I was just reminiscing about when I was younger. I was sitting here, 3.30am – don’t worry, it’s normal – and the song top of the world was running through my mind:

I’m on the top of the world

Looking down on creation

And the blah blah blah blah 

The only thing I see,

He’s my friend he’s my guide 

and he’ll never leave my side

I’m so happy that my saviour set me free.

Then I thought no, somethings wrong it should be:

The love that I found ever since you been around

Your love’s put me at the top of the world.

At the time, in my dream / thoughts, I wasn’t aware of the other version, I’d been raised in a very Christian house, we went to school and church & that was it, it was a lovely family, at church & Sunday school we sang those religious songs, it was one of the better ones! 

Years later I’d hear the original “real version” 

Of Top of the world by the Carpenters, and finally it dawned on me the song had been stolen & re-worded in order to suffocate and subdue the children.

I didn’t see it that way at the time, I was just a happy kid, happy in my world, then I met this guy, my school friend Dave, he was so funny & bright & naughty, we got up to all sorts together, he thought I was strange, he liked strange friends, and I knew from some years earlier he was a bit disturbed from when his sister was killed in this dreadful car crash, it had been in all the papers, I never forgot it, cos I knew him as a school boy.

When Dave reached 16 he got this girlfriend & I didn’t see so much of him, we left school and he got married, I found new friends & went on just fine.

It was only years later I came to realise how influential Dave had been on me, he showed me you could have fun without all the boring church stuff, so when I came to really question my beliefs I realised I had no real faith, I hardly cared about religion anymore, and I was quite angry really about all the time wasted being weird and strange to my school friends, they were all getting to learn about love & relationships while I was just telling everyone about how Jesus said this and that, and how wrong they all were, what fools! They had no idea the path that lay ahead was madness & chaos!

Thing was, it was the other way around – I was the one who was going horribly wrong! I had no clue what I was talking about, no one cared what I thought anyhow, and I accepted that people were nasty and didn’t care about anything but their own greed & satisfaction.

Only later did I realise I was wrong and they were right, it was very confusing, people thought I was mentally retarded, or just mad, and I thought I was too, I was quite used to it, if people treated me like a total cunt, I treated them the same way. I remember I met this Christian guy at work, he said  Christians go to church to be with other Christians, I just thought he was probably gay and just desperate, I didn’t mind that cos I liked gay blokes myself, they were much kinder that straights, I hardly noticed in fact that nearly all my close friends  were gay, or at least a bit suspect, we never talked about it so I didn’t ask.

When I finally realised I really wasn’t gay in the slightest, I still had my gay friends with me, quite a lot of them were still in the closet themselves, they  didn’t want to be gay cos of all the abuse they got, also I only realised much later that many of them had been so tolerant waiting for me to “come out” they had been secretly pretending to like me for different reasons than I understood at the time, many had been openly gay and waiting for me to join them, even though I had been such an arsehole for going on about homos and poofs like it was so funny, not realising that must have sounded annoying!

To this day I’m as likely to be humming the Christian version of Top of the World as I am the real version of, and it’s still to this day confusing and irritating! In fact I’m very often singing songs like Onward Christian soldiers at he top,of my lungs, inside I mean, long before I realise I don’t feel that way at all!! Music is weird like that, it stays with you!