The Cringe: 1992

 

 

Over twenty years ago, I destroyed most of my teenage diaries. My mum watched me do it, and told me I’d regret it.

‘No I won’t,’ I said, with the kind of deluded conviction you only really have when you’re 18.

Guess what?

I regretted it.

Some survived though, and I don’t know why I chose to keep these in particular, given that rereading them made me cringe so hard I’m pretty sure my bumhole has relocated to somewhere near my spleen.

Please note:

• I was 13 years old
• I fancied pretty much every man on the planet
• I was horse mad
• I had zero self-awareness (I genuinely thought I was going to write and publish a best-selling novel at this age)

Names have been changed. [] indicates adult me’s comments.

23^rd February 1992

Dear Diary,

Hello! Keanu Reeves is so lovely. Brad Pitt is so sexy. (so is KR and Christian Slater) Surrounded by the world’s most hunky men, I dunno! I mean, you have to agree with me!

Oh yeah, today went fine, but I didn’t go out for a ride. Punchie [my on-loan pony] was in one of his better moods and Sali lent me Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure so I can watch one of the most gorgeous blokes in the world strut his stuff. It’s excellent! Ah...but complicaTED though [see what I did there?]

24^th [assume Feb, not properly dated though]

Dear Diary,

Sent home with crippling tummy ache. Sat and talked to LS for an hour. Didn’t have to go up to the yard today.

Stephanie Slater’s (estate agent) kidnapper was found. He is believed to be the killer of Julie Dart – oh, now on the news he’s just claimed that he didn’t kill Julie Dart [Michael Sams was convicted in 1993 of the murder of Julie Dart and the kidnapping of Stephanie Slater]

Lady has claimed that she was horse-whipped by one of Prince Phillip’s hunting thingy people.

Benetton’s ads were banned because they were too ‘explicit’ and had no connection with their clothes. They showed a man dying of AIDS, a slaughtered elephant amongst others.

I’m writing this all down so that in years time I’ll remember what kind of world I lived in at the age of 13.

Shakespeare’s Sister’s ‘Stay’ is still number one in the UK chart.

25^th February

Stayed home. It’s 5 to 8 on a Tuesday. I’m listening to Capital. I’ll do some ironing, hoover and watch Bill and Ted again. I’ve written to Vicki and the damned stamp isn’t sticky, so I’m battling with the glue. Write more soon...dead boring day.

Undated

They’ve built a dual carriage way on the bridle path next to Spencer’s farm! Sali got kicked by Max.

I saw ‘Gleaming the Cube’ with Christian Slater. ‘Gleam the cube’ means to go to the point of break, yah know? [Uhm, nope] Christian has his hair bleached in it and had an ear pierced but by my [scribbled out, I’ll let you imagine what I wrote]

I hope to be a journalist. My poem is to be published in a book!!! This is the first step to stardom! I’m gonna be famous world, ahm gonna show you who I am!! Prepare to have your eyeballs spin back in your head and your tongue to drop out. [I don’t know why I thought journalism = fame]

PS, Bryan Adams is a pretty hot rocker.

Undated ‘The Opal Incident’

First, let me tell you about Opal. She is a chestnut mare, 15.2 hands high and she is a complete nutter. Well a girl called LM had her out on loan.

We (Sali on Chips, me on Punch and L on Opal) decided to ride down to the Moor. Opal reared and L fell off. Terrified, Opal galloped out on to the road and galloped up P_ Rise. Chippie and Punch love a good gallop, and took off after her. Three times she was nearly hit by a van as she galloped uncontrollably around the streets.

Sali was screaming, ‘Opal! Opal!’ and crying. Luckily a man jumped out of his car and chased her down a dead-end-street where we caught her. [I don’t know what to say about this, what we did was so dangerous, but when you’re 13 you don’t think about consequences of things. Sali later bought Opal. I can’t remember what happened to L, I am assuming she recovered from her fall.]

