We open today with the 1988 hit, Need You Tonight by INXS.
Most of today's sermon will focus on that year. As it's the year I was 12. A children's TV programme in the UK uses this as a format to look at history through the eyes of celebrities. Some speak of the perfection and freedom of being 12, usually the ones who were good at PE while others talk of the realisation they were different and escape into a more creative world of music, literature or art. As discussed last week, I'm not one of life's PE winners.
I was inappropriately reading Riders by Jilly Cooper and dreaming of being fabulously rich and successful and a million miles away from Wilmslow, the off licence I lived above and All Hallows Catholic High School. I was enjoying getting turned on by Michael Hutchence with his raw sex appeal and George Michael with his new album, Faith, and his declarations that he wanted my sex. I didn't quite understand yet that really he didn't.
Not that I was much of a Lolita. I was hiding behind my glasses and curling up with my nose deep in a book. This was the year Matilda by Roald Dahl came out, I would have enjoyed her every bit as much as the strong characters in Riders, here was a little girl who could outdo her teachers and perform magic. Wonderful. At the cinema, I was watching Tom Hanks in Big, working magic through the mighty Zoltan. Dreaming of being a grown up and controlling my destiny.
This was the year Kylie Minogue and Bros bounced onto the pop scene so I was singing along about being so lucky and dropping boys, all the while desperately seeking a hat with no top on so my hair could poke out like Kylie's album cover, the ultimate pineapple.
I wonder what 12 year old me would make of 36 year old me? She wouldn't be amused by the fact I still live at home. She would probably tut that I still bit my nails and ponder that maybe that's why I wasn't allowed to wear a sparkly engagement ring? She'd be happy that I'd been on adventures and had written and had fallen in love and had sex with strange men in strange places. She be surprised that so much remained the same. That the same yearning would exist, dreams of another life and the constant escape to the arts.
Caliban sums it up rather well.
Be not afeard. The isle is full of noises,
Sounds, and sweet airs, that give delight, and hurt not.
Sometimes a thousand twangling instruments
Will hum about mine ears; and sometimes voices,
That, if I then had wak'd after long sleep,
Will make me sleep again; and then, in dreaming,
The clouds methought would open and show riches
Ready to drop upon me, that, when I wak'd,
I cried to dream again.
I leave you with Sunday Worship. Olympically themed of course. The first is safe for work. The second. Depends where you work.
http://www.buzzfeed.com/mjs538/the-best-tom-daley-gifs-of-all-time
http://www.buzzfeed.com/stacylambe/olympics-or-gay-porn?fb_ref=recbar
Enjoy Caliban's song.
Peace be with you.
x
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