina Simone. My mum used to have a battered CD of Nina Simone’s Greatest Hits, which lived in the glovebox of her car. I have a very early memory of watching the blue, plastic dolphin air-freshener swinging almost in time to this song, and tapping my hands on the car seat as I sang along. It’s a song that is as joyful as it is melancholy, a song that reminds the listener that even when you feel that you have nothing left, you have life. I was driving in my own car just the other week when this came on the radio, and it reminded me just how lucky I am. Even in the darkest of times, we always have ourselves. As long as our hearts are still beating, there are experiences to be had. If I ever find myself marooned on an island, lost in desperation and desolation, this song could remind me to keep fighting. But also, it’s a banging tune.

3. Horrible Histories, Charles II, King of Bling

While this song may not be as deep and meaningful as the previous two, it perhaps means the most to me. Stick with me here. Aged 9, I didn’t really have any friends. I was a bit of a nerdy, confused child, with a bob haircut that looked like a mushroom, and two front teeth large enough that, if you looked closely enough, you could see the ten commandments written across them. And yet, when I first watched CBBC’s brand new show Horrible Histories, I found my calling. Nothing else brought me unadulterated joy as much as getting home from school and watching an episode.

My most fervent crush was Mat Baynton, aka Charles II, Charles Dickens and Dick Turpin respectively, to the point that I made a private PowerPoint entitled ‘LOVE’, comprising solely of pictures of his face. I applied for the Gory Games spinoff game show, and the Jim’ll Fix It revival, (I think we can all be grateful I wasn’t successful in that application), in the hope of meeting Mat. I wrote him several letters, one of which was written about half an hour before I was violently sick into my duffel coat on the worst Catamaran trip of my entire life, on a holiday from Hell, to Jersey, in 2011. But I got through that awful crossing by listening to Horrible Histories songs, which my dad had illegally ripped off the internet and put onto my mum’s iPod for me. Eventually the production crew sent me a signed photo, which was practically a cease and desist letter at that point.

Little did I know that, aged 19, I would finally meet the entire cast at the premiere of their new BBC series Ghosts. My hands were shaking so much as I waited in line for my DVD boxset to be signed, that I somehow drew all over my jeans with the Sharpie clutched in my clammy fist. Mat Baynton touched my shoulder, and I have never washed the jumper since. It was the best day of my whole entire life. I may have been 19, but my 9-year-old self was ecstatic. I will always be a Bayntonette at heart.

4. Belle and Sebastian, Expectations

“And the head said that you always were a queer one from the start, For careers you say you want to be remembered for your art Your obsessions get you known throughout the school for being strange Making life-size models of the Velvet Underground in clay.”

I truly love Belle and Sebastian. While I like all of their songs, this song really is about me. I was so completely and utterly strange at school, in relation to everyone else, but also completely and utterly me.

One thing I am really proud about is that I have never, not once, changed myself to fit in. At primary school mufti days, even though the girls checked the labels in the back of my clothes, and told everyone that I was wearing boys’ clothes (which I was), I wore what I wanted because that was what I felt comfortable in. In secondary school, while everyone else had long hair, Snapchat and lip gloss, I had a pixie cut and spent my lunchtimes alone in the art room, finding solace amongst ink, paint and paper.

I really did go to the careers room filled with excitement, aged 15, having just discovered Grayson Perry, and told them I wanted to become an artist. To which I received concerned stares and a one-sided print out telling me that making art was not a career option and would leave me depressed and penniless. While I may not be making money from artwork today, I still very much enjoy making it. It puzzles me how, at school, we are fed onto the Pink Floyd ‘Another Brick in the Wall’-esque conveyor belt, and told that every skill or talent we may have is only valuable if we can profit from it. That we should only pursue an interest if it is a viable career choice. Whatever happened to having fun?

Lockdown has reintroduced me to the joy of having a hobby. There is so much satisfaction that can be had in doing something just for the fun of it. I think we all need to strive to forget what we have been taught, and to try and remember to have more fun. There is a brilliant piece of artwork by contemporary artist, Mr Bing, depicting a tombstone inscribed with the words ‘Remember to Have Fun’. I try to picture it whenever I start to get narrow-minded or stressed.

