Typical stamp ad from the 1960s |
MILD & MELLOW MELANCHOLY MUSINGS...
Does What It Says On The Tin!
Sunday 7 April 2024
THIS SURE TAKES SOME LICKIN'...
Sunday 17 December 2023
SANTA CLAUS IS BACK IN TOWN...
Hail, the returning hero |
However, just before I get to the point, I also sometimes wonder whether Raymond ever returned to Scotland for a visit over the years, as surely he and his parents would've had friends and (assuming they were of UK origin) relatives with whom they'd want to keep in touch? All I know is that last time I saw him was around 55 years ago when we were still primary school pupils, and 55 years is a long, long time. To think that he may have returned on occasion yet I never ran into him is a bit sad, as he was part of my youth - and you all know how important my youth is to me. As yours is to you also, I'm sure.
Raymond in September 1967 |
So what's the deal with Raymond to warrant a mention here? Simple. We weren't particular pals who hung about together, but one day he invited me back to his house after school. I've no idea why; perhaps he was just at a loose end and wanting someone to talk to, or maybe he was simply trying to expand his circle of friends, but I accepted his invitation and accompanied him home at four o'clock. All I remember of that visit is me expressing a liking for a small stuffed cloth Santa Claus lying on his room floor. "Take it" he said, generously, so I did, and Santa returned home with me for the rest of his existence. I assumed him to be a cat's play-toy, a notion reinforced a few short years later when I saw his double in a garden across the back lane from a friend of my mother's we were visiting that day. I was sorely tempted to nick him, but resisted.
Poor Santa took a bit of a drubbing over the coming weeks and months (maybe even a year or two), due to the fact that my brother and me played 'dodgeball' with him. My sibling's bed ran along one side of our shared room and my bed ran along the opposite side, so we'd hurl Santa at one another while we each tried to evade being hit by him - not that it was painful when Santa found his target as as had no weight to him. Eventually, Santa was in a sorry state due to the rough-handling he'd received and started to come apart, so I carefully undid the stitching holding him together and separated the cloth segments into their individual pieces, intending to sew him back up more securely to better withstand his 'dodgeball' adventures.
Alas, it just wasn't to be as, due mainly to the dawning enormity of my ambitions, I repeatedly procrastinated from remedial administrations until, eventually, at least one of the six cloth pieces was mislaid and never seen again. I kept what remained for a few years, but eventually disposed of them after flitting to a new house and deciding to rid myself of childish things in an attempt to be more 'mature'. (That never quite happened, eh?)
Seller's photo of cloth Santa |
Still, I never quite forgot Santa, and while keeping an eye out for a doppelganger replacement over the years (and decades), I bought other Santas to act as 'stand-ins' until such time as I could locate one. Not that any of the others were ever used for dodgeball, but I liked to dig them out at Christmas to brighten up the living-room in a festive fashion. Recently, however, I saw what looked to be the same Santa I had as a kid on eBay, though with one significant difference. My Santa had been manufactured 'ready-to-go' as a complete item, whereas the eBay one had clearly been a 'do-it-yourself' kit version that hadn't been sewn together too well. As you can see from the seller's photo, the edges were all frayed, and it needed a bit of a clean.
No problem for the big man. (Yes, that's me - why are you laughing?) I carefully removed the stitching, applied a thin coating of PVC glue to the frayed ends, and then stitched Santa back together again, all the while being fully aware that I was finally completing the task I'd set for myself over 50 years earlier, but had left undone. It felt almost like I'd simply dug out the pieces of my original Santa given to me by Raymond and picked up where I'd left off all those years before, making my feelings of accomplishment even greater than I'm probably entitled to.
He still needs a bit of a clean, but it's good to see yet another once-familiar face from my childhood back in the fold, along with all the other replacement items I've managed to secure over the years. Honest, hard as it may be for you to believe (or appreciate), it's almost feels like they've never been away. And, take it from me, that's a good feeling. So here's to Raymond for being the source of happy memories of days gone by. Hope he's doing okay for himself over in the land of Oz, though I'd be surprised if he even remembers me - or Santa.
