Have you noticed how high tech a lot of museums and tourist attractions are becoming these days. They're not content unless they're bursting to the seems with 3D computer simulations, interactive holograms, teleporters and Hadron Colliders. Not like when I were a lad when museums were all "Do Not Touch" signs, plastic replicas of squirrel droppings and dusty fossils. Having said that, sometimes I long for the simple times. It's like Doctor Who. The modern day monsters might be impressively realistic CGI creations but there's still nothing as scary as a dustbin with a sink plunger on top. Maybe our imaginations worked a little harder back in them days...
All of which brings us to the next stop on our journey south, the Dorchester Dinosaur Museum - where the ancient relics are more than just the skulls of sabre toothed tigers and woolly mammoth tusks. Many of the exhibits here transported me back in time not just to the Jurassic Age, but to the museums of my youth, before everything came with bells, whistles and flashing lights to grab our attention deficient youth. (What a fogey I must sound. Isn't it ace?)
That's not to say this museum was entirely without audio visual or interactive elements. For the former, there was a video of Jurassic Park on continuous loop. And for the latter... who needs computer games when you've got red plastic plates? Simply press the "button" to reveal the answer...
They certainly kept me entertained. Well, them and the huge plastic dinosaur that greeted us as we arrived...
Looking through some old photographs, I came across these pictures of my bedroom wall when I was a young boy. As you can see, my heroes back then weren't pop stars or sporting heroes like you'd find on a lot of boy's walls, but (perhaps unsurprisingly) the same comic book characters who still provide me entertainment and reassurance thirty years later. If I couldn't get to sleep, I could always glance across at my four-colour friends for comfort in the night.
Look - I even had a Spider-Man lampshade... how cool is that?
Most of these posters came from Marvel UK comics of the time which usually had a full-colour pull-out in their centre pages, even when the rest of the comic was printed in black and white. I also recall a Marvel Poster book which gave me some of the better quality images on the wall below. You can even see my own sorry attempts at being a comic artist pinned to the lower wall - just above my young scalp as I hold the camera up high behind me to get this picture.
As I grew older, I took the posters from my bedroom wall and pinned them up in the box room at the top of the stairs. My teenage bedroom wall gave fewer clues to my comics addiction, although the duvet cover, headboard full of stickers and box of comics at the side of the bed show that I'd hardly left my heroes behind.
Looking back at these photos now, I feel a warm sense of nostalgia for my childhood bedroom. I was happy there, safe, and always had something to keep me entertained. Part of me wishes I could go back, to simpler times, when life wasn't so damned complicated. Of course, I'd probably hate it... but it'd be nice to take a few days holiday there at least.
What did your teenage bedroom look like? Who were the heroes on your walls? Do you have photographs? Consider this a meme challenge... do you accept?
When I was a kid, back in the late 70s and early 80s, our annual family holiday would be to a small pebble-dash bungalow at Reighton Gap near Filey. Me, my mum and my dad. I look back on those holidays with enormous fondness.
The bungalow was located on the edge of Reighton Sands holiday village and every day I'd get on my scooter and ride down to the beach, up to the slot machines or round to one of the three shops in the area that sold old American comics from spinner racks.
Even though I was only 7 or 8, I'd go off by myself on that scooter and my parents wouldn't worry because it was a different time, a safer time, far more innocent. Plus they trusted me not to go near the sea, not to go of with strangers, not to get in any trouble. I was a good kid. Not an only child but my brother and sister were both much older and had left home so I was used to playing by myself.
Most days Mum and Dad would take me down to the beach. At the bottom of the hill from the bungalow a long concrete path led down from the clifftops to the beach where the remains of old wartime sea defences and bunkers were gradually dissolving back into the sand. I'd take my Star Wars figures down to the beach - not all of them, but usually Luke, R2D2 and my battered up landspeeder. Where better than to play at being on Tatooine?
We'd also go on day trips to Filey, Scarborough, Bridlington, Flamborough and Whitby. Sometimes we'd go up to Seamer Market so Dad could look at the cattle. We'd have fish and chips and ice cream and all the usual seaside treats. They're some of my happiest childhood memories despite the fact that around this time my dad was made redundant from his long standing job as a car auctioneer and set about starting up his own auction site on the outskirts of Leeds. Most holidays Dad would drive back there twice a week to run the auctions. Money was tight but that never stopped my parents from spoiling me. I still remember one year (1980, it turns out) Mum and I walked 3 and a half miles to the nearby village of Hunmanby to buy a Spider-Man Summer Special I'd seen there the day before. We couldn't afford both bus fair and the 40p comic below. It was one of the best comics I ever owned.
A couple of weeks back, I took Mum back to Reighton Gap for the first time in years. (Dad was invited too but he passed - "too many hills!") We stopped off in Filey for fish and chips then drove down the coast to park on the cliffs at Reighton, sitting in the sunshine and watching the sea.
The old bungalow is long gone, demolished years ago along with most of its neighbours. I expected it would have been replaced by more caravans but the site itself is mostly just a grassy field now, the odd bungalow still standing, but mostly empty land. The concrete path from the cliff to the beach has crumbled and broken up and the old WWII sea defences have been bashed to sand by the sea. Reighton Sands holiday village remains, just over the rise, but all the old shops with their spinner racks of American comics have disappeared and the slot machine arcade where I played Pac Man, Space Invaders and Dragon's Lair has been replaced with a flashy bar. It's all changed from when I was a kid; all except the view from those cliffs. Some things are forever - the sky, the sea, and how much I love my mum and dad.
