There was a time when the pirouetting brunette in the red
floaty dress or black cat suit warbling about her homecoming to lost love Heathcliff
was known by a less than flattering name in the Page family household.
My granddad Jim, less than impressed by what he deemed her
caterwauling on TV one evening proclaimed he wished to she’d go back out and
lose herself on those wiley windy moors once again then promptly christened her
with the moniker with which she has been referred to jokingly by my family ever
since, that of Kate “Bloody “Bush.
A name which stuck so vividly in my 3 year old memory that it wasn’t until i was a good few years
older that I realised she didn’t actually
in fact have a very interesting middle name starting with B.
So it’s fair to say through the power of family influence I
probably wasn’t one of Kate’s biggest fans growing up.
In fact around my teenage years she was probably like Annie Lennox,
George Michael and Simply Red, one of those artists that I constantly bemoaned
got nominated for a Brit award regardless of whether they’d actually done
anything.
But as the years started running up that hill and hounds of
love drove away any peer pressure of who I should pledge a fans allegiance to, I
started to notice that her music has a real wow quality to it.
And not only that , in reading and watching programmes about
her in the run up to her sell out gigs recently I noticed just how similar in
personality I am to the lovely miss B.
For on one hand you have the Kate stage persona that we all
recognise that’s outgoing, over dramatic and outrageous, wildly putting on a show,
acting out the characters in her songs so you can see the story that she is
telling you.
Then in stark contrast you have the quiet reserved little
lady talking modestly about the things she’s achieved in her life and who chose
to shy away from the spotlight at the peak of her career to bring up a son who
meant so much more to her than whether her latest album was number one this week.
And in some ways i can relate to that dual personality with
much affinity.
In real life as just plain old Nina page I am a very shy
almost timid person in some social situations, put me with people I don’t know
and expect me to make conversation I go to pieces until I really get to know
them or them me, ditto standing up and speaking publicly in front of a crowd .
But give me an amazing outfit, a set of d.j decks or a
computer keyboard and different persona and suddenly i don’t mind being the
centre of attention in a room full of people I’ve never met before.
And along with dee vinyl, my dj alter ego who behind her amazing outfits and cracking
tunes can be the first on the dance floor and last to leave , Girl from the
neck down is the far more articulate and fluent version of myself that I struggle
to convey as I stutter and mumble along as the real life action Nina.
Maybe one day though she’ll have the confidence to take
centre stage on her own and my , what a comeback that would be.
THE UNEDITED VERSION OF MY " GIRL FROM THE NECK DOWN " COLUMN PIECE FOR THE MEDWAY MESSENGER ON 8/09/14
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