Another snap of Santa after a little work by yours truly |
Tuesday 28 November 2023
51 YEARS AND COUNTING (DOWN?)...
Wednesday 18 October 2023
WHERE WERE YOU IN SEPTEMBER 1967?
A 2023 replacement for the Santa Raymond gave me |
Me, with photo to my right, in front of the former site of the huts in September 1987 |
Sunday 27 August 2023
CHILDHOOD'S END...
My 14th birthday was the first birthday I ever spent in my present home, and earlier birthdays in my previous house still seemed so recent that I didn't yet miss the years they represented. It's only when the recent past has 'matured' (like an old wine) and is no longer so close that we begin to pine for it, and such was the case with me. (It's not only absence that makes the heart grow fonder, but distance too.) The last couple of years in my former domicile were not the same as the years that preceded them. I'd already progressed beyond the stage of viewing the surrounding environs of my neighbourhood as my playground, and was venturing further afield in search of adventure. My taste for toys (in the main) was diminishing, and the occasional item aside, comics had become my primary interest instead of being just one of them.
The 'fabric' of my life had changed and was continuing to do so, but it was doing so while escaping my attention, so when my family flitted to my current residence in June 1972, my life continued for the first couple of years or so in much the same way as the last couple of years in my prior abode. And it was this sense of continuity in the pattern of my life over the transitional period between one house and the other that dulled my awareness of an incontrovertible fact - namely, that my childhood had already ended in my former home and I had progressed from one stage of my life to another without being fully aware of the 'metamorphosis'.
It was only with the passage of time and many years after the fact that I realised my actual childhood 'belonged' to a previous house (and other houses before it), and that I'd left that blissful state unawares, as cognizance of the process of one's early life unfolding in stages doesn't consciously register until some way down the track. As I've said before in other posts, life as it happens segues from one 'scene' to another in a subtle cross-fade, but when we look back years later, it seems to jump-cut between them. That's because we recognise, categorise, and compartmentalise retroactively, not during the actual process of everyday life itself.
I think that's why I sometimes make little 'pilgrimages' back to old houses and neighbourhoods, to pay my respects to my demised childhood, even though, as I said, I wasn't aware it had passed away at the time. And hey, perhaps it hadn't, and I'm assigning an arbitrary time of expiry as it subjectively seems to me today, not as it appeared back then. Whatever the case, it makes me wonder how others regard this subject, which in turn leads me to ask the following question to those who feel inclined to answer:
Were you aware of when you ceased to be a child and moved on to the next level of your biological, emotional, and psychological evolution, or - like myself - was it not until many years later while trying to assemble the jigsaw of your life to view the full picture (up 'til now), that you realised you had transformed from a caterpillar to a butterfly without being aware of the fact? Thoughts, theories, and observations will be made very welcome in the comments section.
Saturday 26 August 2023
MELANCHOLY MUSINGS...
Childhood. An age of innocence where time seems to hold no sway, and awareness of the future only extends as far as looking forward to school holidays, birthday and Christmas presents, and the latest issue of your favourite comic going on sale. That apart, there only seems to exist one big 'now', and whatever state you find yourself in feels like it will never end. The house you're living in will be your home forever, you'll always be a schoolboy (or girl), and your parents and siblings will be around for as long as you are - which feels like it will be for eternity. Childhood - the best days of our lives we're told, and unless you lived in a third world country beset by war and poverty or were the victim of abuse or cruelty, they are.
It's all downhill from there I'm sad to say. Age, illness, deaths of loved ones, financial and family worries, uncertainty about a future you never even realised lay ahead of you, so accustomed were you to the eternal present you once thought you had. Sure, there are good moments too as the years pass and your youth recedes, but they're always bittersweet once you reach that age where you're painfully aware there are more years behind you than lie ahead. Do policemen, teachers, shop assistants, workmen, etc., all look younger than you recall them being in your day? They're not, it's just that you're getting older and at the stage where you're beginning to 'fret to find your bedtime near'. The final bedtime that is.
