The long hot Summers of childhood

It wasn’t just that one of 1976, I’m sure.  Perhaps we’re programmed to only remember sunny Summer days and the things we did on them, because I swear that all my childhood years were absolutely full of them.  No dull, rainy July mornings linger in my memory at all.

Instead the memories are characterised by the feeling of hot black tarmac under my bare feet when I ventured out onto the quiet bit of cul-de-sac out the front without my flipflops - footwear abandoned because the soles had already cracked and split like wafers.  Hard gritty lumps of road stuck to my naked heels like chocolate chips in cookie dough, is there something masochistic about that I wonder, a tactile pleasure bordering on pain? - and I loved the smell;  how do you describe the smell of hot tar?  Kind of oily, burnt-toasty, strangely satisfying.

We sucked on Ice Pops that melted so quickly you could drink the last few mouthfuls: undiluted fruity syrup so deliciously intense in flavour it almost made you wince.

There was the Summer gang - 1973 or ’74 perhaps.  Jill, Liz, Richard and me, rolling down grass hills, riding our bikes over home-made ramps of splintery planks, jarring our wrists on landing and carrying on regardless.  Bouncing psychedelic Super Balls against the back of the houses for as long as we could keep it up.  Thud thud thud; wall ground hand, over and over and over, getting the trajectory just right so you barely had to move.  I loved my Super Ball, me.

We didn’t want John to join our gang of Nerds-cum-Secret Agents.  We weren't sporty or tough in the least, we were normally pale, bookish children, but Summer meant being outdoors and uncharacteristically physical.  Liz's kid brother was too babyish, so we set a really hard initiation test.  It was dangerous, you had to jump off the high wall and land on Jill’s concrete patio, do some high-kick 'French Skipping' moves, other stuff too that we figured would test the limits of endurance for an average 9 year old.  All in a set order as well, ten or maybe twelve tricky manoeuvres which had to be remembered and successfully completed to join.  One of them might have been a spelling test - we were the kids who'd had first editions of Watership Down after all.  We met in Liz’s dad’s garage, sitting on old paint cans with dented lids or the faded deckchair sticky with abandoned spiderwebs and their previous inhabitants' dismembered legs.  It felt important and secret, even though we didn’t really have a clue what to do….  apart from setting difficult initiation tests for future members who didn’t exist.

John didn't get in, by the way.  We may have engineered that slightly.

It’s 32 degrees here today, I believe.  Just like it was every single day of every single school Summer holiday, the ones in the ‘70s that lasted for years and years.

Lost for words - part one

The long dusty Summer continues without let-up -  sorry for lack of posting lately – less screen time, more sunscreen time.  Work, sleep, rat-catching (no killing involved, I would never - just relocation), books, freckle-cultivation, too much Prosecco (if there is such a thing).... is that it?

Well, not completely...   I also had a fab time at Latitude Festival, which must be just about the friendliest place on earth, quite otherworldly, and where I mistook the map symbol of a Pepsi Max Drink Station for the obelisk where I was supposed to meet a friend and ended up looking for a monolith akin to Nelson's Column when in fact it was all of about four foot tall.  But it worked, it all worked, and we pals all found each other amongst the crowd of thousands.

The whole experience has taken on a bit of an Alice In Wonderland feel now, and what with all that confusion re. size – first the tiny huge obelisk and then later, when texting my location: “We’re near big fish flagpole” and the hilarious reply: “Can only see a little red goldfish on a stick”.  When does a little red goldfish on a stick become a big fish flagpole?  Or is it all just relative?  Big… or little… who knows which is which in such heady surroundings?  And who cares - you are away from the violent, screaming world and in this escapist bubble, where complete strangers offer you their pink fondant fancies whilst bass lines rumble like trains through your guts.

I was only there for one day so missed quite a bit, but loved what I caught.  I thoroughly enjoyed Sleeper who were even better than I’d expected after all these years (also prompting a new girl crush on Louise Wener who was on top form and utterly charming).  Wolf Alice also hit the spot for me; I’d been really looking forward to seeing them and especially their performance of Giant Peach during which, as hoped, they wigged-out full Hawkwind-style...

