i've never seen scarface either.

Hands up all of you who are 'into' dance music. Buffoons, all of you. It's witless, soulless trash.

That was me just under ten years ago. I think we've established how fickle I can be but for those of you reading this for the first time I am the crown Princess of the backtrack. I used to hate reggae too, and would whine and writhe in my seat every time my boyfriend lent over to play Lee Scratch Perry, finally sliding noisily to the floor in protest as he stared at me passively.
Now I'm sat here listening to the Orbital practically dancing my way out of the seat and across the room, occasionally breaking off typing to do some kind of nu-rave hand gesture. But that's just me, I am closer to forty than twenty these days.

I'm the same with any popular (for 'popular', read 'good') television series - Father Ted, The Mighty Boosh, Shameless, The Wire, Futurama, Spaced, Flight of the Conchords - I 've let them all sail past me and into the horizon of my interest before I'll realise that hey, this is quite good actually. I'm the twat always slavishly parroting the catchphrases long after any self-respecting individual stopped, if that is, they ever started at all, which is unlikely. That won't stop me though, this is all new stuff to me.
Actually I've just seen that I've listed The Wire there, and I've still yet to see that. That's how behind the times I am - I've come around full circle and am existing in a self-created paradox where I've actually seen the things I claim to have missed.
Such is my studied dis-interest I'm impressed I managed to be present at my own birth.

Feck! Drink! Arse ! Girls!

i fell over myself

I fell over myself trying to please you and you just stepped right over me and carried on walking.
"I'll be back for you," you'd told me, over your shoulder, "you just wait there."
I did, I waited, and time seemed to pass, and always you were on the edge of my peripheral vision, too far away to touch. After some time I started to get up, and brush myself down. I was surprised how much it hurt.

This is what I was doing when you came back,
"What are you doing ?" you said, sounding shocked, "I told you to wait for me."I barely looked at you.
"Hey!" you demanded, sounding petulant and antagonistic, "I told you I'd come back. Here I am."

But by then I was on my feet, and already you seemed smaller, and less important. If I move away you become less of me. Once it felt like it was us against the world, and now the idea of us was crystallised in a tiny fraction of a fossilised past.

I fell over myself trying to please you and you walked all over me.

not millions of fun.

The past is a foreign country. Someone brought this clumsy phrase up at me at the weekend - much like my friend Odge regurgitated a packet of sweets called 'Millions of Fun' during a trip to Cornwall and thus;
"And were they Millions of Fun, Odge ?"
"Fuck, no."
(Check for yourselves, they've actually changed the name of the sweets to just 'Millions'. I suspect the 'Fun' was reported to trading standards, because a mouthful of acidic syrupy goo could never be called 'Fun', unless excessive enjoyment tastes of sugary bile.)
Where the hell was I ?

Oh yes. The past is a foreign country. Not one you'd like to visit either, no matter how good the memories. If the past was a foreign country it would be called Memoralia and would be a hazy, indistinct blob on the end of a more self-important country (namely the Present) and would make you cringe if you were to ever have to look back through photographs of that particular holiday.
"What the HELL was I wearing ?"
"No idea Daise, do you want me to burn this one too ?"
"Yes please."

I, however, tend to revisit Memoralia a lot. For a start, it's right next door. Secondly, the cost is very low - maybe the painful tug of a memory or two - thirdly, it's safe there. Because nothing which happens there can surprise you. Do you think this sounds a bit mad ? Really, don't. We all do it, each and every one of us, more then - on average - three times a day. Show me a person who exists solely in the present and I'll show you an imbecile. A song, a smell, even a colour can remind us of something, someone, sometime and then you're already right back there, fiddling around for your passport and maybe your currency. How long you stay is up to you, but be aware, it is not a country built for living in, only for visiting.
As I said, it's not a bad place, but it is captivating, and it's easy to stay there longer than you'd planned.
However.
I once looked after a lady with no short-term memory. This meant that every fifteen minutes or less she would ask me what my name was or why I was in her house and what I was doing there, but yet she could tell me stories of her childhood, or how she met her husband, and the name of the ship he sailed on in World War II, but not whether she'd had breakfast that morning….and what was my name again ? Her knack for recounting incidents - however minor - which had occurred forty or fifty years previously bordered on uncanny - but there was no obvious cure or method with which to help her train her brain to living in the present. It is significant to note as well that I, as a crass, idiotic twenty-five year old grew frustrated with it, very quickly. Thinking back now I wish I could have supported her more, but I was young and stupid and not altogether patient enough to deal with it.
So, back to the past. There it is, spread gleaming and generous before you, as it sometimes can be, or wrapped in barbed wire with crows circling above, depending on which past it is that you're re-visiting. Just don't stay there too long. As my friend Odge would tell you it is not, in any way, Millions of Fun.