So now that I've cheered everyone up with my positive and optimistic assessment, let me ask you all a question. Are you fulfilled in your life; do you have a goodly store of pleasant memories while yet adding to them each and every day, or do you feel that you never achieved your potential and still have so much more you want to do, while being all too well aware that you really don't have enough time ahead of you in which to do it? Linger a moment in the darker recesses of your mind, consider your life up to now, and then share your regrets (if any) and sadness of how quickly life seems to pass without us being aware of it until we near journey's end.
(There's no doubt about it - I'll need to stop taking those happiness pills.)
Thursday 27 July 2023
REFLECTING ON A REFLECTION...
Regular readers may remember me mentioning the house I and my family lived in between 1983 and '87, before moving back to our previous abode, the one in which I now reside today. A friend of my brother stayed in the spare room of that other house for around 9 months or so before getting a place of his own, and my brother moved into a flat after around 3 years, leaving just myself, my parents and the dog in a house that was far too big for us. Then, by a fortuitous quirk of fate, our former home became available so we returned to it after 4 years and 3 months away.
It had been madness to move to that other house from the start, as I was 24, going on 25, and my brother was 28, going on 29; did our parents think we were going to live with them forever? Interestingly, a few years ago, I found a letter from the council, which revealed that my parents had already started looking for another house only a year after moving into the new one. Anyway, while still in that other house, I eventually 'inherited' both rooms that had once been occupied by my brother and his pal, meaning I had 3 rooms to myself on the upper floor.
In the middle room, the open doorway looked out onto a vertically-long mirror on the hall wall opposite, reflecting part of the interior of the room, which looked remarkably similar to the layout of my bedroom in our previous (and now my present) home when I was in the hallway and looking through the open door. In our new home I'd lie on my spare bed (my main one was in one of the adjoining rooms), gazing at the reflection, and pretend that I was looking into my old room as it afforded me some pleasing feelings of nostalgia.
However, before I continue, let me first explain something so that you can fully envision the picture I'm trying to paint in the paragraphs directly following the one below.
Nowadays I sometimes use my bathroom as a kind of 'workshop' whenever I'm repairing old comics or giving them a slight colour touch to restore their visual appearance. I'll sit on the toilet seat (with the lid down) and with a board across my knees, and apply my restoration skills to whatever comic requires my attention. The reason for this is because the bathroom window is on the left side of the seat, and the natural daylight which streams through usually compensates for my slight colour-blindness by enabling me to better match whatever colours need touching up (oo-er, missus) and/or applying Chinese archival repair tape.
Obviously, because I'm not in there using the facilities for their usual purpose, I don't bother closing the bathroom door, which means that I can look out across the hall landing at my room on the other side. When my bedroom door is also open, it looks like the reflection in the mirror of my former room in the previous house, though in this instance I'm looking at the actual original view, not a reversed image of it. Incidentally, the mirror nowadays hangs on the hall wall downstairs, where it was originally situated before we flitted in 1983 and then relocated it upstairs across from what became a spare room for me.
Anyway, I just thought it odd that what was previously a reflection of a former 'reality' is now once again the reality itself, and when I remember this, I'm reflecting on what was at one time a mere reflection. In that other house I missed my old room, and now, in this house, I miss the reflection that resembled it - even though I'm reunited with the original. Surely there's some kind of irony or significance inherent in the situation, though perhaps I should have spared you the tedious detail of my reminiscence? I'm sure you'll tell me - either in a comment or by an all-pervading lack of any response at all.
Admit it - you don't get this kind of deep, psychological introspective nonsense pondering of such trivial matters on other blog sites, do you? What do you mean, "Thank goodness for that!"?
Wednesday 24 May 2023
GUEST POST by CHRISTOPHER NEVELL: The RETURN Of ULYSSES - Or 'Away And Back Again'...
In May 1976, at the age of 10, my younger brother James and I climbed into the family car with our dearest belongings and said farewell to our childhood home. As we drove across town to our new house we had a sense of excitement, but our parents were subdued. Over the 12 years prior to that day, my parents' dream home on the seafront in Sussex had transformed into an unsustainable financial burden. They had to sell and so we crossed to the other side of town.