It was also the first time in a long, long while that I’ve woken up in the morning with smudged eye make-up all over my face because I was too lazy to take it off the night before.  Ooh, a long while!

But there will be far better reviews and summaries floating around and I'm happy to leave more detailed descriptions to those who do it best; for now this is just a post to break the silence and to rediscover my blogging mojo which has been AWOL for almost as long as it is since I've slept in my make-up.  Irony is that I have had a few things I’d like to write about but just haven’t been able to find the words and the energy, somehow.

Talking of lost words, though, I’ve deliberately/foolishly labelled this as a 'part one' to force myself into following it up with another post, hopefully before the Summer is out, which is about a beautiful book I recently bought, and once I can actually catch those elusive words and put them into some semblance of order they might land on these pages soon.  In the meantime, thanks for bearing with me!

RIP Peter Firmin

Such a shame today to read of the death of Peter Firmin, co-creator of the much-loved Clangers, Pogles Wood and more.  There's a lovely piece about him here.

In the meantime, I wrote about an exhibition of his work a couple of years ago, so - please forgive the lazy repetition today - here it is again as a reminder of some of his superb creations, ones that are sure to evoke many happy childhood memories for those of us of a certain age.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

(First posted September 2016)

The other day a friend from the West Country sent me this fantastic card in the post.

She would be staying in London for a while, cat-sitting, she said - did I have time to get down to the East End? So I made time for a flying visit yesterday.

We met at Liverpool Street, from where she, in her vivid blue jumper and me, in my new bright green coat, took a rainbow-coloured No. 8 bus

to see a large pink stripey cat (not the one my friend is looking after.)

More on that in a minute.

First we stopped at what must surely be one of the most memorable and wonderful East End caffs (or is it a restaurant?  or a greasy spoon?) in the city - E Pellicci.  Everyone is greeted like an old friend, many are old friends - it's no wonder.  Hugs, chat, banter.  Total warmth.  It's noisy, vibrant... just real.  A far cry from the English tea room vibe which proliferates around my locality - sweet as that can be for visits by ageing relatives, sometimes I feel what I can only describe as an underlying sense of uptightness to our rural establishments.  You couldn't get much further from uptight at this place, though.  I had a lovely cuppa and sponge pudding with custard and learned how to say my friend's name with an authentic Italian accent.  Loudly!  The ebullience of our host was contagious. The surroundings are interesting too - beautiful Italian art deco marquetry on the walls had been put in during the 1940s, the old cash till (think Open All Hours) is still in use; the same warm and welcoming family have run this place for over a hundred years on hospitality and home cooking - why change?

After good conversation and a sugar fix, my friend and I dash on up to the Bethnal Green Museum of Childhood.

This is where we see Bagpuss... and Professor Yaffle..

... as part of a small, but beautiful, exhibition of the fabulous world of Smallfilms - Oliver Postgate and Peter Firmin's creations that are forever lodged in the memories of those of us who spent our childhood in their joyous company.

Bagpuss was a bit after my time - first aired in 1974 - so, lovely as he and his companions are, I didn't get that same special thrill at seeing him.

I got my special thrill from seeing these, ohh! the Pogles!  My favourite!

Look at little Tog on the right.  He was some indeterminate species of animal, sort of squirrel-like with rabbity feet.  Apparently they all had to have weights in their feet to stop them falling over during filming.

"I'll be respectable when I'm dead, Mrs Pogle," says Amos (on the left). "Until then, I'll shout and sing as I like".  Go for it Amos!

The witch was extremely scary, I mean really scary, and even scarier to see pinned up under glass yesterday.  Apparently a number of stories were planned for the witch but were never screened because the BBC thought them too frightening.   I tried to take a photo of her but I think she cursed it as all I ended up with was a nasty black smudge.

