The Way We Heard: Something's Gotten Hold Of My Heart (January 1989)

THE WAY WE HEARD: SOMETHING'S GOTTEN HOLD OF MY HEART

(January 1989)

Saturday 28 January 1989

I am already sick of 1989. 1989 is already a shit year. It is such a shit year that I’m already thinking I won’t be able to face keeping up my diary. What did I write, on New Years Day? I wrote, quote: ‘It’s a New Year and a new start and we must believe the world can be a better place.’ And I look back at that, just four weeks ago, and I feel like I’ve aged ten years.

I honestly think, I honestly really do, that I won’t be able to have any party at all for my seventeenth, because by March the entire world, possibly the entire universe, and not just here, will have gone to shit.

I know it’s petty, and I’m sorry, and I should be thinking about all those poor people in Lockerbie and Dad says the world will the pay the price for America electing George Bush as President (Dad always says the world will pay the price for America electing whoever as President) and he said ‘I told you so’ the other day because there was a hoohah when American jets shot down somebody else’s jets (Libya? Syria? Somewhere like that. Libya, I think.) And I know I should care about that but I just hurt SO MUCH over Jacob, and fucking Something’s Gotten Hold Of My Heart is No.1 now and that was OUR song, mine and Jacob’s, and I can’t bear to hear it but I can’t help it, I need to hear it, because that way I can still pretend he loves me.

And the ghost’s back.

Mitzi says it’s because, when I first played Something’s Gotten Hold Of My Heart, Mum heard it and insisted on playing her record of the original, which goes back to nineteen-sixty-blah-blah and is just Gene Pitney on his own, which makes you realise how good Marc Almond is. Mitzi says Mum doing that set up a time wobble and let the ghost back in. I said if that happened every time someone played a remake of an old song there’d be so many ghosts there wouldn’t be room for us, but Mitzi said it only happens when both versions are played in the same place and close together in time.

I know Mitzi’s mum’s a psychic and all that, and Mitzi knows more about ghosts than I do, but TIME WOBBLES?? I sometimes wonder if Mitzi’s talking out of her arse, but she’s coming round later with the Ouija board, so we’ll try and find out what the ghost wants this time.

I can’t forgive Jacob. I hate him. I mean, Debbie Franklyn??? DEBBIE FRANKLYN??? That girl’s not a bike, she’s a tandem. A quad bike. How could he want to go out with DEBBIE FRANKLYN??? Every single boy in school, every single boy in this entire town, has had a go at Debbie Franklyn, but I thought Jacob had more sense. I thought he had more morals. I thought HE LOVED ME. And he actually stood there, in my own house, in my own fucking kitchen, and told me he’s IN LOVE WITH DEBBIE FRANKLYN because she’s SMART and FUNNY, and ORIGINAL, and she, quote, ‘GETS HIM’. I know I shouldn’t have thrown that vase, or the fruit bowl, and Mum’s stopping my allowance until they’re paid for, but bloody, bloody, bloody hell. DEBBIE FRANKLYN.

The ghost was here when I woke up this morning. I tried asking it again what it wants, but it just looks so sad. It’s hard to describe exactly what makes a sort of misty cloud, or cloudy mist, look sad, but it sort of droops over the room and I feel it’s crying, somehow, or trying not to cry, and honestly, I know how it feels.

Something’s Gotten Hold Of My Heart. Yeah, Jacob’s gotten hold of my heart and I don’t know how to get it back. I HATE HIM.

I was thinking about last October, when the ghost first came and I thought it was Gran, because we’d just had her funeral and I missed her so much. I kept thinking if I just closed my eyes and wished, really really hard, I’d open them and she’d be there. Obviously I didn’t think she’d actually be there, I’d have had a fit if she’d actually been there, I suppose it was just wishing I could turn back time and she hadn’t died.

Was that a time wobble? Did me wishing I could turn back time actually make time go funny and bring the ghost back? I’ll have to ask Mitzi about that.

