Whatever Happened to Rick Astley? He Grew Up

 

Whatever happened to Rick Astley? may be an unusual title for a book of short stories set in Africa. Western expectations of African literature demand something more exotic, something at least with connotations of heat, dust and hardship.  Like every place, Africa has more than one side to it and there are as many different experiences as there are people and places. 

Growing up in Zimbabwe in the 1980s, my life was an interesting mixture of experiences.  I lived on a gold mine out in the bush.  There were snakes and scorpions – and fear. It was an unstable time politically in post-Independence Zimbabwe.  Not everyone wanted the ruling party, ZANU-PF, in power and, in retaliation, the government sent North-Korean trained soldiers to Matabeleland to ‘sort them out’. This time of anxiety left an indelible mark on me. In other aspects, my life was ‘normal’ by Western standards.  I went to school, played sport, belonged to the library and watched television. 

Once a week, I listened to Sounds on Saturday, an hour of music videos of the ‘latest hits’ (some of them weren’t quite the latest), incorporating both Zimbabwean and Western music.  It was on Sounds on Saturday that I first saw Rick Astley with his shoulder pads and his jackets and his baby face, taking the steps two at a time and singing. Never gonna give you up, never gonna let you down …’

Did I adore Rick Astley? Not at all.  Did I like him?  Not particularly.  I was never one to hero worship celebrities. Did he leave any impact on my life whatsoever? No.  So why then did I decide, not only to write a story entitled Whatever Happened to Rick Astley? but to make that the title of my collection of short stories? 

It was a Friday evening. My sixteen-year-old daughter was out a friend’s party, and I was trying desperately to stay awake until ten o’clock, when I had to fetch her. I was drinking jasmine green tea and flicking through Facebook, catching up on who was doing what with whom.  There were the usual posts about food and weight loss; pictures of children and pets and the occasional potted plant; adverts for Indian take aways and plumbing services.  And that’s when it hit me: this was life at forty-five.

              There was a time that does not feel so long ago in memory, yet is at least thirty years ago, that I would never have been found at home on a Friday night.  Never.  If it wasn’t a party, it was a film we went to; if not a film, coffee with friends.  Then, when I was older, those dreaded night clubs, pubs and bars. Friday night was THE night to go out.  Nobody who had an ounce of life in them stayed at home on a Friday night.

              My teenage self swore a million times that I would not end up like my parents when I was older.  No, I would be one of those people who partied their way through life.  Not marriage, not children, not a position or a job was going to stop me, and yet there was nothing more comforting than coming home at the end of an evening and finding my mum still up, pottering around in her blue dressing gown.  An enduring image I have is of her sitting at the kitchen table eating a strawberry yoghurt and flicking through copies of Women’s Weekly.

              Of course, I did change – and I am glad I did.  I discovered I wasn’t half the socialite I thought I was. It’s not just that the thought of being out a night club in my forties, mother of two children and a school teacher to boot, sounds horribly dangerous (I can think of nothing worse than being one of those people who tries to hang around with people half their age, knocking back tequila and pretending they are having the time of their lives), but even parties and barbecues fill me with a kind of dread.  Truth is, I don’t even want to go out to the movies and, if someone would like to pop by for coffee, they are most welcome – as long as they are gone by nine thirty.

              I was therefore surprised by what I felt that night whilst sipping my jasmine tea and planning what I would make for lunch the next day.  I felt fear. Real, hard, cold fear, and it wasn’t because I longed for the past, or that I felt there was something else I should be doing with the present.  It was the next stage that frightened me.  The future. The ‘what now?’

              I had always thought of myself as quite an aware sort of person, not the type to be surprised by sudden revelations about my character or the direction of my life path.  I found I was not at all prepared for the changes I faced in my late forties.

              The first major change was my mother’s death six years ago, something I struggled to come to terms with. My father’s mental health deteriorated as dementia set in. On top of the sadness of witnessing this, I felt I had lost both my parents, and for someone who had always been a ‘home baby’, enjoying living near my parents and having them around as my own children grew up, this was very difficult.  For a long time, I floated in a strange sea of grief, not knowing how to move on.

              Empty nest syndrome loomed as my older daughter began to plan what she would do once leaving school.  It was a couple of years away still, but I began to think about it more.  I struggled to imagine what it would be like not to have children at home.  As much as increased time on my own, the freedom to come and go as I please and a reduced laundry pile were appealing, I felt a terrible emptiness, a death almost.

              Throw in the perimenopause and I was a wreck.  The most overwhelming thing was feeling the change in my life both physically and mentally and knowing there was nothing I could do about it.  I couldn’t stop the world.  I had to go on.

              I could have asked whatever happened to Boy George or Jon Bon Jovi for that matter, but it was exactly Rick Astley’s fresh-faced, unsullied, not-yet-disillusioned mien that made me pick him. What had become of him, and could that kind of optimism stand the years?  Where would I find him?  Had he ditched in his career, or had it ditched him?

              When I googled him, I was interested to find out that, unlike many other pop sensations, Rick Astley had given up his career to bring up his daughter.  A noble move for anyone, a man in particular, and especially someone who could have gone on and on to greater heights – or could he?

              Astley knew when to get out, when to make a change and when to do what he wanted to do.  It may be argued he had the money and the means, but he still managed to make a break and do what he truly wanted.

              Whatever Happened to Rick Astley? is the last story in my collection, and its positioning is deliberate. The anthology brings together twenty years of short stories, from my first story published,The Queue, to more recent ones, such as Moving On. Zimbabweans like to dwell on the past.  We talk about it, long for it, idolise it.  We constantly look back to a time when we were richer, happier and healthier. We are afraid of moving on because there is no clear guidance as to what the future holds. We cannot look forward because that future is hazy; we don’t know if it includes all of us or just the chosen few.

              It is understandable then that our literature also dwells in that gulf between the past and the
future, that uneasy present moment of loss and often despair, that reckoning between what has gone
and what is yet to come.
              I like to think that, like Rick Astley, Zimbabweans are due for a comeback and, as a result, our literature is changing direction.  We are exploring new areas and writing new stories. Whatever Happened to Rick Astley? is an acknowledgement of the past and the power it as to shape us, but it is also marks a turning point for me. As I enter a new phase of my life, I am apprehensive yet excited about what is to come.