If you remember Pogles' Wood, then you'll no doubt recall Noggin the Nog. I love the artwork for this 2-D animation classic.  I'm currently working on a book with human characters and, quite coincidentally, I'd recently been looking at some of Peter Firmin's illustrations for inspiration, so it was brilliant to see his work for real.  Look at this wonderful art for the Ice Dragon!

And then of course we have The Clangers.

They were a bit larger than I expected.  Peter Firmin's wife knitted them and apparently some of their space-age clothes were inspired by pictures of Twiggy.

Well yes.

And you can't have Clangers without Froglets, nor the Soup Dragon....

"Don't you remember the Iron Chicken?" I heard a young bearded man say to his friend in disbelief.

Don't you remember the Iron Chicken?!  I couldn't get a good shot of said chicken, but I must say it was lovely to see him again after all these years.

Well, it was good to see them all, after all these years.

Abstract moment of the week #9

I think the manufacturers of these protective gloves must be having a bit of a laugh.

Tribute to a remarkable, much-loved man

If you’ve been following the life and times of Matt Johnson and The The, you probably know that they have just embarked on a really special comeback tour but also that last weekend in the midst of this, Matt’s father died unexpectedly.   I know that he and his brother, and the whole family, are absolutely devastated at this huge loss and my heart goes out to them all; my deepest sympathies.  It is so very sad and perhaps especially poignant at this time.  Eddie was a remarkable, much-loved man and I can say this with conviction because he had also become very dear to me personally.

I am actually still struggling to believe he’s gone.  He was such a big character that I just felt like he'd go on forever.  I was going to pop round this week for our usual cup of tea and a natter (and a big slice of cake or a Belgian bun, he always treated me!) - something I’ve done dozens of times in the last couple of years.  Through the deep sadness following the illness and death of my good friend, his eldest son Andrew, it was something so positive; we had formed a lovely, easy connection of our own.  At first it was really that we had Andy in common and took comfort from that, but it soon became a unique friendship in its own right.  It was perhaps an unlikely bond given our age difference, but Eddie had a presence and timelessness about him which meant you could relate on so many levels and age was no barrier at all.  As I said to a friend the other day, how many octogenarians are likely to talk to you about anything and everything from jellied eels to Johnny Marr?!  I remember coming home from seeing him one day, smiling to myself about the fact that our two hour conversation had just ranged through so many subjects, from Brexit to Auf Wiedersehen Pet to pease pudding to J G Thirlwell!  

Just like Andy, he was a fantastic conversationalist with a cheeky sense of humour and I never tired of the tales of the extraordinary life he had led in his eighty-plus years.  This was a man who had mingled with some of the East End’s most notorious characters in his days as landlord of a popular pub, a venue where he’d also had the Small Faces rehearse in an upstairs room.   He had also coped with more than his fair share of tragedy.  And he could tell you fascinating stories about the past, but was not stuck in it.  We frequently talked about politics and current affairs, and he taught me a lot; in return he seemed to enjoy it when I shared some of my knowledge on subjects close to my heart such as birds and nature.  

But even more than all the things we enjoyed in conversation, he was caring, warm and generous, a great father to his immensely talented sons, and he allowed me to feel so included, being supportive and interested in what I was doing too, and  I valued that.  I just wish I could pop round for a cup of tea with him now and tell him - but I think, and hope, he knew.  

I shall miss him greatly.

Growing up fast

I mentioned in my last post how "it felt like I’d grown up fast" the night I first went to a gig without my friends.   I also mentioned that I had quite liberal parents, who had no issues with me seeing bands and getting into punk in my early teens.  I suspect they also knew that the smell of Polo mints on my breath whenever they picked me up from a night out was only there to hide the whiff of cigarettes and alcohol, but they never said anything.  So it was all pretty good, back in ’78 and ’79, and I have such fond, vivid memories of those exciting and undoubtedly pivotal years. 

Things changed just a couple of years later when my parents’ marriage finally fell apart.