April 17, 92

I have entered a comp to win a jacket identical to the one Christian wears in Kuffs, which I am going to try and see. Un-problemo. It’s a 15. [Kuffs was an excellent film, if anyone has a copy of it pretttty please can I have it? Thanks!]

Sali and I are in lurrve! With two boys we saw out shooting [the boys were out shooting, not us] I think I recognise one. He is rather nice and has a stunning, sexy smile! We hope to see them again. [I think ‘being in love’ meant ‘I have a lady-boner’]

Sali bought some reins from Robyn – they broke. The lesson here is never to buy ANYTHING from Robyn!!

Deeply Dippy by RSF is no. one, it’s a great song [it’s really not]

The W’s have left [the yard] and everything is hunky dory. I feel confident about myself, etc.

The best film I have seen this month is Pacific Heights, which has lots of bonking, swearing, cockroaches and spooky violence in it. [I still benchmark how good films are by those 4 things] I’d recommend it to anyone.

Mum has loaned out the Silence of the Lambs on video, but she won’t let us watch it. But I need research for my novel [is it bad that I still use this excuse? I really hope no-one ever has cause to seize my laptop to see what I’ve been Googling, because they’ll find an almost unhealthy interest in murders, forensics, police procedural and death] 

24 April 92

Dear Diary

Hello. It seems that the whole world flips over into the deepest obscurity when you think of certain male people.

Opal has been ridden by [some very famous male riders, most noted for Olympic show-jumping]

I hope and pray that I have won that Kuffs competition. Please o’Lord [bah haaah, like he’s Irish or something] you have to know just how much it means to me!! PLEEEAAASEE!

Tempest had a rearing fit in the field – in fact all the horses did. I think a storm is brewing. Horses can sense that sort of thing.

Carla’s owners have left her without food, water or a clean bed for four days now. People like that should not be allowed anywhere near horses!! [I like to think that other people on the yard fed Carla and mucked her out, but I can’t remember if they did or not]

I saw a bit of Heathers at Sali’s house – put it this way – it’s not a normal film. In fact it’s ‘damned strange’ [Heathers is now one of my favourite films...and I’d been sneakily watching Twin Peaks, hence the ‘damned strange’ comment]

Robyn’s b-day tomorrow. I have nay bought her a pressie. Old cow [Robyn was about 25 years old, max] yesterday she called Sali ‘a fucking wimp when it comes to horse riding’ and ‘too fucking big for her own boots’

The thing with Robyn is she thinks she knows it all.

Signing off.

Write ya later, dear diary.

26^th [April]

Dear Diary,

I threw a bit of carrot at Max and it hit him on the head. He looked up at the sky!

Saw the rest of Heathers and it’s weird. JD (Christian) blows himself up in the end.

Undated

Dear Diary

I saw ‘Mobsters’. It’s very violent but a good film. N has it on pirate.

J and A are leaving the yard. Rats deserting a sinking ship, heh? First the W_____’s, now the P___’s.

I’ll remember Penny because she farted and sneezed at the same time and went flying across her stable. Funny haha funny peculiar.

I tell you Violet, Noah’s ex is both – she’s really gone strange, I can’t explain.

Hopefully we will see ‘Hook’ on Monday today is Saturday) ‘cause it’s a bank hol but I have to find N’s number first. I’ve practically turned my bedroom inside out. Also saw ‘Dances with Wolves’ it deserves all 7 Oscars – it’s excellent [it’s really not]

Hold on my Heart! I love it! [the one and only time I’ll admit to liking anything to do with Phil Collins] Oh well, I’d better go. I’ve got numbers to find!

Undated

Diary,

Saw Pump Up the Volume. Great film about ‘freedom of speech’ SO BE IT! [you can read my review of PUTV here. It’s not really about freedom of speech at all, but I liked to throw around things I didn’t understand – I still do, as anyone who has got into an argument with me can confirm]

Please God, I have won that jacket, haven’t I? [I still hadn’t won the jacket]

Summer exams – heat waves – dear me!!