Looking back now, the new house we moved to was nowhere near as good as the old one, but at that age I judged it by how close my friends were and, of course, the quality of the local newsagents. By both counts, it was positive. I also now had my own room and soon set about unpacking my comics. My father had bundled them up with string, and so my fledging collection of Beanos, TV Comics, Marvel UKs and more, quickly found space within reaching distance of my bed. With a new radio next to me, this was my set-up for years ahead, and soon I was adding early issues of 2000 A.D. and Doctor Who to the weekly shop.
For me, these comics were not just reading material, they were more like souvenirs of past days. If I picked up Avengers #1 then I was back in the Post Office around lunchtime on Friday 22nd September 1973. The Look-In issue with the Bowie cover was a memorable walk to the shops a few months earlier. Titans #1 in late October 1975 was the comic I was gifted on a beach walk to tell me I was going into hospital for an operation the following day. The retained Pippin and Playlands reminded me of very early years when the Saturday morning paperboy's clatter of the letterbox sent us racing down the stairs. James was the Pippin reader as he liked the glossy paper, I had the Playland with its matt finish as it had more of a grown-up newspaper feel.
My parents said the relocation was only a temporary situation, but after three years, the regularly-mentioned move back to the seafront 'next year' never came about. The downgrade had stuck and my parents' own ambitions being thwarted took on a more personal meaning. Nothing seemed quite so good now. I'd gone to a different secondary school from my friends and the comics themselves seemed a poor pastiche of past glories, especially my favourite Marvel line.
The new home stayed in the family for decades, far longer than the first one, and in between university and jobs, I began to yearn for the old place. We never really let go of it in our family dinner conversations and it stood there as testament to the family's own high tidemark of achievement. Going to that part of town always saw a tweak in the journey - just to see how number 7 was.
In time I moved out, met and married Tracey, and then later we had our own family, though still living in the same town. We created new memories and not only did my family grow, but so did my collection, up into the stratosphere. The Pippin and Playlands were now relegated behind collectable original UK art and Silver Age Marvels, but that first house was still the 'golden age'.
Inevitably, my two children picked up on my indirect drives around town, and it became a bit of an in-joke between the four of us.
Sadly, just prior to the Covid lockdown, James passed away at short notice. Due to a health condition his life was always going to be shorter than any of us wanted, but we never reckoned on 51. I spent the last days sleeping over at the hospice. It was a close time together, but he never complained and then he departed to join my already long-gone parents. The one thing that struck me though, was he said his happiest days had been at number 7, which saddened me even further as surely he'd found more to enjoy in life after his first 8 years. I couldn't disagree though, as I'd always known it.
Having no wife or children, James was very generous in what he left to me. He wanted me to go and live back near the seafront and I inherited enough for Tracey and I to ponder that move. Then one day my daughter came rushing downstairs, waving her IPad and shouting "Dad, isn't this the house you used to live in?" Those little diverted drives had made their impression. She was right, it was the very same house.
A viewing was arranged and, though brief, it confirmed what I'd always known - number 7's DNA was utterly etched in my mind. I navigated the rooms at ease, even looking for and finding the chip on the banister I'd made and been scolded for, back in 1974. I made a point of opening and standing in the larder, next to where the potato and onion stacker had been. I leant on the small bedroom inner windowsill the way I used to. I stood in the old nursery and breathed in the air. The room sizes felt right, despite the fact that I'd grown. However, it was a shock not to find the back garden as we'd left it. I'd anticipated the trees would be more mature, but they were gone. Everything was different - even alien. It just wasn't the back garden I remembered. Then I spotted the familiar immovable stone bench right at the end, an anchor all this time. The change around it now seemed more plausible and palatable. I sat down on it for the first time in decades.
I stepped back out through the front door and then down the driveway to the pavement. I whispered a goodbye for the moment, not yet knowing whether it would be forever or not.
However, a deal was done and four months later, on my birthday, we picked up the keys. As I turned the key in the lock I momentarily pretended it was only the day after we'd left. It had taken time, but my old family (no longer here) had returned. I took something personal into the house for each of them as if they were with me. My father's tin box with his name printed on it, my mother's Red Rum book, and my brother's box of early toys. Each of these consciously and carefully carried over the threshold.