It had been on its last legs for a long while, to be honest.  I’ve made no secret of it: my mum suffered from clinical depression throughout her adult life and had had some pretty horrendous episodes.  At the same time, she and my dad were becoming increasingly incompatible; the two things were somewhat intertwined.  To cut a long story short, my father left home when I was 17, after a weird and painful break-up.  He's never shown any interest in me or my life in all the years since, which feels more shitty now in retrospect than it did at the start,  but that's another story.  Going back to when they split, I witnessed a lot of shouting, tears, and even some broken crockery.  Oh and mum playing David Bowie’s ‘Aladdin Sane’ album in the early hours (I couldn’t fault her taste there – a great album - but I can’t disassociate it from that period!)

Anyway, when my father finally left, my older sister had just moved out too, and so there was a really odd and uncomfortable period in my life when it was just me and my mum living at home, and my mum was suffering from depression.  She'd been hospitalised for it before so I was familiar with the scenario.  Sometimes she would spend days on end in bed, and I’d have to go and get her prescriptions and take care of her, which - being a snotty, self-obsessed teenager - I resented.  It's kind of what makes you resilient, though - natural teenage selfishness!   At other times she’d be up and about but behaving strangely – her actions could be a bit over-the-top or misjudged.   Not that it was always easy then for me to discern between what was strange and what was normal, because she was my mother – she was all I knew.  However, I realise that this is the reason why I sometimes still feel a certain discomfort if life around me gets a bit chaotic, and why I also feel the need to steer clear of anyone or any situation which might be toxic in some way. Do you know what I mean?  Some people seem to get off on all that in a weird way, but there are so many toxic people - toxic relationships - that can bleed into your psyche if you let them.   I just can’t go there, I need to protect myself .  One whiff of toxicity (it’s just like that smell of Polo mints masking cigarettes and alcohol) and I’m out.

But at the same time, something very positive came out of it, because I learned that I simply couldn’t depend on either parent at that time and thus, ultimately, I only have myself.  It sounds harsh but it was as if there was no role model I could really lean on mentally because one was absent and the other could be a bit doolally.   It felt as if there was no big, strong, 100% reliable, parent figure who could make everything alright.  Whilst leaving me feeling a little cast adrift -  unsafe, even - it also quickly instilled in me a very deep and strong sense of self-reliance, self-sufficiency.   I'm a big believer in the notion that we all need to take responsibility for ourselves and our lives, so much so that it irks me when other people don't.   I read somewhere recently that this often happens when the parents of teenagers divorce (which may be a different effect to that on those who are very young); their children quickly learn to develop their independence.

People have far worse situations to deal with when growing up so I've nothing to complain about, but the way our experiences shape us is something that fascinates me and I'm interested in the psychology of why we develop the way we do, and where some of our attitudes and characteristics come from.  I'm pretty sure the way I feel about self-reliance is as a result of my odd home life in those teenage years, and it developed in me an innate determination to achieve my personal goals and not to expect nor depend on help. Maybe it’s no bad thing sometimes to have to grow up a little fast.

A lighter post to follow next time!

Anniversary snapshots: 28th May 1978

On May 28^th 1978 Adam & the Ants were booked to play at my local venue.  I was barely able to contain my excitement when I heard.  It was only five months since I’d been to my first gig, when Siouxsie & the Banshees had played at the same place.  Five months is a long time when you’re 14 and in that interim the venue had become my regular haunt, usually twice a week (depending on the demands of homework).  My three friends and I always went together to watch bands, drink cider and mingle with fellow punk fans.

We felt at home there in a way we rarely did anywhere else; we were all outsiders together.  Mostly punks, a few rock types, a couple of hippies and one or two general oddballs.  The club occasionally played host to artists who were not too well-known to overcrowd its intimate small-town setting, but were established or culty enough to have made it into the music papers or perhaps recorded sessions for John Peel.  Bands like Adam & the Ants who, in spite of not even having recorded their first single yet, had gained an underground following I’d read about.

And they were coming to my town!  Presumably with Jordan – the embodiment of London art punk outrageousness, the most outstanding looking woman I’d seen in the whole of this brave new underworld  - I was in awe.