Summer's here and the time is right for playing ball games in the street.
Am I the only one who feels suddenly intimidated?
I have two major concerns when it comes to ball games in the street, and they have little to do with broken windows. They go a little something like this...
1) I have limited sporting ability. While I could occasionally, in my youth, catch a cricket ball if pressed to do so, this was largely a survival mechanism. Better it hit me in the palm of my hand than smack in the face, chest or unmentionables. I cannot, however, and never have been able to, kick a football. You know when you're walking down the street and two urchins are moving (passing?) a ball back and forth and one of them sends it swerving towards you and the "decent bloke" thing to do is stop (trap?) it with your foot and send (shoot?) it back to them? I cannot do this. If I try, I am more than likely to fall on my arse... or break somebody's window.
2) Balls are weapons. No, this isn't a Freudian thing. In my youth, I was, on various occasions the direct victim of GBHBB (general bodily harm by ball - come on, keep up). Tennis balls used as forearm-to-face missiles. Footballs booted with such savage velocity that they'd have taken off the heads of lesser men. Basketballs bounced repeatedly on my supine fizzog till it became porridgey mush. Well, you get the picture.
Through all that time, the one thought that kept me going (through what could, quite reasonably, have been dubbed My Childhood / Adolescence of Terror) was the idea that "Things won't always be this way". That I would reach a point in my life when I was older, when I commanded the respect of an adult, when I actually intimidated kids with balls more than they intimidated me.
So following my trawl through the 50s and 60s, we finally reach the decade that gave us Showaddywaddy, The Love Boat, Pong, Margaret Thatcher, bell-bottoms, the three day week and... me.
As already established, this isn't my Top Ten Songs From The 70s (hence no Born To Run at #1), just songs about that dismal decade...
Let's begin in the year of my birth with this wistful ditty about two young lovers caught between smoking pot and playing pool in the afternoon, working nights at the drive-thru, and screwing in a motel room all the rest of the time. None of which I did myself in 1972, given that I was 0.
I was the one who let you know I was sorry ever after 74-75
Don't look at me, I was just a toddler.
It amuses me that when you type "Connells" into wikipedia it takes you to a page about a British estate agent, with a small link saying "Do you mean the American rock band?" Their marketing team must be working overtime.
A song actually written and recorded in the year it describes, though the experience of being a teenager trapped in a home with squabbling parents and dreaming of rock 'n' roll escape is pretty much timeless (I'm sure Samuel Pepys covered it in his own teenage diaries).
I ran into my room And I fell down on my knees Well, I thought that fifteen Was gonna be a breeze I picked up my guitar To blast away the clouds But somebody in the next room yelled "You gotta turn that damn thing down!"
Billy Corgan is scary. Look at him in this video. No, look at him. Why has no one ever cast him as a vampire in a really scary horror film? Eh? Because it wouldn't get past the censors, that's why.
Even scarier is the pun-ishing name of the album this came from: Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness. Ouch.
Like Billy Joel's We Didn't Start The Fire, Chris traces his life as a songwriter, beginning in '75. It's a much more personal journey than Joel's This Day In History romp, and yet, through all the ups and downs of fame and fortune, Squeeze's top man still has to conclude, "I've never been so happy as 1975." There's a lesson there somewhere.
Ten years after Bryan Adams had his moment in the sun, the Ataris turn up to celebrate roller-rinks, air hockey tables and "We Are The Champions". Given that Bryan Adams was only 9 in the Summer of '69 and the Ataris didn't form until the mid 90s, they were probably foetuses duruing the year in question. Then again, I had some of my happiest times as a foetus...
From the underrated Rock 'n' Roll album - at the time, everybody said "it's not as good as Heartbreaker or Gold", but that's only because they hadn't heard some of the dreck he's released since. That said, given that this song is all about the year of Ryan's birth... he's still achieved a heck of a lot more with his life than I have, and I had a two year head start!
Anthemic guitar pop from the valleys... could the Alarm be the 80s Manics? If you're in the right frame of mind, this song could bring a tear to the eye. If you're in the wrong frame of mind, those tears will be buffeted by laughter.
Another autobiographical piece from another performer younger than myself...
I was born in the year punk broke Days before the king was dead
I'm old enough to remember Elvis's death on the TV (though for some reason, Lennon's death a couple of years later failed to register). Ed Harcourt appears to view the 70s as the birth of the Me-Generation that would rise to power in the 80s...
Born in the '70s (No, we don't really give a fuck about you) Born in the '70s (No we don't really give a fuck about you)
And while Ed was crawling round in his nappies, Joe Strummer and co. were really not giving a fuck. There was no Elvis, no Beatles and no Rolling Stones in 1977 - just The Clash. And the toilet didn't work.
Anyone who leaves a "but I wasn't even born in the 70s, Rol, nyah nyah nyah" comment wins a very special price. A Silver Jubilee tankard. To the face.
But... what's your favourite Song of the Seventies?
0
comments