This boy went into a newsagents with his little sister (he’s 14) to buy some fags. The cashier had just passed the Marlboro over the counter when the boy’s little sister blurts out, ‘you’re not 16!’

 

Dear Diary,

It’s the 8^th of July. As you can seem I have not written for a while.

Andre Agassi won Wimbledon 1992 against Ivan Snitch [I meant Goran Ivaniševic] and mum and dad are splitting up and my world just fell apart. The match lasted nearly 3 hours. Agassi was most excellent. 3 hour match. [I like how I casually throw in my parents’ divorce in the middle of my Wimbledon review]

SB is getting married and I am going to the wedding.

I am hoping some how I’ll find someone to help me I can’t talk to anyone. God. Yeah, like I’m gonna turn into a regular bible basher.

13 July

I feel so much better, like I’m making a positive step forward to a less cluttered life, with no strings attached [I have no idea what I was wanging on about here, but some 27 years later, absolutely fuck all has changed in this regard]

It’s really time that I calmed down and reorganised my life [I say this every single Monday morning] Again I feel good about myself. No-one can upset me. Hurt me. Put me down. Because you have to have a rhino skin to go through life. Knocking back the insults, rumours that people will say about you. Hooray for a new, happy and organised me. [lies, all lies.]

20 August

Finally we are about to set off on holiday to Cornwall which should be good fun. I bought a beautiful dress for SB’s wedding. It’s blue and very figure hugging. [I had about as much ‘figure’ as string bean when I was 13]

We go back to school soon, what a shame.

I love Edward Furlong. A bit younger than Mr Slater and Mr Reeves, eh?

But anyway, he could be coming to...ENGLAND!!! AND wait for it...HE WANTS TO MEET A GIRL HERE! [I was that girl. In my dreams]

Sazy [Robyn’s horse] is still lame, but his leg has lost a lot of its heat and swelling, which is very good, bit he is still going to be out of work for over six months. Poor Robyn. Punchie is very well and he seems happier than he has been for a while, he has put on weight which he needed to do. His eyes are no longer swollen, sore and weepy.

I suppose I am looking forward to going back to school again...I don’t know.

Sali is a bit bitchy at the mo...I wonder why [I can’t remember why now, but I obviously didn’t want to write it down at the time.]

One month til my birthday and S’s wedding, so I’ve got that to look forward to.

Did I mention I saw Bill and Ted’s Bogus Journey? It’s very good.

Most of what I’ve written further back in this diary is a load of crap, basically. Or am I in a cynical, sarky mood? Oh I don’t know.

Tomorrow I’ll go back to deep and dark thoughts about the universe but being able to see my darling [Punch] at weekends after mom and pop have split puts things into a brighter perspective.

Friday 26 August 1992

One more day to go before we set off! Hooray! Celebrate...holiday...it would be so nice!

I said goodbye to Punchie who was in a good mood. Sazy is still lame.

Well it’s 12.09 and time for lunch – or something [I went to the EL James school of creative writing] Finished packing, but I’m sure there’s something I’ve forgotten.

Check list:

T-shirts – 4 of them

Jeans – 1 pair

Shorts – 3 pairs

Jumpers – 3

Waist coat

Tights, socks, knickers, soap, swimming cossie, flannel, toothbrush, face cream, a ton of books. I think it’s fairly sorted out now.

Later

22

Today is the day! I am sitting in the car ready to set off on some excellent adventure (NOT!) it’s raining which is a bit of a shame. Ah well. nothing’s perfect, eh? Oh, we’ve stopped – about 16 feet away from our house. What the heck...we are off. It should be a fairly boring journey from now on so ta ta.

Luv

Well on our way, now, we are journey so far – one hour. 4 to go.

23^rd

So here we are. The caravan is very nice. There’s no farm, we’re on top of a hill facing over the sea which makes it really windy. It’s all very tacky, a bit like Butlins. No other people here our age [I meant me and my younger sister’s age] but I’m trying not to be so disappointed.