When I was forced to take a year off school, I turned to my mum and said ‘I feel like I’ve been under the ground, digging a tunnel with a plastic spoon. And now I’m finally out.’ I think about that a lot. School had made me so narrow-minded, so set upon getting grades, that getting anywhere felt like digging away at a wall with a tiny plastic spoon, the kind you get in a cafeteria, that was liable to snap at any moment. I never want to feel like that again. I’ve got a second chance at life. I want to have as much fun, and welcome as much happiness into my life, as possible.

5. The Saw Doctors, Exhilarating Sadness

My love of The Saw Doctors is also inspired by my mum’s glovebox CD collection. Although they have a backlist of brilliantly upbeat numbers, I think this song is perhaps the most beautiful. I also feel it perfectly encapsulates the isolated pain and sadness of being a teenager.

“You were sitting in a cafe At a table by the juke-box Making cups of coffee last for years You never heard the fanfare Never saw the sunshine smiling And the summer slipped in unnoticed From beneath your tears

The pounding big bass rhythm Shook the room, shook your little heart All the talk that whistled through you ears You were minding your own business But you were everybody else's And the summer slipped in unnoticed From beneath your tears”

Being a teenager was an incredibly lonely time for me. I missed an entire year of school due to a previously undetected heart condition, which lead to two bouts of heart surgery, and then, perhaps as a result of the stress, my 12-year-old sister developed life-threatening anorexia, which led to her being sent to a regional secure unit.

Without putting too much of a dampener on things, I felt completely isolated from the lives of everyone around me. I would sit by myself, on my own table in the lunch hall, surrounded by stares and whispers, and often brought sandwiches and ate them, sat on my shelf above the toilet, locked in a cubicle, so that I didn’t have to face it. I have never been happier than when I finished my last GCSE exam, and ran out of the exam hall, my tights falling down my legs, until I reached the school gates and never looked back. Every day, when I realise I no longer have to go to school, I get a little rush of happiness. It was a hard time, but I got through it. While the health problems will never entirely be over, I never have to be a teenager again. And that fills me with such a rush of happiness and gratitude. If I can get through that, I can get through anything. And even a desert island would be better than revisiting secondary school.

6. The Smiths, Bigmouth Strikes Again

And now we enter the start of a happier time in my life. Bigmouth Strikes Again makes me feel exhilarated. Although I doubt it’s what Morrissey meant, I finally started using my Big Mouth and let myself shine. I talked to people, I grabbed opportunities, and I made the best of life. Aged 13, I applied to be a journalist for the British Heart Foundation, writing regular articles for their teen magazine. I started a blog called Heart Hobbies, where I made videos for young heart patients every month, to encourage them not to let their condition stop them from living their best life.

After about a year of writing, video making and fundraising, I was awarded a gold Blue Peter badge for ‘inspiring the nation’s children’, by then-editor of Blue Peter, Ewan Vinnicombe. I was invited to spend two days at the Blue Peter studio in Manchester, and to see an episode be filmed. It was between my two surgeries, and during an incredibly draining and stressful time, and I can’t express how much it meant to me.

When I was 16, I applied for the BFI Film Academy at Pinewood Studios. I only found out about it at the last minute, having checked my email spam folder, and applied seconds before midnight on the deadline day. But, by some stroke of magic, I got in. What followed was one of the best experiences of my life. Over several Saturdays, I started to find likeminded misfits, who didn’t mind my awful haircut, and didn’t need to know any of my medical history. I worked as art director on a pretty terrible short film, which felt like the next Tarantino masterpiece at the time.

During the course, I heard of an opportunity run by Screen South. ‘Random Acts’, a funding scheme for 16 to 30-year-old filmmakers, called for a three-minute film idea. The commissioned films would be made for Channel 4, and would receive a £4k budget to get them made. I had just turned 16, and decided to apply, with my short film idea ‘Spectacle’.

In a whirlwind few months, I found myself pitching to a panel at Channel 4 and getting commissioned. I worked with a professional crew, and was practically in charge of the whole process, from casting to location scouting, to editing and set design. Aged 16, I found myself, as a commissioned writer and director. Looking back, I still can’t believe it happened. I was the youngest person ever commissioned. I’ve since pitched again for the BBC, but was sadly unsuccessful, so I realise what a crazy fluke this was. But it taught me a hell of a lot. I went from being a terrified child consumed with imposter syndrome, to slowly gaining a little bit of confidence. It certainly wasn’t smooth sailing, and there were many tears shed along the way, but I’m still incredibly proud of myself. And, Lily Lesser, the girl I chose to play the leading role (and who did an incredible job), recently had a speaking role in The Queen’s Gambit!!

