Ghosts of #Christmas Past

I was talking to someone on Twitter today about family Christmases, and realised how long it is since I've had one!  When my parents were alive I used to love going to their house for the day, with my sister and brother (and whoever we were currently married to/living with).  As Mum and Dad got older and moved to a smaller house, and my brother and I often had other commitments, they would just spend it with Julia, but for your entertainment I've dug out a few old photos from happy family Christmas Days of 25-30 years ago.

1989

We always had a liking for playing silly games with fun photos - I remember that year we decided to do a photographic depiction of the seven deadly sins.  This is Eddie (my brother) demonstrating 'wrath' on Julia... 

...whereas Mum insisted that 'pride' could mean pride in one's country.  I have no idea how she managed to randomly produce those flags!

1993 or 4

When you get a new cosy for the toaster, it's got to go on your head.  Even better when you get two.

1995

Continuing the things-on-head theme:  while we were waiting for lunch to arrive, Eddie insisted that we make party hats, and the nearest paper available was the Sunday Telegraph.

I am sure you would agree that they're inspired!  I particularly like the old style Spanish policeman and the French Foreign Legion (which I made, I am proud to say!).  The man with the longish blonde hair is my then-boyfriend Marcus; next to him is Eddie's then-wife Debbie, and the little boy is their son Christopher, who is sadly no longer with us.  

How lovely it would be to be able to have a family Christmas like this again ~ wherever you are, I hope you enjoy yours! 

My Clever Brother: Hamworthy Junction #Trains Railway Modelling #Nostalgia #Railwayana

My brother has been a railway modelling artiste since childhood, and he's made a layout in his loft to reproduce Hamworthy Junction in Poole, Dorset, from the 1950s (see YouTube video from 1964 at end of this post).  I thought you might like to see some of the photos; the artistry and workmanship is amazing.  I've included some of his explanations from his regular bulletins, because the information will be of interest to others who enjoy this pursuit.

 

'A view across the yard with an eastbound train speeding through. I built the yard crane from a kit and added the figures, which have had their arms and legs
repositioned to suit. The crates are a one-piece moulding that only needed a coat of paint, and the trolley started life as a market stall kit. The Bedford truck is built from a kit and seemed to take ages to get right, however I was happy with it once I had found the right shade of blue.'

'The stationmaster wonders who has parked their brand new E-Series Vauxhall
Cresta outside his house! The telephone box is built from an etched brass kit and
features full interior detail, not that you can see it here. I think the plinth needs
letting into the road surface as it is quite a step up into the box.'

'

These are ready-to-run Hornby items, weathered and
with suitable loads added, either from kits or lengths of balsa ‘plank’.'

'Waiting at the bus stop on Blandford Road could be a fruitless exercise; although many trains cross the bridge above, I have yet to see a single bus on this road!'

'This picture and the next are eye-level shots down Platform 2. Canopies are built
from 1959-vintage Airfix kits and the waiting room is scratch built from card
and plastic sheet.'

Hard graft outside the loco shed.

 A new arrival waits for a taxi! 

Watching the world (and the trains) go by

Finally, the following may be of interest...

'It is a piece of footage taken in 1964 of a Locomotive Club of Great Britain rail tour hauled by a Maunsell Q class, running from Poole via Holes Bay and through Hamworthy, down the branch to Hamworthy Goods. It shows fleeting glimpses of the station that I have been trying to recreate in miniature over the past few years and I hope that I have been able to capture some of the atmosphere.'

Time travel ~ in my dreams!

I had a dream the other night that stayed with me for ages ~ you know how some do?  Fear not, I know being told the plot of someone else's dream is one of the world's most tedious things ("then you changed into Paul from the office and we were running away from the Nazis - oh no, sorry, that was after the roof had fallen in but before I saw my mother laughing at me in the mirror...").  I promise I won't do that.  I'll just tell you why it stayed with me.

I dreamed that I travelled back in time ~ not very far, just to 1988, to Cromer in Norfolk where I lived during the last decade.  In the dream I met several people I knew when I lived there, and tried to tell them stuff like 'oh no, don't do that, you have no idea of the path it will take you down!', just as you'd warn the you of thirty years ago, if you had the chance (my mother used to say that we all needed two lives, the second one to get it right).
  