There’s nothing to do, our caravan is miles from any other people.

Is this going to be another disaster holiday? It’s going that way. [this was the first holiday that our dad had taken us on without our mum, and I was an ungrateful brat]

Undated

It is raining. That really horrible ‘spitting’ kind of rain.

It’s dead boring here, maybe that’s why half the people have packed up and left. I thought this place was supposed to be a farm – wrong. It’s got a really tacky club Butlins-type thing which is really dirty and has rubbish everywhere. No doubt maggots in the kitchen!

The bedroom isn’t big enough to swing a gerbil, let alone a cat!

Can I complain?

Yes! [though I really shouldn’t have] There’s no-one here our age. The door of our caravan doesn’t shut and I miss mum and Punchie.

Dad’s gone off somewhere. Still raining. Ohhhhhhh Gooooddddddd!!!!!!

Undated

When I wrote it was over a month ago. Well now I get back to school and who should seem to be the most gorgeous boy in school? None other than Noah. But he fancies Ice Queen Melanie R. there’s no hope. He pushed past the grounds and actually hugged her in front of everyone.

He wrote I Love Melanie R all over the Goldfish Bowl terrapin windows!

Dear me! It’s so unfair. Sigh! Maybe I fancy someone else next week, or someone will fancy me. But it’s not likely, (someone fancying me) I feel bad and down about it, that’s not any good. You cannot get depressed about it, cos it will drag you down.

You see, Noah likes girls with big breasts and a pretty face. It’s depressing.

Today I said a last goodbye to Punch. Well, I couldn’t because he wasn’t there. Anna had taken him out for a ride. This great lump rose in my throat when I collected my things. He has a new grooming kit. Anna and Punch’s Grooming Kit, it says. I wanted to cry. It isn’t fair. I couldn’t say goodbye properly. I gave him up on Saturday morning and Sat eve, Anna’s moved in. Such great sadness fills me as I realise that Punch will soon forget me, and adjust to Anna.

Punchie was my friend and teacher for nearly two years. He has taught me a lot. To ride with confidence but without cockiness, to look after your perfect pony as he deserves to be looked after. So I owe a lot to him. Feeling horribly cut up inside will not help scream and cry.

1^st November 1992

I saw Kuffs which is excellent. White Men Can’t Jump and City of Joy. (City of Joy! Inappropriate title if I ever knew one)

I do not fancy Noah. He’s not worth it ‘cos he’ll never go out with me, plus I’ve totally gone off him. I told you I’d fancy someone else within about a week! [adult me says: if only I could apply this rule to my dating life today, instead of still insisting on chasing down uninterested men that don’t fancy me. 14 year old me was obviously far more sensible than 40 year old me. What happened??]

Re:Watching - Pump Up The Volume

‘Load up on guns and bring your friends, it’s fun to lose and to pretend…’  - Smells Like Teen Spirit, Nirvana.

‘Eat your cereal with a fork and do your homework in the dark’ – Happy Harry Hard-On

Some things are best left on the nostalgia shelf, next to Boots lavender & mint shampoo, petrol blue Kickers, pink lemonade Snapple and wearing skirts over trousers. This is a new series of posts where I’ll look back sometimes not so fondly on the books, films and music of my youth. We’re starting with the 1990 Christian Slater film, Pump Up the Volume.

Ah, Christian Slater! With his Jack Nicholson eyebrows and his knowing chuckle, his bad boy hair and the way he smoked cigarettes, what teenage girl from a small town in England wouldn’t hope to bump into him outside McDonalds? He would take you for rides in his vintage car, he’d have booze and cigarettes. Best of all, he could even dispose of school bullies by making them drink drain un-blocker, or shooting them in the head.