Sometimes, using your big mouth is not a bad thing. Now I know how Joan of Arc felt. (That’s a line from the song by the way – I have not led an army and, thankfully, I have not been burnt at the stake. Yet.)

7. The Cure, Friday I’m in Love

While this doesn’t have a deep-rooted meaning, this is one of the few songs I have felt truly euphoric while listening too. I have always appreciated The Cure; my mum’s best university friend David introduced her to them through his record collection, and she has liked them ever since. But it was not until I was 14 that I truly started to love them.

As a child, my sister was always something of a chameleon; whenever she saw somebody whom she wanted to be friends with, she had a tendency to become them. When she was 12, my sister met a goth called Gemma in the regional secure unit. Gemma worshipped Robert Smith. Whenever she had to eat a meal, she would have a laminated photo of Robert on the table, to help her get through. According to my sister, the lyric from Friday I’m in Love: ‘such a gorgeous sight, to see you eat in the middle of the night’, gave Gemma strength when she needed it most.

So, my sister became a goth. And I mean, she transformed into a goth. Mothers and children would cross to the other side of the street when they saw her coming. We once had a hellish time in an airport when she had to remove all her metal accessories and piercings to get through security, and take off her steel-capped New Rocks, leaving her dressed in a full-length, fishnet body stocking. So committed was she to this look, that I genuinely believed it would last forever. Out went Capital FM, and in came Siouxsie and the Banshees, Joy Division, and The Cure.

And music like that is infectious. I just couldn’t get enough. While I wasn’t allowed to go full Goth, (it was her thing), I donned a black lipstick and listened to The Cure Greatest Hits tape on a Walkman I bought from Sue Ryder (so edgy), every day on the way to college. Despite my good grades, I dropped out of school after my GCSEs and went to the local state college, a place filled with messed-up teenagers, drugs and asbestos, and I had never been happier. I did a Level 3 Extended Diploma in Creative Media Production, and I started to find myself again. The Cure is my soundtrack to a time when my life slowly started to open back up. It was a time when I started to recover.

Aged 18, I finally saw The Cure live at Hyde Park. It was the greatest night of my life. My sister freaked out last minute that she might bump into Gemma (which would have been extremely triggering), so sadly didn’t come, but my parents came instead. Even though the man next to me was so off-his-face that he was eating his own t-shirt, I couldn’t have been more ecstatic. I was one of the only people there who didn’t have greying hair, but if I closed my eyes, I could almost imagine I was at a Cure concert in the 80s. Robert Smith sounded exactly the same as he did on that very first album. And when they played Friday I’m in Love, I jumped up and down in time to my pounding heart and the thrum of the bass guitar. It was a perfect moment.

8. Kings of Convenience, I’d Rather Dance with You

The final song on my list is one that never fails to make me happy. I discovered Kings of Convenience, a Norwegian band, completely by chance, while listening to music at college. The moment that the YouTube algorithm started playing this song, I knew that life would never be the same again. This is a song that, no matter what, whenever I hear it, I want to dance. In fact, I often have to stop everything whenever it comes on, just so that I can jump around the kitchen.

Coming to university has been the best of times, and the worst of times. I have truly never felt happier. A few weeks into my first year, I described that period of my life to my mum, as ‘the credits scene’. It felt like the story was complete: the dark-night-of- the-soul had happened, the training montage was over, and I had finally reached the happy ending. I had found my people; for the first time in my entire life, I had friends. I had lots of friends. I am in a state of perpetual disbelief that I am almost, maybe, ‘popular’. People actually liked me! And for who I was! Nobody expected me to change! The people around me were lovely, nurturing and supportive. The sun was shining. Everything was good. If any song could have represented that time, it would be this one.

And then the pandemic hit. Suddenly, we were all living through a historic event. The first time in my entire life when I had felt like I belonged, where I was actually enjoying my education, was cancelled. I still haven’t seen any of my friends in over a year. But, all is not lost. We still have each other. To come back to Nina Simone, we have life. And university is waiting for me when this is, hopefully, over. Until then, I will keep dancing to Kings of Convenience in my kitchen, and dreaming of better days to come. Of course, nothing is perfect – life never really is. But we have hope on our side, and that, to me, is enough.