The dream was incredibly vivid, and I was right back there, in that cosy, pre-internet, much more simple life.  D'you remember how it was?

• You wanted information?  You'd go to the library, or to WH Smiths to rifle through a few books.
• You needed a practical service?  You'd ask people for a recommendation, or take pot luck with the Yellow Pages.
• A new book or film?  You'd read reviews in papers, or just buy/see it anyway. 
• You needed to get in touch with someone?  You'd wait until they were home, and ring them up.  Or drop them a line.

It's hard to recall, now, not having an endless source of information about every bloody thing in the whole world, at your finger tips.  As for that phone thing ~ one of the people I met in my dream was a girl called Claire, who shares my birthday (although she was born 22 years later).  In 2000 she was, like me, one of the last people to have a mobile phone, for the same reason ~ she didn't want to be constantly 'on call'.  I remember us both arguing with her mother about it; I only got one because my father didn't like the idea of me walking along crumbling cliffs on my own.

The internet has made us more informed, more wordly, ensures that we never, ever suffer a moment of boredom, or if we do we damn well shouldn't.  All the same, I did enjoy being back in that more innocent time, if only in the world of dreams.  It was kind of nice.  Easier.  

....which brings me to the other reason the dream has stayed with me.  For those few seconds, I knew what it was like to go back in time.  It was amazing, magical, fascinating, just as you might imagine, but so terribly frustrating, because I couldn't explain to everyone WHY some things they were worried about didn't matter, how life would just roll on and take its own course.

Have you ever dreamed an emotion or experience about which you know nothing?  One that makes you think, when you wake up, 'oh, is that what it's like'?  Quite a few years back I dreamed that I murdered someone.  Taking someone's life made me feel as though I'd stepped outside the normal world, and was plunged into a terrifying dark realm ~ Hell, if you like, although no-one else would have seen anything different about me.  I knew that I would be living a nightmare for the rest of my life.   I wonder if that's what it really feels like.

The other experience was much less scary but equally powerful.  When I was eleven, I dreamed I was in love.  Obviously, at that age I knew nothing of such things past crushes on pop stars, and I remember waking up and thinking, 'so that's what it's going to be like ~ crikey!'  It was such a glorious, intense and all-consuming feeling, but not altogether pleasant, in the moments of doubt.  Oddly enough, the object of my affections looked rather like someone with whom I would fall in love some twenty years later.  I think that was probably coincidence rather than premonition, though!

My dreams are usually the predictable mish-mash of mild, long-held anxieties, random people I worked with twenty-five years ago, ex-loves, and bits and bobs that I can tell come from whatever I've been watching on telly ~ I doubt they mean much, and I can usually analyse them pretty well.  Only a few have stayed with me for years (though I have fond memories of the one on the Aerosmith tour bus!).

  I'd love to hear about anyone else's nocturnal adventures :)

All the SUNDAYS of my life...

'Millions long for immortality who don't know what to do with themselves on a rainy Sunday afternoon' ~ Susan Ertz

A Sunday afternoon on the island of La Grande Jatte by Georges Seurat

I got the idea for this post after reading one by Tom Angel: Every Day is like a Sunday...
.....and it got me thinking about the changing face of the day of rest; these are my experiences but I am sure many will share similar :)

My 1960s childhood Sundays meant a church service I thought would never end, forcing down Sunday lunch (I hated it!), a walk in the woods, David Copperfield on telly at about five-thirty (with tea on the coffee table in the sitting room, such a treat!), and that feeling of doom about school on Monday.  Brussel sprouts, long sermons and the dread of Monday aside, very nice ~ but it all went downhill when I mooched (in a particularly gauche fashion) out of childhood.  I don't think today's teenagers, with their short attention spans and need to be constantly entertained by iThis and iThat, would be able to deal with the long dark tea-time of the soul that was four o'clock on a winter Sunday afternoon in the 1970s :)

Photo by Max Dupain

The 'long dark tea time' phrase was nicked from Douglas Adams, of course.  It's perfect, isn't it?  I remember it so well, sitting upstairs in my bedroom, cold and dark outside, wondering what on earth to do with all those hours until bed time; I can't recall what my parents did on Sunday afternoons; not that they do any of these things now, but they certainly didn't go shopping, watch DVDs or go for a drink ~ televisual entertainment was a three channel affair and pubs/shops weren't open!  I think Dad did stuff in the garden and Mum in the kitchen.  As an older teenager, when I was at the stage of being in the house as little as possible, I can remember wandering around dark, wet streets with my friends (doubtless with our flared jeans dragging in the damp - I'm talking the mid 1970s!), stretching out a coffee in the only place that was open, whilst we waited for the pub to welcome us back at seven o'clock.

