1985, Jason Ellis, and all that

25 years ago, on the 22nd of June 1985, one warm Midsummer weekend at home in West Mersea, Jason Ellis of St. Benedict's School in Colchester decided to try and find out what it would be like to be suspended from a noose in his bedroom, with rather fatal consequences.

Accounts varied the following Monday at school from a freak accident on the television with some wire, or that he had killed himself in a self-imposed sadistic little game - which he was prone to doing. The latter rumour was sadly proved correct, and the previously carefree and self-assured 3rd Year at St. Benedict's were suddenly plunged into grief for one of their own taken from them.

I never liked Jason Ellis, I must honestly admit. He was, as the above incident suggests, deliberately mischievous, an "anarchist" in his own words. But it was a phase he was going through, that so many kids of his age have done, and I was shy and awkward at school then; ironically his oddball but secretly rather shy mischief was something I gravitated towards, because I too felt as different to others as he was. Had he lived beyond the age of 15, I am sure he would have grown into the mature and sensitive adult that many of his contemporaries have since become.

It was, I guess, a rite of passage in the process of growing up, a watershed moment in a year that had many of them: also in May 1985 I remember standing at a football match at Leyton Orient and casually hearing on the radio about a terrible fire at Bradford City FC - and then a few weeks later there was the Heysel tragedy at the European Cup Final.

The latter incident, and also an ugly riot at the Luton-Millwall FA Cup tie in February (which Jason rejoiced at), was perhaps the epitome of the ugliness of the 1980's for me, and how I am well reminded never to want to revisit that decade again. To be fair there were individual happier moments, and I have a certain nostalgia for the era from time to time, but it is now firmly in the past, and I wish it to stay there.

But such events are worth remembering too, for future generations' sake.