In a recent tv interview, Andre Aciman, the author of the novel Call me by your Name was unrepentant about his decision to make the main character just seventeen. It’s such a beautiful age he said, and I knew what he meant. My own romantic gene emerged at the age of 13, inspired by the fair-skinned paper boy who put the South Wales Evening post through our letter box every evening. A couple of years later it gathered momentum with my crush on the curly haired plumber who played air guitar to the Strawbs in the Briton Ferry Rugby club.
By the time I was seventeen the romantic gene was raging and I fell properly in love for the first time with all the joys of passion awoken and reciprocated. And when he gently dumped me for a physiotherapist two years later, I naturally booked into Heartbreak Hotel because that’s the downside of romantic genes.
So I get what Aciman meant when he said that seventeen is a special age, and if you think of it, so did many songwriters like Janis Ian, Stevie Nicks, the Beatles, and even Abba. But my favourite ode to seventeen year olds has to be from Aretha.
