Mourning England in Song. # 1 Destiny - Zero 7 2001

Readying myself for what feels like a forced emigration, I am putting together the soundtrack of a whole life spent living in England...

As I make preparations to leave the UK, I'm getting hit by what I can only describe as a grief. Apart from 3 years spent in Asia as a young child, as my father was sent abroad, England has been my home for all of my 64 years. I never imagined in my darkest of thoughts that there would ever come a time when I felt excluded and pushed out of my own country - driven out by an unrelenting and bitter campaign to remove from me the basic rights on which I thought I could absolutely rely. Because I am a trans woman and because the UK has now become the pariah of Western nations - on a national basis going further even than Trump's America in its rush to delegitimise our right to be known and treated as women - I feel that I have no choice but to go. 

I cannot live in a country where I am told I cannot urinate in a women's toilet anymore (after almost twenty years of doing so without the slightest issue), or use a women's changing room, even though I would be ridiculed and beaten up if I used a men's facility. 

I cannot live in a country where, as a woman, to be hospitalised means being put into a male ward. I cannot live in a country where to tangle with the law - not that it has ever happened - would mean being sent to a male prison, either to be put in solitary confinement or to be subject to rape and abuse. 

I cannot live in a country where new legislation outlawing harassment of women doesn't apply to me, a place where I am not allowed to compete in women's sports, or where, were I to be a young person I'd be segregated and institutionally bullied at school. I cannot live in a country where all these rights used to exist for me, where I did everything asked of me, legally, socially, medically, and more, to qualify for the protections that British law clearly and unequivocally gave me, only to see all that law suddenly erased without cause. Where a Supreme Court burned over 50 years of statute and accepted practice one morning in April 2025, for no reason, and where even my own so-called centre-left MP says that he will speak against me and those like me. Where over a decade of media obsession with people like me has been soaked in lies that seem to have no end.

So I must leave, with my partner. The decision is made - and preparations are now underway full speed to make it happen. I am lucky to have an EU passport, but it means leaving friends and family and it's an emotional wrench on a scale that I am only now beginning to take on. This is not a choice I ever wanted to make - so much of what's processing inside me roots in the pure and naked unfairness of it all, the way that twisted prejudice has won out in Britain, the way that I and others in my community have been lied to. Others with my background, or similar, will make their own decisions - to stay and stick it out, or go. Some cannot go - they lack the resource - or perhaps they are just too damned tired. I get that, and I wish them all well. I do hold in mind the privilege I have - my broadly portable job, the partner who wants to go too, our savings, the fact that my beautiful children are all grown up and no longer dependents. I know many others who aren't in that position - they'd get out if they could. 

I am done with Britain. I trusted my country. Did what it told me to do. It betrayed me, over and over. 

Leaving a country where you have spent pretty much your whole life, where you were born, went to school, whose football team you have supported, whose Olympic medals you have cheered on, where you have worked, married, had children, bought and sold houses, paid taxes, to which you have felt pleased to return when the wheels of the plane touched the tarmac after a foreign holiday, rips it out of you. It is doing that to me at least. Not least because it feels like it's wrecking the narrative of your whole life. What's about to happen, wasn't supposed to happen. I have been through many loses in my life, but I never, ever, thought I'd be dealing with this one.

But I must deal with it, and I will. 

Part of doing that is involving a great deal of reflection about my life. The inspiration for this post, and the many that will come after it, is that process - specifically thinking about moments in my life and the memories of them that I hold. Memories which are vastly concentrated into this country. I realised that in so many cases, the memory - of a time, a place, an event, a relationship, or simply how I felt about myself, life and the future - sat within the context of a song. I have been fortunate to live within a country that has since the 1950s been one of the two international powerhouses of popular music, and often within or close to the epicentre of its music scene, London (a city where every major band tours and where any night of the week you can hear any kind of music in hundreds of venues, from stadia to sweaty rooms above pubs).

I am and have been since very young a huge music fan. Thousands of albums, tens of thousands of tracks. My life certainly has a soundtrack - it feels like it has little structure without it. 

And this is that soundtrack. It's part of me letting go of the place where all these memories, all this meaning, were made. 

This is the first post in a series - 64 in all - which begin at the year of my birth, 1962, and end in 2026. For each year, I will share and write about a song that means something to me - a song that first appeared that year. Sometimes I will have come across that song on its release, sometimes years later. It won't be chronological, as I'll let my inclination guide me, but I hope to get through them all.

For many of these years, especially 1970-1990, I could easily have picked ten or more songs, and if so I may mention some contenders too. For a few later years it was down to one or two. It's been really, really tough to single out one song that nosed ahead of the others - but my choice has always been a song that speaks to me, that brings back feelings, memories, joy, hopes, sometimes tears. 

It's the story of my life - a life made in England - through music. And part of my saying goodbye.

******

Destiny - Zero 7 (from Simple Things). 

I could probably fill each of the years from 2001-2005 with songs from this, Zero 7's debut album and their follow up When it Falls of three years later. 

Destiny remains close to the top of my all-time playlist a quarter of a century later. I play it all the time. Gorgeous and languid, the fluid, bewitching melody is held together by a repeating guitar phrase and a mellow run of descending bass notes that soothe the soul. There are the flourishes, the programmed flute notes, that little trilling synth, the sun-drenched pace of the whole thing. But it's the vocal that most stays with you. Originally written with and for Sophie Barker, later collaboration with Sia saw both lace their beautiful, wandering vocals around the dense and dreamy soundscape. I loved also that the lyrics referenced returning to London, where I lived, near the huge and sleepy River Thames.

It brings back the Mediterranean for me too. Long afternoons looking at the deep blue of the sea around Skopelos, lazing by our holiday rental villa. Our children happily occupied, playing by the pool or colouring. Me with a beer in my hand, stretched out in the shade, the headphones of my Discman (or was it a very first generation iPod?) on. A trip to the beach later maybe, followed by a wander into town for dinner. Nothing could go wrong. Life felt good. 

The version here is my favourite live one. There's also the official video - rotoscoped (think A-ha and Take on Me) which I never took to. The gentle joy and ownership of the song in this performance does it for me...

Honourable mentions also from 2001: Jus 1 Kiss by Basement Jaxx (very much in the same kind of Med holiday space) and Spiller's Groovejet (If this ain't love) featuring the newly discovered Sophie Ellis-Bextor, called "ice-filtered summer funk" by one critic.

See you next time...