It was a Tuesday lunchtime. What did that mean? That's right, it was new chart day.
Jonathan Murgatroyd came rushing out of the double doors between the library and the forum - the rather pretentiously grand name given to our assembly hall - onto the multi-levelled concrete playground that was designed for sitting and chatting only and bellowed:
"Guess what's Number One! That girl. The one who's 17. Katie Bush!"
We were all rather shocked. I'd heard it a few times and found it rather odd. Kind of impenetrable but haunting all the same. Once I became used to it I got to love it, and today I'm a major Kate Bush fan. But it did take some time.
I never bought any of her singles. I was six months away from buying my final single until 1981, with a small pitsop at Tubeway Army and Squeeze's Up The Junction in 1979, but I didn't ever buy any of Kate's. I've got the lot now, but at the time her music, though catchy and interesting did not move me to buy it. I liked Wings.
Some of the videos she's done over the years are either hot (Sat In Your Lap) or bonkers (that one on a variety show where she's writhing daftly on a peacock chair doing December Will Be Magic Again), but you could never call her boring. She's always surprising, always different, forever unpredictable and to be around at the birth of her career and remember how everyone greeted the news of her number one record with amazement is quite something really. She became a huge star and rightly so.
It wasn't only that though, it was the way we used to be desperate to hear the charts on a Tuesday. It was a really big deal and remained so (for me) for years and years. Not now of course - I'm lucky if I've ever heard the current chart topper, even though I have heard of the bands I've never heard their music. Not knowingly, anyway.
Why did chart-watching become a dated concept? It's such a shame. Along with records shops it's a thing of the past. Sigh. At least I enjoyed it while it lasted.
Oh look, here's that mad vid. She's wearing silk pajamas.
