Birthday Blues No.1 #5 - Queen - Bohemian Rhapsody

Bohemian Rhapsody

I am sat on the sofa in our front room. Our tinny record player is playing A Night at the Opera and I am reading along with the lyrics to Bohemian Rhapsody. It terrifies me. Why is this man singing about dying? Who is going to get him?  It upsets me and thrills me at once....The sight of Queen miming in some cavernous pretend concert every week on Top of the Pops each week is equally hypnotic and horrific. I don’t know what dry ice is but it feels like part of the thing that Freddie is singing about, the terrifying thing that is coming to kill him. And then there’s that whole weird echoing face effect. Bismillah. Scaramouche. I don’t know what these words mean and neither do my parents.

I am fascinated by my parents’ little record collection. Aladdin Sane is terrifying because the man on the inside cover is wearing makeup and has no genitals. I ask my mum what wanking means when reading the lyrics. My mum hides that record for the next few years. Not long after my birthday there is a trip to school to find out what it is like.  School that is, not wanking. It is a cold day, the grey of an empty playground.

My Mum, still only 23 or so has a conversation with the headmaster, a Mr O’Shea. Mr O’Shea was a booming red-faced Welshman straight out of central casting and is not impressed that I can already read and write and says to my mum – “What are we supposed to do with him for the next two years?” How I would come to wish they’d made me stay at home.

On my first morning in school, I fell apart in terror. I begged my mother not to go. I am eventually separated from her by a teacher and gently dragged to the front of the assembly where I sit cross legged in fear and tears. On the wall an overhead projection of the words to “Kum Ba Yah.” – to my left a battered old piano, played by some unseen hand, lurches into life. Everyone sings this mad fucking language I don’t yet know, I just sit there and cry. An exasperated teacher repeatedly shushes me. I don’t know anyone here because our house is on one side of the school grounds and most of these kids seem to live in the estate that is the other side. I haven’t made any friends in Maidstone yet. I don’t think I’m going to.

Day one of the 2,500 odd days that will make up school does not go well. Our teacher is Mrs Murcott, a kind old lady. She sits me next to Martin Bond (NOT HIS REAL NAME - I HOPE HIS LIFE TURNED ROUND AND SOMETHING LIKE A KIND CHILDHOOD CAME HIS WAY). I soon find out why no one else is sitting next to him. He smells. He is visibly dirty and a bit odd. At playtime there is more horror. Kids running around, falling over on the concrete, screaming, telling, forming gangs, playing games. Dinner ladies help small girls graze their knees via the medium of the skipping rope. I don’t understand any of this stuff. My childhood has been books and television and none of this. There is British Bulldog, there is kiss chase. There is mainly this thing of kids forming a huge chain of hands saying “Who Wants To Play (name of game) – All join hands” – children would stop their own activity of marbles or hopscotch or whatever and join this long line of kids until they had enough kids to play the game. Invariably about 30 seconds before a teacher rang the bell to stop playing.

Me and Martin Bond are not welcome in any of these games. It is the summer of 76, a ridiculously hot one, outside school the air is thick with punk rock. The independent streak that saw anyone able to form a band had not passed down to us Maidstone-based five years old, and so me and Smelly Martin Bond are not able to do our own thing. We are Genesis, the enemy. The other kids are the Sex Pistols and the Clash.

There will always be bullying in school. And well, me and SMB were sitting ducks. I’m not proud to say it was two six-year-old girls who first saw their chance. I don’t recall their names or faces. Just that sense of powerlessness as I pathetically handed over my lunchbox. Eventually my Mum worked out what was going on and went up the school and these kids were spoken to and it stopped. A few days later, it started again. Two boys in my year, Lee and Ian. They lived for this shit. Ian, in particular, was clearly someone looking for trouble. Again, my Mum came up the school and this time Mr O’Shea decided to catch them in the act.

When he did, he rang the bell.

Everybody was told to line up. He told these boys to come forward. They did so, crying. Now I don’t know if he hit them in front of us with this plimsoll or if he dragged them away to do so. I just remember them crying and the bullying stopped. At least that sort did. Now I was about to enter a whole new world of hell. Name calling.

My mum had given up on the whole sandwich thing and I was now on school dinners, presumably in the hope that I might get through that without handing over a plate of hot food to some terrifying small child. I can remember the name of the boy very well who began the process of ruining my life. His name was Brian. I don’t remember his surname. He looked a bit like a young Beach Boy or infant Nazi.

I had protruding front teeth. Teeth are the curse of my family. My Dad had them all taken out voluntarily as a young man, just sick of all the continual chips and fillings and accidents, his brother smashed his all in on a trip at home as a child. No one escapes it.

In the canteen, Brian the Beach Nazi calls me Bugs Bunny. I don’t understand. Then he calls me Goofy. This gets hysterical laughter from the other kids on our little table. They all suddenly start sticking their teeth out and calling me Goofy. I just sit there and cry. I know instantly this incident is a life-changing one, that it will not go away.

That summer term in school is seemingly unending. The one thing I can do is clock watch. Every minute passed is another triumph. I hide away at playtime. If I am discovered, it’s to be surrounded and called Goofy. Occasionally one kid would say “What’s Up Doc?” like Bugs Bunny. Of course, I am in no position to fight back. The other children are legion and without the imperfections I need to counter.

We are given bottles of full fat milk to drink at seemingly random points of the day. The milk smells like sweat but I drink it because there are children in Africa who would love some sweaty milk. I have learnt not to stand out if I can help it. My Mum comes to pick me up each day with a beaker of Ribena which I guzzle like it’s a reward for survival though it’s probably to get the taste of free milk out of my famous mouth. My sister is in the buggy, my brother is in the womb. Those few hours between getting home and going to bed are the happiest of my day. My parents try their best with the sticks and stones speech. It doesn’t work. I am miserable and being clever doesn’t help either. 

In one of his many attempts to comfort me, my dad points out that Freddie Mercury has mad teeth and he’s a rock star and everyone loves him and he’s a millionaire. It doesn’t work. Freddie Mercury to me is the bloke singing about wanting to die. I haven’t yet been introduced to the concept of suspended disbelief.

And a decade passes, and you keep your love for this song to yourself because by now you’re a teenager and everyone else is cool and you’re just a nerd kid with a record collection that’s yet to find its identity. Queen performs at Live Aid, and everyone begrudgingly admires them and you’re too young and not yet cynical enough to appreciate the career revival their 20 minutes at Wembley gives them. Geldof says, “Give me your money” and you remember the sweaty milk from 1976.

And 30 years or so later you’re sat in a cinema with your 13-year-old daughter and you’re watching Bohemian Rhapsody, a very selective editing of the Freddie Mercury story. You suspend your cynicism because your daughter is very excited about seeing this film and it’s the first time you’ve been to the cinema since your marriage ended a few weeks previously. And Rami Malek steps out in front of a CGI Wembley and the first notes of Bohemian Rhapsody kick in and you’re at once there in the dark as a middle-aged man, and alone at home as a tiny five-year-old, and one of those versions of you is silently sat there with tears streaming down their face. A side glance at your daughter smiling and chomping on popcorn brings you home. Nothing really matters after all.

Current Ranking of Birthday no. 1 – 3

Final Ranking of Birthday no. 1 –  N/A

What Should Have Been Number 1 instead that week -  Midnight Rider by Paul Davidson.