You Better Know Yourself, Little Girl

Now, you can call me lame all you like, but this is literally one of the best things that has ever happened to me. 

Let’s go back, let’s go waaaaaaaaaay back in time.  I’m 13,  just-about-been-kissed and I LOVE indie music.  Now, I started off pretending to like indie music because it was a useful way to Get To Talk To Boys but soon the madness took me and my shelves became a-brim with tapes (tapes!  remember tapes?!) and tapes by PWEI, The Wonder Stuff, Ride, Jesus Jones,  The Charlatans, EMF, The Happy Mondays, The Sultans of Ping FC and Carter The Unstoppable Sex machine to name but few.  The better the band, the dumber the name.  I LONGED for an Inspiral Carpets ‘Cool As Fuck’ t-shirt, but these were tricky to come by after some guy in (I think) Cambridge got fined on an obscenity charge.  Heady days… 

Amidst all this were The Railway Children, who weren’t quite pop enough for pop, but were far too pretty for indie.  They were Prindie (sorry, that’s just AWFUL – no wonder they never really caught on).  Anyway, they never really troubled the charts too much, but on the basis of the lead singer being quite heart-stoppingly pretty if you liked that sort of thing (and I did) they were on TOTP a couple of times and I’m pretty sure I still have one of their performances on video somewhere (videos!  remember videos?!).  I and at least 6 other people bought their album and I had a poster (torn out of Smash Hits.  Smash Hits!  Remember Smash Hits?!) of the heart-stopper on my bedroom wall. 

It might actually still be there (I’m not even kidding, I need to clear that room out). 

Anyway, this was a fleeting crush, gone but not quite forgotten.  Back in January of this year, my best friend from school, who we’ll call Eva, came down to stay and we ended up having one of those random giggly conversations that you have at 2 in the morning around “remember that guy you used to fancy” etc.  Now, I have had possibly the worst taste in celebrity crushes that you can possibly imagine.  You can name any embarrassing crush that you care to, and I’ll raise you Les Dennis, Steve Davis, The Jolly Green Giant (he was TALL, ok?) and Richard Clayderman.   I know, I know, I was YOUNG.  So it took us a while to get to the Prindie Boy (Gary Newby).  Where was he now, we mused?? 

Well here’s to our friend The Internet.  In a matter of minutes we’d established that he was alive, well, still making music and living in Japan with a wife and kids.  Married with kids??  Traitorous rat.  When I was 11 and Matt Goss was 21, I fondly imagined that he would wait for me.  Matt Goss has never married…  On some level, he knows that we are meant for one another.  Unfortunately, I’ve since moved on, consigning him to a life of eternal, bewildering solitude.   My bad, Matt.  Loved your brother in Blade II btw…  (This is, somewhat bizarrely, also true of  my other Big Crushes: Matt Dillon, Joaquin Phoenix and Steve Jones.  And technically Rob Pattinson  – although is he old enough to get married yet?? ). Gary, on the other hand had followed his own path.  Maybe he went wandering the world in search of me and by the time he got to the Pacific, the connection was somehow severed.

Not only did we find his whereabouts and marital status but also a website that he himself maintained (couldn’t afford a webmaster eh, Gaz?  Hey, these things happen).  Better yet, it had a messageboard which he obviously read and responded to.  By now it was about 3am and the giggling had reached fever pitch.  Especially when we found the lyrics section that has some of the most inexplicable lyrical phrasings since progressive folk rock discovered acid. 

sample excerpts:
“swimming in a torrent of your foreign imagery”
“the bare walls like semifore say this apartment’s closed down”
“this dream’s a recurring theme so meet your true flaw”.

I’ll spare you any more (you’re welcome).

At this point, we decided it would be appropriate to signal to Gary that I had a crush on him.  So I messaged him with sledgehammer subtlety:

Even reading this again, I’ve  got tears of laughter in my eyes.  I can only apologise if such puerile humour isn’t to your taste.   Anyway, the next day, we were agog with excitement and kept checking back to see if Gary had replied.  Nothing.  Obviously he was busy polishing his imaginary Grammys or something.  Ah well, you win some…

Months passed and every once in a while Eva would say “did he ever reply?” and I would check and he hadn’t.  I even saw that he’d replied to the 2 posters who’d posted after me (this site wasn’t exactly ablaze with activity) but he was evidently choosing to ignore my sincere declaration of love/tawdry offer of intercourse.  This was fair enough.  Plus, the bit about the lyrics was probably a tip-off that the whole thing was a piss-take.  More months passed and I forgot all about it.