But my friends couldn’t come that night.  At fourteen, and female, was I brave enough to go on my own and spend the whole evening there without them? 

“Well we’re going down to the Jazz Club later, so you can come home with us,” my mum said – meaning that she and my dad would be in the adjacent bar for the latter part of the night and my lift home was assured.  It was a deal.  (I was deprived of any excuse to rebel against them - they were too liberal!)

It was a warm, light evening as  I walked across town on my own, then waited nervously outside the door to get in, along with some unfamiliar faces who’d clearly come down from London - but the queue wasn’t as big as I’d expected.  And then I noticed the hand-written sign and overheard the conversation filtering through the line:  Adam & the Ants had cancelled.

So on this date 40 years ago I didn't actually see Adam & the Ants, or Jordan.  I saw The Automatics on my own instead.  Regulars at the Marquee and with a vocalist who'd briefly been a member of the Boys beforehand,  they were pretty good (listening to them again now, they sound quite power pop too).  And being on my own had its advantages;  I got chatted up by the guitarist from a local band who was also there on his own, a bloke a fair bit older than me, about 20.

 “Can I buy you a drink?” he asked. 

“Oh yes, a pint please”.   

“A pint of what…?” 

“Beer”, I replied helpfully, thinking myself very grown up.

And then we stood together with our drinks, hardly able to talk above the noise.  I think the ‘beer’ went to my head a bit, because it wasn’t long before I turned round and kissed him full on the lips. Well, he looked like Mick Jones.  I think I took him a little by surprise.

When the evening ended, it was a little awkward, as I had to wait for my parents, which didn’t seem very cool.  But ‘Mick Jones’ and me said lovely if slightly clumsy goodbyes and, even without Adam & The Ants, I’d had a great evening.  Then I waited there in the foyer alone, as the last few people filed out of the hall.  A great big older punk bloke whom I’d never seen before – a Londoner, I think, maybe he'd been part of the Automatics' entourage – stopped and looked at me. 

“Do you wanna fuck?”  he asked, just like that.  Straight to the point.

I don’t think he was too chuffed when I said a polite “No thank you”, trying not to show my disbelief.

With that, he called me a “boiler” and marched out the door – just before my mum and dad appeared and drove me home - I didn't tell them.

It felt like I’d grown up pretty fast that night.

Adam & The Ants did come to my town in the end – in March the following year, six months before the release of  Dirk Wears White Sox.; they were great.  And I stood and watched them with the bloke who’d bought me that pint, as we'd been going out together for 2 weeks.

The Automatics: When The Tanks Roll Over Poland Again b/w Watch Her

1978

Adam & The Ants: Zerox Machine 

1979

Look through any window

A very quick visual post today as the result of an afternoon out with friends yesterday.  Our outing included, but was not limited to, some of my favourite things: sunshine, spotty pigs, peacocks (elegantly named Dave and Steve), gargoyles, olde stuffe, a maze, beehives and macaroni cheese.  All in the same place too, just five minutes' walk from my home, but where I've never before ventured beyond the gates.  I've just looked through the bars longingly, many times, like a child pressing her nose against the toy shop window. Sometimes, ironically, places of interest are so nearby that you simply don't take advantage of them. "Oh, but I can go there any time," you think, and as a result you don't.

Anyway, yesterday I did, and took quite a few pics, including some of the spotty pigs and Dave, or was it Steve?  I merely ate the macaroni cheese.  We saw bees chasing a gardener (they didn't like the vibrations of the lawnmower, apparently) and fed the carp in the moat.  Of all the many beautiful, ancient and quirky sights we enjoyed, though, there was another favourite thing - or perhaps theme -  that kept catching my eye, all within this one location. What is is it about old and often tatty doors and windows that I find so appealing?  Something mysterious perhaps - and the idea that they are portals, that so many people have passed through or peered through them, over decades - or centuries.   I'm glad that now includes me.

(Inside the high, creepy attic - which easily fitted the
criteria for this)