He'd Like to Come and Meet Us

How old were you? I was eleven. Not a single curly cute hair on my knackers. I’ll never forget it. If you were there in those fucking, freaking, fabulous 70’s, you’ll know what I mean. On a colour TV in the corner inside a veneered cabinet that looked like some freakish cross between something for storage in the Captain’s cabin on a caravel and a cocktail cabinet, there he was. On TOTP. No sign of the Fiddler In The Wig: luck, serendipity if you’re that way inclined. My dad would turn the telly off if he caught sight of the the Yorkshire Groper. Not that anybody even suspected. My dad just didn’t like him – never would say why. So, lucky it wasn’t him. I can’t remember who it was. I was 11, don’t forget. My brother was 16. He was the one interested in pop. We still called it that, hard to believe, I know. I had a book open. The Chrysalids, actually. I often read while the others watched the goggle box. Yes, it was two separate words, then.

So, I wasn’t really watching at all. I don’t know why I looked up. A snaggle-toothed man who looked like a woman with an arm round a fellow band-member’s neck. “There’s a Starman...’

My brother’s mouth was wide open and my Dad’s was too, but he was already asleep, two songs in. Maybe he considered Blackburn – or whoever it actually was – safe enough. My mouth was tight shut. I was speechless and at the same time scared of what might come out if I opened my mouth. By the time Lie-lie-lie, lie-lie-lie was signalling the end of the song I knew that it would be singing. Shit. I went upstairs afterwards, pretending I was going to read John Wyndham. I stared up at the smoke-stained ring on the ceiling, waiting for the sun to go down. I knew, knew for damn certain, that there was a Starman, that He was a Starman and he was waiting in the sky. For me.