Until last night.  Last night I was googling something or other (I can’t remember for the life of me what) and it reminded me of Gary.  I decided to drop in and possibly leave a vaguely Kathy Bates-esque message about him being a big doody for not replying to his Number One Fan.  Hey, it was a Monday night at home andI knew Eva would get a kick out of it in the morning- she and I are easily amused, what can I tell ya.

Anyway.  I clicked in to the message board, scrolled down to my message, clicked in, scrolled down and OH MY GOD!  He had replied!  Brilliant!  Hahaha!  Soooo weird – I hadn’t thought about this in weeks and he’d messaged me a mere 2 days earlier.  This was DESTINY.  Maybe he’d left his wife and wanted me to move in to look after the kids.  I’ve never been to Japan, why not?  I could re-name this blog So Yen-yway (again, I’m so sorry, I don’t know what’s got into me today.  Blame it on the euphoria).

Hang on, this didn’t look right…

OH MY DOUBLE GOD AND ALL THAT IS SACRED AND HOLY!

It wasn’t from Gary.

It was from Gary’s WIFE.  And she doesn’t sound too  happy.

18/07/09
From:  The woman I’m about to realise is Gary’s wife  WITH her email address.  What is she, nuts???  If I WERE Kathy Bates, I could have a field day

Sorry love,
It just ain’t going to happen.  You can be a number one fan, and a number one wannabe Mrs Gary Newby, but the future Mrs Gary Newby doesn’t exist, as there only ever was, is or ever will be one.  Yes love, we are talking about myself, natch.  Now run along, there’s a good girl, and put those Kylie posters back up on the bedroom walls, there’s a good girl………

Kisses from the one and only,
*insert crazy wife name of your choice here*

1) Natch?????  Have they been in Japan since 1982???  That doesn’t seem possible since I’m pretty sure he was living in a Northern Town when I was crushing on him in 1990

2) OH MY GOD!!!  I cannot believe his WIFE has messaged me.

3) I can’t believe he married her.  She’s the very definition of uncool.  Also, am I the ONLY person who has ever fancied him, so she hasn’t had enough practise at becoming cooler in the face of anonymous tawdry offers of  intercourse??  How embarrassing (for me) (and for him) (and possibly by extension her)

4) This is fucking brilliant.  The internet is officially the best invention OF ALL TIME.  How could I possobly imagine, at 13, as I videoed TOTP and carefully folded the sellotape over to make it double-sided and stick his poster to my wall that one day I would get an angry message from his wife???  I wonder if Tim Burgess has got a website I could get involved in?  He has a wife.  I could make a collection of Angry Wife Messages. 

5) Better yet – what if they’ve actually talked about me?  Ooh, I could have provoked a massive argument in the Newby household.  My influence is potentially vast:
“You bastard, you don’t understand how hard it is to deal with your constant stream of fan [sic]”
“Look, Crazy Wife, I thought we’d dealt with this by following your suggestion of moving to the other side of the world from my already limited fanbase. “
“THIS is EXACTLY why I said we should move TO THE MOON.  That’s it, I’m taking the kids to get fitted for spacesuits”  [exits stage left]
[Gary moves towards laptop]
“Hmmm, have a go on her, eh?  Interesting…”

Well Angry Psycho Wife, seeing as I plainly have your attention, how do you like these apples:

How’s your luck?  The ONE weekend that I haven’t checked in  to see if there was a reply is the weekend you took the time to reply.  Weird.    Watched pot and all that.

Anyway, calm down love, no need to get all Sharon Osborne on me.  I now realise that maybe marriage was a tad ambitious.  Tell Gary from me that the wedding’s off but he can still try me on any time he wants.  I’d like him to wear me like a hat.  Maybe you could join in?  Do you look much like Kylie?

Let’s try to get along – we already have so much in common.  As Gary himself would say: “could the sea should banish God from his town”.  And I think we both know what he means by that.  Or, in the words of a comparably great musical philosopher (Lady Gaga): “I wanna roll with him, a hard pair we will be”.

Big Love,
The Future Ms Worn-Like-A-Hat-By-Gary-Newby

I really hope she doesn’t  decide to just ignore me…  Aren’t penpals fun?