I like to think we were more subtle about it....

..

  ... which brings me onto the 1980s, which wasn't much different.  I loved going out for a drink or six in those days, but if you didn't get to the pub by one o'clock on a Sunday you couldn't get as pissed as you want to when you're in your twenties, because opening hours were a meagre noon until two pm.  During most of that decade I had a shop in Northampton town centre with Husband #1, and we lived above it; our 'local', The King Billy, was only twenty seconds walk away.

Something we used to do with a group of friends was the shared all day lunch with a theme - French Day, or American Day.  We'd each bring a course, and dress up appropriately.  Average calorie intake each ~ 4000 for the day.  Such days always resulted in increased sales of Andrews Liver Salts.  Great way to spend a Sunday, though, especially in the winter!

Sundays weren't always about self-indulgence, I hasten to add!  We used to do those indoor crafty/arty type fairs in which we sold the wares from our shop, or went for long saunters in places like Salcey Forest, which is in Northamptonshire. 

In the early 1990s I used to spend Sundays at the casino - I was living with a compulsive gambler!  Oh, those six hour long games of kalooki, the sessions round the blackjack table during which our holiday fund was lost to the turn of the card....  and it was some time during the 1990s that shops began to open on Sundays between 10 and 4, wasn't it?  Like many people, I was against it.  Not from the religious aspect (though I understand and respect that, of course!), but because it stopped Sunday being something special, a bit different.  

In the late 1990s I was an alternate weekend step-parent, which I loved; Saturday nights was spent under the duvets with Jonathan Creek and scary films, but Sundays meant the park, and games.  Um, and sometimes it would be a drink or two in a pub garden, many pubs being more family orientated by then.  The Crown and Cushion, on the way back from Abington Park, even had a children's play area, and my 11 year old stepsons were allowed into the pub to play pool with their father.

Delightful stepson David, now doing Sunday things with his own daughter!

In 2000 I moved to Cromer in Norfolk - and what would Sunday be without a walk on the beach, whatever the weather, calling into The Kings Head on the way back? I worked full time then, so Sunday was a wonderful day - always is if you live by the sea, regardless of the time of year!

Photos by Jackie Rivett

 Me and Kings Head chums Ema, Gail (landlady) and Fee, on a return visit in 2013!

Nowadays, of course, people go shopping, stay in the pub all day, go to work ~ Sunday is a lot like any other day, though it still has its own atmosphere, doesn't it?  There's something about the papers, the smell of the beef cooking ~ which often means opening the first bottle of red; not that I've done that for a few years now, as I'm married to someone who doesn't eat meat, I hardly drink, no longer get the paper and am usually writing!  Oh, and when I go to stay with my father I even accompany him to church... and enjoy it, too.  Mostly because I am fascinated by the history of the church (some parts of which were built in the 10th century), it has to be said!

 Daddy outside church

It's still a bit special, Sunday, isn't it?  Always will be....

It wasn't like that in my day...

I felt compelled to write this post after reading a very good and amusing short story by writer E.L. Lindley -  READ IT HERE, ON HER BLOG - about a divorcee going 'out on the town' for the first time in years.  We had a bit of a conversation about how pubs have changed since we frequented them every Friday and Saturday night, and E.L. said this:  "City centre pubs are just awful, every time I go into one I feel as though I've inadvertantly stumbled into a hen party from hell" - which I thought kinda summed it up!

I live in the north east, (happily) a fair few miles away from the notorious Bigg Market in Newcastle, host to stag and hen parties, and in which one would feel out of place if fully dressed and not completely rat-arsed.

Ladettes out on the razz in the Bigg Market, appropriately dressed for the weather

I have never visited this area, and never intend to.  Okay, that's a bit of an extreme example, but, generally, isn't it a shame that you can't just go out in a town centre for a normal drink with your pals, without the boom boom boom of horrible music, bouncers on the doors, advertisements for ghastly cocktails, etc?  

