Bad memories and a disc

This week we go back a bit to the early days of the great rebellion against longs clad outside school wearing red with white side panel trim sports shorts with a one a half inch inseam around 1980/1 when we were getting the hang of leaving subtle hints for what records I wanted for Christmas and birthdays.

It also came around a period of more hifi awareness around getting decent crackle free sound from them so I had a brush to clean them with having been suitably chastised by my my older brother for leaving the Beach Boys 20 Golden Greats in chocolate stains at the age of 12.

Anyway come Christmas hint had worked as a copy of the current AC/DC album from July that year, Back In Black was in the christmas pile with the £3.99 price sticker on it.

This was the album issued after Bon Scott had died in February and Brian Robertson had taken on vocal duties and remains one of their finest with a few pictures of eternal schoolboy Angus Young on the inner sleeve who I wanted to resemble in class time.

Anyhow time went on, a copy of Denim And Leather, the Saxon album and a original 1967 3d cover version of Their Satanic Majesties Request on green Decca arrived as disaster struck.

Note I mentioned about keeping records clean and Dad had suggested using neat Surgical Spirit BP on a cloth so thinking he might have a point I duly cleaned them with it.

The first signs something was wrong was white thick paste covering the stylus after a couple track that never went and then any lined inners developed funny wavy lines that seemed to stick to the surface of the record.

One day borrowing my older brothers part tube hifi, I decided to tape the AC/DC album which went well enough on his hand tweaked and tuned cassette deck.

A couple of days later all hell broke loose as seemly he'd gone to play a record and the stylus had become unglued from the holder on the cantilever necessitating replacement which wasn't cheap and this was because of the Surgical Spirit had melted the glue used at the factor to bond the stylus tip to it.

I did well to escape a sore behind but that now mean any records treated could no longer be played on anyone elses equipment and didn't play to well on mine as the gunk on my stylus needed cleaning every few tracks.

In time those records left because of those issues that had ironically started with the nobel idea of clean discs leaving cassette copies.

Recently I managed to get a near perfect copy of that AC/DC album that matches the very copy I had rather than a later repressing that sounded great and more importantly but all the emotional baggage associated with it to bed.

Getting set for Summer

Warm week and one that takes us though spring into summer so obviously we get the point Summer Specials traditionally would of been announced but DC Thomson have made announcements but it's been very low key this time.

Traditionally you'd of bought them from places like train stations - perhaps you remember going on your hols by train? - as much newsagents when you arrived at your destination and today if boys were more dressed as we recall they'd have the Smartphone out, checking connections.

The Pink Panther Show was a big thing with me - the spin off from the classic Pink Panther films with the hapless Inspector Clouseau - shown typically on saturday afternoons to the point of having plushies and calendars.

It was the same era as the beige Viewfinder I used to own was in heavy usage and recently I was able to find a three reel set for my new-old Viewfinder based upon the Pink Panther's cartoon adventures although it had to got from the United States so will take around a fortnight to come while I relive the adventures of the classic 1966 Batman with Adam West having got a set which while made in 1978, was just the original tv tie-in set from 1966 reprinted.

There will be a Part II on the other blog once we've run though a couple of planned entries.

Words

For once I'm actually a bit ahead of myself with a combination of both getting up a bit earlier and blitzing chores and generally being a bit more "on the ball" across the days.

I can remember some of the conversations around that kind of thing well cos while I'd never say I was perfect and did need some chastising, the thing that still rankles a bit with me is really the way in which there appeared to be double standards.

I may of left things in ways that of been untidy or in the way but say dad may of left heaps of things for over a month and nothing got said about that that or the time I was told to reduce my coats down to three from four cos did had nowhere to put all his - over ten - by mum.

He might of threatened grevious bodily harm to a cat after a bird but my protesting was a "you are under my roof and if you have any issues with my actions leave" matter.

It's that kind of thing really but women can be just as capable of it too - and some certainly have an issue with males full stop - but you can't avoid the need for adults to actually parent us and tragically we've seen instances where they've failed utterly in that allowing much suffering to others

Reliable, fair and supportitive adult authority is what boys need, ideally from men.

