Yesterdays life writing class exercise was unsettling to say the least.  We are still looking at memoirs, autobiographies et al, and I was quite intrigued when David Bishop produced a sheet of ‘fringed’ paper.  You know these home made adverts that have tear off phone number strips at the bottom?  Well like that.  He then proceeded to go round the room and hand us one each.  This is what mine said:

Christina S    5.7.88    ‘I owe you nothing’ by Bros

Yep turns out Bros were number 1 on my 18th birthday!  I cannot describe  just how immediately I was transported back to the dark depths of the 1980’s, some of good and some of it bad but all of it better left where it lies! 

Someone had James Blunt – so she is clearly far too young for good taste; someone else had Britney Spears and thankfully two others had Mull of Kintyre by Wings and Come up and see me by Steve Harley and the Cockney Rebel respectively which means I don’t have to be referred to as ‘Eldest’.

(For those of you who don’t know, Bros were like an early prototype of Oasis…or Chas & Dave.  Marginally better looking than both of these but they were not shaping or even shaking the world of music with their brand of easy listening/pop.  Of course I spent the rest of yesterday and all of this morning singing the chorus (because that is all I remember) of ‘I owe you nothing’)

Our exercise was to write a memoir of our 18th birthday and although I feel somewhat of a cheat, for once I am not going to reproduce my class effort.  Mainly because I could not remember much of the day and was only able to write a series of disjointed memories from around that time.    I think David gave us 25 minutes or so and again, I cannot stress how one small strip of paper instantly jerked me back in time. 

So, go Wiki your birthday and find out what was number one when you were 18, and YOU write a memoir.