After a week away with friends from university days and a nostalgic trip back to the 80s, I have been listening to Slow Moving Millie’s album ‘Renditions’, 80s hits, stripped back to their bones, without MTV production values or Stock, Aitken and Waterman hi-NRG.

As much as I admire Bananarama for all they achieved, I love this new version of ‘Love in the First Degree’. For the first time I have actually listened to the words as I haven’t been distracted by the male dancers on the original video. Or the insane costumes. This is the only Youtube clip I could find, live on Radio 5, but you get the gist… It’s sweet.

More nostalgia to follow…

Very excited to be on Judi Spiers show tomorrow morning between 11 and 11.30 on BBC Radio Devon. I grew up with Judi on the telly and it will be so cool to chat with her. She just gave me a name check on today’s show and said that The Generation Game is the ‘best debut novel she has ever read’!

Tune in if you can…

It was about a decade later when I got my first and didn’t know then that it would become an iconic piece of 80s memorabilia. In a record shop in Exeter, a friend and I each bought a ‘Choose Wham!” (not ‘Choose Life’) t-shirt and put them on in the ladies in Debenhams. We then strutted around the shops… A couple of years later, I ran the world in those same streets and had the t-shirt for that too.

The 80s was a  great time to be a student, not only because we had full grants, but because we had a prime target: Thatcher. The campus at Lancaster was always full of Smash the Tories, etc. And no student was a proper student without a Smiths t-shirt of some description.

These days slogan t-shirts have lost their power and tend to be ‘humorous’ or ironic (‘Sex and Drugs and Sausage Rolls’ was one I saw around Teignmouth last summer). They are also printed up by school-leavers, hen-and-stag parties, and any group or sports club going.

I don’t wear them now I am a woman of a certain age (apart from as pyjama tops). But I still treasure my Choose Wham t-shirt as it sums up my teenage years. Not quite cool but proud of it.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-17076512

The Candy Shop is now a security shop. But I still drive past every now and then, just so I can remember…

There are far more famous connections to Belgrave Road. Agatha Christie was baptised in All Saints Church which was just over the road from us. And further down, towards the seafront, is the Grosvenor, made notorious recently from the hilarious Channel 4 documentary, The Hotel.

A few months ago I visited my old school in Teignmouth and talked to some English students about the book. They asked me who would play Philippa if the novel was ever made into a television drama. I turned the question back on them, and one lad suggested Miranda Hart. Genius. But I only discovered today that Miranda was born in Torquay in 1972… How cool is that?

Just love the way men could dress back then, anyhow they wanted. A flowery choker and a hairy chest could sit well together (admittedly looking like David Essex helped – not sure my dad could have got away with it)…

… so I was only a 7 year old when this song was in the charts but, whenever I hear it, I go straight back to the sweet shop where we lived in Torquay at the time. This was the setting for my debut novel The Generation Game and indeed Hold me Close is ‘played’ twice in the book at significant moments. There’s something about the cheesy words, his slight cockney accent, the flares, the cheap Top of the Pops set that makes me long for that simpler world.

Or is that just plain old nostalgia…? And is there anything wrong with that?

I love the Graffiti Grannys from Cornwall! They work undercover.  They are as anonymous as Banksy. And they knit.

Keep an eye out for knitted awesomeness – the grannies have left their mark as far away as NYC… Could be coming to a place near you soon…

So I’ve been thinking about sitcoms I miss, short-lived series that fizzled out for one reason or another. And how situation comedy can really show the stark reality and absurdity of life.

The High Life

Can you remember the theatrical The High Life about the flight crew of  Air Scotia flying out of Prestwick airport and starring Alan Cumming before he was whisked off to Hollywood?

Then there was Cardiac Arrest which showcased Helen Baxendale and Andrew Lancel, currently bad boy Frank in Coronation Street. It was a mix of dark humour and hard-hitting attack on the NHS – just pre-New Labour.

The Goodies

Can’t forget The Goodies for its surreal take on life. British people of a certain generation can be put into two camps: The Goodies or Monty Python. For me, it has to be the former.

Then there was a much more down-to-earth sitcom that was on a Friday night with Mel Smith and Louisa Rix, called Colin’s Sandwich. This was gentle and quiet but with a wry humour – a British Rail clerk who wanted to be a writer.

There must be many more sitcoms that could have gone on longer but stopped short for one reason or another…. Can you think of any?

Colin's Sandwich

As a failed diarist myself, I am envious of those who have managed this consistent task. How else can memories be preserved so precisely – not just the when and wheres but the feelings and emotions and dreams? Samuel Pepys and Ann Frank’s diaries are at the same time intimately personal and important social commentary.  They personalise history.

It’s not just these real-life accounts. Fictional diaries offer another truth of the times in which they were written.  Adrian Mole passes through the eighties, nineties and noughties and we hear of his life set against the backdrop of cultural, economic and social changes. He is the ultimate unreliable narrator but we, the reader, can see the reality of this fiction – thanks to Sue Townsend’s great skill as a writer.

Other favourite fictional diaries include: The Diary of a Nobody by George Grosssmith and Weedon Grosssmith, Bridget Jones’s Diary by Helen Fielding, Any Human Heart by William Boyd, Diary of a Wimpy Kid by Jeff Kinney

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-africa-16645594

Yesterday in Malawi there was a peacfeul yet powerful protest by women who are angered at being attacked and even stripped for wearing trousers, instead of national dress. Seodi White, lawyer and activist, has been an inspiration, standing up for women’s right to freedom. She said:  “failure to act now in sending a strong message of protest will create widespread actions against women that will be difficult to contain in future’.

It’s really hard to believe that in this day and age a woman cannot dress how she wants, assumptions being made about her from what she wears.  But sexism is still interwoven throughout all societies, east and west alike, nowhere is free of it. Jokes, porn, strippers, rape – it’s all on the spectrum of men still needing power over women.

So I am thankful for strong women like Seodi White who will put their lives on the line for a fairer world, a world where everyone - female and male - can live to their full potential and be the person they were created to be.

For those of you who have read my debut novel, The Generation Game, you will know that I have a mild obsession for quiz shows from the 70s ands 80s. In fact, one of my characters, an old lady called Wink, likes to watch Blockbusters of an evening. Well, it was was one of the best. And Bob was a gentleman who I rank up there with the greatest of hosts, even Sir Brucie.

My thoughts are with his family. He will be sadly missed.