Is truth stranger than fiction

 This weeks crazy...

Most of are used to satire, we read publications such as Private Eye, we watch the likes of Have I Got News For You and radio shows often taking current affairs and putting a twist on them revealing a little more about the people at the centre of them than perhaps they would be confortable with.

It seems today though that some matters are in effect beyond satire as how they act, their actions are out of the everyday norms but seem to be entirely normal for them.

It's probably fair to say recent rants and statements on their own social media - a major world leader that has spare time to rant away and create their own A.i image creations - have caused much alarm, mirth even in recent months.

His depection in recent days as a christ like messiah in a major spat with The Pope, the leader of the world wide Roman Catholic church is just such an example that only a matter of  few years ago would of been unthinkable.

The State of the World

We are living in rather worrying times, some of the grown ups seem to have taken leave of their senses  and as I'll be away on a easter playaway day I'll leave this week with a well observed cartoon in the Calvin and Hobbes series I adore that tackles what to me seems to be the notion of "american exceptionism" head on.

That last frame is just marvellous for puncturing it.

No country is perfect, all have their good points and bad ones what matters is being free to live where suits you best.

And your word to describe is?

It's another week in what were told was spring but it sure doesn't feel like it, it is April too so white rabbits have been about and another sort of rabbit will be making its appearence at the weekend armed with enjoyable gifts.

Sitting watching Call My Bluff the other day, one of Geoffrey Robinson's shows at the time, the other being that post tea and news Ask The Family, remembering panellists, a good few sadly are no longer with us, just locked in our memories as ever my mind was at one point in time while attempting the work out  which explination of a word or phrase was True and what was Bluff.

I was just thinking what the answers might be if the word was "Adult Schoolboy"?

Peter Pan?

I could imagine a scene rather like this.

A collection of boys, allowed up by Matron or your house master to watch a late show in the era of rigid bed times enforced without fail watching the show as we did back then - grown ups thought shows like that were good for our brains - thinking "just what is "Adult Schoolboy?"

Thye'd never seen anything that met that description, perhaps they knew a kind older person who kept a similar sense of fun to them and, looking at each other said "Could we look like this when we've taken our O Levels and left school?"

I suspect for many of us possibly not - other things were on our horizons like A Levels,  college or shockingly at sixteen, work that was worlds away from that life we knew and loved - and yet today many of us do loving being mentally and in terms our presentation being just that.

I knew for all of that I felt at that age of still being very much a junior and preferring to dress more that way the idea I might freely elect to dress like that would of seemed - strange.

Indeed this morning I saw a post of Mumsnet where one had started a topic even suggesting that actual boys wearing grey short trousers was "off" and "had the wrong impression" although many I hasten to add did spell out the advantages and that even some boys would sooner wear them by choice all day long.

Just where that might come from who knows?

Yes we sometimes read of the person who gets into serious trouble with the law while looking more like that but bigger proportions do wear very much adult male attire and get into the same.

For us it may be "a thing" but I don't feel that deters actual boys from wearing them any more than the interest in say replica football strips or vintage sports shorts adults have puts them off wearing sports wear, perhaps dreaming of being the next celebrated striker or going out as the club mascot.

Perhaps we just loved being that us back then and kept it that way as best we could?

The importance of older men to boys

I was not too well recently so things will need to be a bit brief as I'm still recovering but thoughts did go back to my teens and how learning wasn't all rote learned academic stuff.

One advantage of having a fairly big family was you had a lot of people with all manner of experiences, some of which were not in your immediate family and when I was younger some of the major events of the last century such as World War Two and the changes in industrialization were still fresh, keenly remembered by those who'd live through them.

Your aunts and uncles plus grand parents talked to you about what they had experienced and some schools tapped into that idea by doing "oral history" where past generations spoke to groups of boys and girls about their life and times.

I feel it grounded me much better as a boy to know of what previous generations when through and to learn something of what boyhood was from those who'd had that life and learned valuable lessons from I badly needed to learn.

Men have a lot to offer us and people should care to help to place us with them where they feel they have a valuable role to play and we gain from what they learned about life, especially as a male.