When I was in my teens in the 1970s, my friends and I used to go from pub to pub with ne'er a care, dressed in proper clothes, rather than hooker gear.  We would buy normal drinks and put money in juke boxes that played music you could hear, but also talk over.  I also used to walk home late at night without my parents worrying; that's slightly off topic, though related.  Yes, yes, I know times change, but isn't it a shame that the ordinary town centre pub scarcely exists these days?  They're all turned into horrible, garish bars now, music blaring.  Ah, how I remember going to the Saddlers Arms in Bridge Street, Northampton, wearing jeans etc, drinking half pints of Directors and putting The Doors on the juke box - and I never saw a fight in there.  I had a shop down that road in the 1980s. When we opened in 1983 it was still an ordinary, quiet street.  By 1985 several of the establishments, including the Saddlers, had been turned into horrible extreme drinking hell holes, and that was when our window started getting smashed on a regular basis. The street used to have antique shops, a second hand record shop, a lovely independent book store, but they're all long gone; my old shop is now one of many takeaway food pit stops for the roaring drunk and ravenous.  These places ruin town centres.  

I'm happy to say that my most frequented pub in Northampton, The King Billy, has remained a rock music type pub throughout - the brewery did make an attempt to change it into a lager lout pub in the 1990s, calling it The Fitchet and Firkin, or something equally daft, but resistance was strong, and it soon changed back.

I know there are a few pubs that haven't been changed too much (The Wig & Pen, The Mailcoach, though I preferred the Wig when it was the Black Lion!), but mostly the rest of the town centre is pretty much a no-go area if you just want to go out for a quiet drink.  I wonder if the only places 'real' pubs still exist within town centres are at the seaside; when I lived in Cromer, in Norfolk, during the last decade, the five or six pubs in the town all retained that 'local' feel, as did others in Norfolk towns such as Sheringham and Holt.

The Kings Head, Cromer - my favourite pub in the town.  The second living room of many.  Wonderful food, beer garden - oh, sorry, Gail, I went into advertisement writing mode for a moment, there!

The argument might be given that the old pubs are changed into these grisly bars because that's what people want, but I wonder if this is so. After I left Cromer, Buffers Bar near the station was changed into one of those boom-boom-boom music, open until late, puke-up-your-thirteen-cocktails-outside type of establishments.  It caused havoc in that area of the town, and only lasted a couple of years.

As I noted in a comment below, (I imagine most) big cities remain okay, because they are large enough to confine it to one area, like the Bigg Market in The Toon, and Prince of Wales Road in Norwich.  

I suppose I just wish there was less of this

and more of this!

Isn't this excellent?  Don't know when this pic of the Saddlers in Bridge Street, Northampton was taken.

Very old shot of The Malt Shovel - out of the town centre, spruced up in a nice way, and still excellent.  I went there last year, and it was great. Average age of about 50, too!

Or were these chaps just the lager louts of the 1950s?  

I don't think so, somehow; maybe it's more to do with the drinking culture than anything else.  But that, of course, is a whole other blog post.

1960s/70s rock band picture quiz!!!

Well, I said to my husband, I said, I don't think it's a very good idea for a blog post, the audience for it would be strictly 50 and over, probably having been or still being a bit hippy-ish, with a silly sense of humour.  Kinda limited. He said, "well, it just entertained us for half an hour, didn't it?"


So here it is, for daft people who will never see 49 again - my picture quiz... 

Name the 1960s/early 1970s rock band (answers at end!)

1.  

They get more difficult, I promise!

2.

I saw the above chap (not the whole group!) (is that confusing?!) at Leeds Roundhay Park in 1982, supporting the Stones.  Top stuff!

3.

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14.  This is a country music one, but it made me laugh - yes, it was my husband's idea!

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14.  Saving the best 'til last...

Well, it passed a spare 10 minutes!!!

Here are the answers:

1.  Atomic Rooster  2. Python Lee Jackson  3. Nazareth  

4.  Grateful Dead  5. Chicken Shack  6. The Faces

7.  The Small Faces  8.  Uriah Heep  9. Humble Pie

10. Velvet Underground  11. Vinegar Joe

12. Thunderclap Newman  13. Black Oak Arkansas

14.  Johnny Cash!  15. Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young