In Pump Up the Volume, he plays nerdy, awkward Mark Hunter (you know he’s awkward and nerdy because he wears glasses and short sleeved, button-down checked shirts) the new kid in school (Hubert Humphrey High, Phoenix, Arizona) who can’t talk to girls but can talk filth over pirate radio waves. Mark’s voice-disguised DJ alter-ego is Happy Harry Hard-On, a priapic, chronic masturbator with an authority problem. He hates his parents, his teachers, the guidance counsellors, any kind of authoritah. 

Nerdgasm

Mark/Harry soon sets about exposing his high school’s unfair expulsion policies, which involve booting pupils out for things like getting pregnant, wearing band badges on your denim jacket or playing sexually explicit rap in the break rooms. 

One night Harry gets a letter from a depressed listener, fellow HHH pupil Malcolm, asking if he should kill himself. Because Harry is a teenage boy and knows jack shit about what you’d say to someone that asks you that, he doesn’t handle things well at first and his later attempts to talk Malcolm out of suicide fail.  Mark/Harry blames himself and Mark decides he’s not going to be Harry anymore because being the representative voice of the yoot is too much for him, especially if his audience are going to kill themselves.

'What if you're a normal reaction to a fucked-up situation?' 

Also listening to his late night shows is Nora Dinero, (Samantha Mathis) the ‘Eat Me Beat Me Lady’ who sends Harry her dirty (and terrible) poetry. Nora is the 1990s take on the manic dream pixie girl. For those not familiar with the manic pixie dream girl trope, she is a female character that serves no other purpose other than to help the male protagonist open up and embrace love / life/ laughter. The manic pixie dream girl will run through puddles barefoot, decide to get a train to Paris after a few beers in a London pub, she’ll be cray-zee and arty and quirky, she’ll be gawky but pretty (not seen a fat manic pixie dream girl yet) It may seem that she has agency, and a personality, but she doesn’t. We only see her viewed through the eyes of the male character.

Mark and Nora meet for the first time

Once Nora discovers Harry’s true identity, she hassles him to ‘get his message out there’. The youth are unhappy! Parents listen! You have forgotten what it was like to be young and angry with the world! That kid what shot himself in the head! Posh popular Paige putting all her stuff in the microwave!

Let me tell you, putting your pearls and medals in the microwave isn’t rebellious or a two fingers up to da man, it’s fucking stupid and dangerous.  Paige escapes only with a broken nose instead of say, third degree burns that require hours of extensive, painful surgery despite the fact she sits IN FRONT OF THE FUCKING LOADED MICROWAVE AND WATCHES IT BLOW UP AND SET FIRE TO HER KITCHEN.

Anyway that’s the basic plot, the authoritahs try and get Harry off the air because he’s a bad influence on the kids but it all turns out OK in the end, fuck you parents of dead kid, it’s all your fault anyway for being mean to him when he said he didn’t want to watch TV with you.

The End. The ending is rushed and unsatisfying. Ambiguous endings to films don’t bother me – one of my favourite film endings is Shutter Island because it’s so open to having whatever resolution the viewer wants it to have. I don’t expect things to be tied up neatly before the final credits roll, but in PUtV it just feels like they didn’t know how to end the story, so they just….end it.

While writing this, I looked up some reviews of the film and comments on Youtube clips. It’s a much loved movie, and a lot of people think its Christian Slater’s best. It’s true that I really like Mark / Harry as a character, but then he’s designed for teenage girls to fall in love with. In fact I fell slightly in love with him all over again, especially during the scene where he’s burning letters from his listeners. There’s something about the way that scene is played and lit that makes you want to scoop Mark up and run, run away with him forever. Then Samantha Mathis ruins it by taking her top off and pointing her perky boobs in his face. Damn you, Mathis!

There are some aspects of PUtV that are still relevant and will always be relevant. Most of us know how it feels to think we don’t fit in anywhere. Most of us feel total, bleak despair at some time in our lives.

Another credit is that Nora and Mark are a good match – he’s not the geek getting the beauty queen (initially he’s crushing on Julia Roberts lookalike, Paige) and Nora’s not the awkward nerd who gets the most popular boy in school because she’s had a makeover and taken off her specs. As an onscreen (and later on real life) couple, they really work. There’s chemistry, even if most of it comes from Mathis’ lustful glances and plump lip licking.

