I was saddened to hear this evening of the death at the age of 61 of Steve Bronski, co-founder of the band Bronski Beat which provided much of the soundtrack of my early twenties. I spent many an hour in the mid-80s dancing away in gay clubs to their up-tempo numbers like Hit That Perfect Beat but, as I’ve mentioned on this blog before, the song Smalltown Boy had a particular resonance for me because it was about thoughts and feelings I knew very well but had never heard expressed in popular music. I really felt like the Smalltown Boy in the song.
Rest in Peace, Steven William Forrest, aka Steve Bronski (1960-2021).
This time of year always fills me with nostalgia. All the talk of new students arriving, taking their first steps on a new life away from home, reminds me of the time many years ago when got on the train in Newcastle and made the long journey to Cambridge with most of my belongings in suitcases. No-one in my family had ever gone to university before I went to Cambridge – and none have gone since, if truth be told!
I’d only been to Cambridge once before (for the interview). When I got there, after several hours’ travel, and sat down in the room in Magdalene College that had been allocated to me, I felt someone (possibly me) had made a terrible mistake and there was no way I would ever feel like I belonged there.
In fact, I’m now feeling second-order nostalgia, because one of my very first blog posts, almost two years ago, was about that trip. I remember sitting in the garden writing it just as I remember sitting in my new room in Cambridge all those years ago thinking “What on Earth am I doing here?”.
Having set off on a sentimental journey, I might as well complete it with this track from Bronski Beat which – for reasons which I hope are obvious – completes the sense of wistfulness. This was released in 1984, a couple of years after I left home, but I’ve never been one to let mere chronology get in the way of self-indulgence.
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In the Dark 