Looking back now
I can see
the ghost of myself
as I used to be
Looking back now
I can see
the ghost of myself
haunting me
It’s an undistinguished room
with a single bed
I used to share with you
at the weekend
Books and records
new wave and disco
We’ll go for a swim
and then the Café Picasso
Looking back now
I can see
the ghost of myself
as I used to be
Looking back now
I can see
the ghost of myself
haunting me
The view down to the pub
of rockabilly boys
Camera crews in Flood Street
for the election
Mohicans, Sloanes
Clones go their own way
and I went to the V&A
Looking back now
I can see
the ghost of myself
wondering what to be
Looking back now
I can see
the ghost of myself
searching for the key
Haunted by my shy self
the things we used to do
The sudden ghost of myself
getting it on with you
1999. I moved into a studio apartment (one living-room/bedroom, kitchen and bathroom) on the Kings Road in Chelsea, London, in 1978. This lyric is a short memoir of living there and sharing it sporadically with a girlfriend. The Chelsea Potter pub was directly over the road, and we would watch the weekend parade of youth tribes on the then hip Kings Road and, on Saturday afternoons, a horde of gay men wandering from the Markham Arms pub down to the Habitat café. The Café Picasso was close by, a Chelsea institution where local bohemians would drink coffee and eat late breakfasts; we would go there for breakfast on Sundays after swimming in the local pool. Mrs Thatcher lived round the corner in Flood Street and, during the 1979 general election, the area was swamped with camera crews covering the campaign that led to her becoming prime minister. The V&A is the Victoria and Albert Museum, a short walk away. I moved out in 1987 when I’d made enough money from the early success of the Pet Shop Boys to buy a flat in Fulham. By then I considered myself to be gay and what I’m haunted by in this lyric is my former ‘straight’ incarnation and its implications.