That said, I don’t think this film would ever work outside of an early 1990s setting, and that’s not down to changes with technology or the teenage mind-set. If Harry was at high school now he’d just be podcasting, Instagramming or Snapchatting instead.

 Watching the film again, despite its message of rebelling against authority, or the unfairness of a system that singles out poor and troubled kids, it all seems pretty tame. These kids aren’t going to a school where guns and knives are a constant presence and they don’t live on sprawling, grim, hopeless housing estates. Sure, there’s a different kind of hopelessness, one that’s probably hard to understand when you come from small town England. A lot is made of the little hillside boxes PuTV’s character live in and I don’t think it’s an accident the film is set in state with a desert climate. Bleak council estates might be absent, but thousands of identical houses are present, perhaps to show us the teenage character’s fight to remain individual and distinct in a place where everything looks the same. (you see shots of Mark walking past these houses being built on his way to school.)

The film’s story belongs to the loners and outcasts, but it also belongs to the kids tired of being forced into a mould of popularity and academic achievement.

In April, 1999, Dylan Klebold and Eric Harris shot and killed twelve fellow pupils and one teacher at Columbine High School. In their video diaries (known as ‘The Basement Tapes’) they outlined their plans for destruction. Their reason for the massacre was that they were bullied, lonely outcasts.  They were going to kill the jocks that made their lives hell. As it happened, they killed indiscriminately and not one ‘jock’ was among the victims. They killed outcasts and loners. They killed kids they professed to be like. Their youngest victim was only 14 years old.

Pump Up The Volume and the Columbine massacre bookend the 1990s for me, apart from date-related obviousness.  In 1991, I had started secondary school myself and some of my own fears of going to ‘high’ school were realised. But I didn’t take a gun into school and kill the kids I hated, the kids that picked on me.

 The early 90’s were the age of Take That rubbing jelly on their bare buttocks, salt and vinegar Disco crisps, Panda Pop cola, Body Shop perfume oils, platform shoes, Smash Hits, Just Seventeen, walking home from school with your friends, when everyone wanted a JD Sports drawstring bag and a pair of Adidas Gazelles.  By 1998, Britpop was dying (grunge was already dead) to quote Blur:

We all say ‘don’t want to be alone’

We wear the same clothes, cause we feel the same

We kiss with dry lips when we say goodnight

End of a century Oh it’s nothing special

When I think of PuTV, I think of 13 year old me, crushing on Christian Slater and taping the Top 40 off Capital FM, dressing like Winona Ryder in Heathers, and smearing my mouth with Body Shop watermelon lip gloss. 1999 might have been in the same decade but it was a whole lifetime away.

So sure, watch Pump Up the Volume, whether you haven’t seen it in twenty-seven years, (TWENTY-SEVEN!) or you haven’t seen it at all. It’s not aged well, but it hasn’t aged badly either.   I don’t think things can have changed that much for teenagers, but I feel that Mark, Nora and all us 90s school kids were lucky we didn’t come of age in the internet era.  (though I’d like to have seen Paige live-streaming  blowing up the microwave, ‘U OK hun?’)

Maybe I’ll dig it out in another few years and laugh again at the bit where Nora is gagging for a snog from Mark so much, she stands in front of him with her mouth hanging open. That’s what I’d have done if he was standing in front of me.

KISS ME you hot nerdy piece of ass

Scores on the doors:

For nostalgia purposes: 9/10

For an accurate representation of high school life: 4.5/10

 The soundtrack actually rocks, so it gets another point for that – 5.5/10

Another for repeatedly using Leonard Cohen’s ‘Everybody Knows’ 6.5 /10

Oh the dialogue is excellent and pretty funny, another point… 7.5/10

Christian Slater shirtless for what feels like 40% of the film gets another…… 8.5/10

Total: 17.5 /20