Obviously the ghost wasn’t Gran because honestly, if Gran was going to be a ghost she wouldn’t be floating around like a misty cloud, or a cloudy mist, she’d be telling me to stop moping and get over Jacob. I remember, after the first time she met him, when we bumped into her down the High Street and Jacob dropped my hand like it was on fire, as though Gran was going to have a go at him just for holding my hand, and later she said to me, “He’s too handsome for his own good, that one,” and I thought that was a great thing to say, only now I know what she meant. He’s so bloody handsome he can have anyone he wants, but he chose me, and now he’s chosen DEBBIE BLOODY FRANKLYN.

I’d like to know what Gran thought about that. If she could make some sense of that.

I have to stop myself putting Something’s Gotten Hold Of My Heart on the Walkman, because I’ll just start crying and I don’t want to cry over him, I never want to cry over him again, but I know I will. I HATE HIM.

Mitzi said I should go down the library and see if they’ve got anything about the history of the house and whether there’s been any ghost sightings, but the house was only built in 1970, Mum and Dad were the first people to own it, and before they built the houses it was all green fields round here, as Gran said every time she came round. So unless there was some grisly murder in a field, which there could have been, I suppose, it doesn’t seem likely that anyone would have seen anything before.

I remember when we first asked the ghost what it wanted, last October, and it just spelled out ‘HELP’ on the Ouija board. And that was spooky, because what help? Mitzi said it probably meant it was stuck on this plane, and it needed help moving on properly to the Other Side. And I don’t know, it was a stupid thing to do, but I said, “Can you imagine being on a plane, a jet I mean, and suddenly there’s a ghost, floating around, and everyone’s scared witless and no-one knows what to do, but maybe all the ghost wants is get to Spain and have some fun with Spanish ghosts”, and then I laughed, really loud, and it felt strange because it was the first time I’d laughed since Gran died, but it was nice somehow. Mitzi said I’d killed the mood and was a proper fucking menace. I think she was peeved because she couldn’t actually see the ghost, although she said she could definitely feel it.

I didn’t see it again after that, until this Thursday, when I was crying my eyes out over HIM, and there it was, floating around, all sad. So I phoned Mitzi and we said we’d try again.

I hope Mum doesn’t see Mitzi bringing the Ouija board in. Mum would go nuts. Mum doesn’t know about the ghost. It never went anywhere else, only in my room. I didn’t fancy trying to explain to Mum that we had a ghost. I had a ghost.

Had to take a break just then because Mum shouted up that Mitzi was on the phone. Her mum caught her leaving the house with the Ouija board and she was furious. Apparently she went on at Mitzi about this being her calling (Mitzi’s mum’s calling, not Mitzi’s) and Mitzi was taking the piss. So Mitzi told her about my ghost, and her mum told her not to interfere, and to tell me I could come to her if I wanted and she’d do a proper séance, and now what do I do if Mitzi’s mum tells my Mum? My Mum will go apocalyptic, and Dad will probably laugh his head off and I don’t think I can cope with this right now, on top of Jacob and DEBBIE FRANKLYN, and Gran.

It’s back, the ghost. It’s here now, as I’m writing. It looks sad. I know how it feels. Maybe it knows how I feel. Can ghosts do that? Understand us? At least it doesn’t ask questions, or offer opinions. It doesn’t say You’ll Get Over It or Time Heals or any of that crap. It’s just here. Feeling sad, with me.

Anyway, it’ll be ages before I can even think about asking it questions or getting rid of it because Mitzi’s grounded for eternity. I’m not sure it was Mitzi who got rid of it last time anyway, to be honest. It just sort of went, when it was ready. And now it’s come back, for some reason. And actually, that’s fine. It helps, somehow.

Perhaps I can ask it to get one of its mates to put the absolute screaming heebie-jeebies up DEBBIE FRANKLYN. That would help too.

Picture by Nevit Dilmen, free to use at Wikimedia Commons: File:Happy new year tarama.png - Wikimedia Commons

Marc Almond and Gene Pitney sing Something's Gotten Hold Of My Heart: Marc Almond & Gene Pitney - 1989 - Something's Gotten Hold Of My Heart