Song of the Day – Out Here On My Own – Irene Cara

I loved Fame the Movie ( 1980) – It was quite a dark film…not all  fluffy lycra and leg warmers by any means. I went to see it at the cinema with a plaster cast on my leg, as I had fallen off my  moving moped and fractured my knee. Very annoying, as I was  escaping from my mother’s flat when the accident happened. I was in the summer holidays of my second year at college studying performing arts (fame!…I’m gonna live foreva!this is where you start paying …in sweat)) and  had just had my tonsils out. She was having a particularly hard time so  was not able to be much of a nurse had a full time job and really did not need to be nursing some stroppy student as well, ( me? stroppy? I find that very hard to believe!) and I was having a hard time  too, so was not much company for her in her hour of need. The escape was going well until I got to some A road outside Stanmore, and the rain started  thrashing down – the moped went one way, and I went the other, on my knee with only cheese cloth trousers (did I say cheese cloth trousers  out loud?) between me and the road….not a pretty sight..one open knee down to the bone…eek I hope no-one is reading this with their breakfast..

I was very lucky a) not to go under one of the many large hurtling lorries I had passed, and  b) that an ambulance just happened to be passing when I fell off.  Once I had been transported to Stanmore General and  was all plaster-casted and stitched up, I then had to phone my mum and ask her to come and pick me up…..pleeeeeease….very embarrasing. I did escape about a week later, as our relationship did not improve, as my ability to be nice to my mum had  obviously deteriorated even further,  so  with  full plaster cast on my leg, I went the full distance of the Metropolitan line, tripping up all and sunday, back to the squat I was living in a the time in Holloway Road,  with 27  other people and one bathroom. Deep joy. It must have been in that week that we went to see Fame with my mate Joy and mum, in Watford, the cinema round the back. At the end of the film I  wanted to leap out of the cinema and jump on cars dancing at the top of my voice, but the plaster cast put a stop to that. Ah well. I heard this song again on Glee this week and was reminded how much I had liked it at the time. Good vocals Irene!

This was written by sister and brother Lesley and Michael Gore, and Lesley wrote…wait for it! It’s My Party and I’ll Cry if I Want To……