The four of us had decided that we wouldn't be living in a museum. The house needed updating and expanding to properly and comfortably accommodate the four of us. I took the view that, had my old family never moved out, alterations and additions would have occurred anyway over the years, so it would never have been preserved 'in amber'. However, updating requires money, so I'll have to consider selling some of my comics collection to help raise the necessary funds.
Letting go of comics does not come easily. For every Donald And Mickey that was never going to make the full trip, there's a Mighty World Of Marvel that was meant to. Also, which is more important - the last issue of a set or the first merger issue the following week? Are graphic novels or single issues the ones to keep? I type this and stare at the wall. Yes, I've made the return home, but sadly, to meet the cost of improvements, not everything that's come home with me will be staying.
However, some will pick themselves to stay. They're the memory ones. Spider-Man Comics Weekly #55, bought in town where Boots is now. That first TV Comic bought at Teleski's near my Gran's. Dracula Lives #1 from Watson's, which I took to school at lunchtime, and so on. And it's with those souvenirs that the house comes alive again, with my old family now mixing in with the new. Moments that perhaps should be remembered with new souvenirs.
Interestingly, I'd considered what would've happened if the house on either side had been available instead. If I’d moved into either Number 5 or 9, with new folk going in and out of Number 7, that would likely have created an imbalance within me, akin to one of those Star Trek episodes when everyone is carrying on normally, but there’s one who senses that something is 'off' - and it is.
Given everything I've said, you could be forgiven for thinking that I regard this absolutely as my forever home and that I’ll be carried out in a coffin. The thing is, my legs have felt tired since childhood and I can foresee a day when the stairs might be just too much of a struggle for me.
So I plan to be here for 20 years, but then move into a bungalow. It would be tragic to move back and die at the foot of the stairs. Imagine that - as a kid running over the spot where you later die, then getting yourself away from there, and then putting yourself right back there for it to happen. So, getting back to the point, I intend to leave on my own terms when I know my time here is properly done. There is one alternative of course - a stairlift. I'll make the final decision when that moment comes.
Sometimes, as I sit on the old stone bench in the garden and listen to my wife and children chatting nearby, I also seem to hear the voices of my parents and brother, whose presence yet permeates the place of my boyhood. The past and the present combined, to accompany me into the future. In returning here, I feel that I've finally fulfilled my parents' wish, which fills me with a sense of achievement on their behalf, as well as my own and my brother's.
"Made it, ma (and pa) - top of the world!"
Thursday 24 November 2022
GIT ALONG, LITTLE DOGGIES...
Monday 29 August 2022
THE SINS OF THE SON...
I don't remember the precise year - or even the month, come to that. June or July perhaps? Whether I was yet a schoolboy or had left my educational environs is another thing beyond my ability to recall. At a guess I'd say it might've been around the mid-'70s upwards, but I couldn't swear to it. I do remember it was a sunny Saturday, maybe late morning or early afternoon, and I was making my way down to the local town centre, which took me past a church in between my house and the shops.
On the path leading from the church, I saw my father, coming in my direction and carrying a stool-type piece of furniture he'd just acquired from a jumble sale in the church hall. He asked me if I'd carry it home for him, but I was eager to get to the shops and so resisted his invitation. It would mean retracing my steps home and starting again from scratch, and as I was already at least halfway to my intended destination, it wasn't a delay I was prepared to undergo.
The stool wasn't heavy, but my father wasn't exactly what you'd call a healthy specimen, so had I been a good and dutiful son, I'd have obliged him. But no, I was eager to be off on my adventures, so my father had to carry his burden home by himself. Yes, I was a bit of a b@st@rd, wasn't I? Anyway, my father survived his trek, and the stool ended up in my bedroom, though whether he'd bought it with that intention or had just succumbed to a whim with no thought as to where the item would go is lost to history.
Over quarter of a century ago, I re-upholstered the 'lid' of the stool with a material that matched the original and restored its appearance to that which it had before it came into my possession. It still sits in my bedroom and whenever I look at it, I feel a pang of guilt at my callous cold-heartedness in not being prepared to (slightly) inconvenience myself by carrying it home for my father.
Funny the effect time has, isn't it? I'd like to think its passage has made we wiser and even kinder (though I doubt the latter), and that, were I to have that moment again, I would acquiesce to my father's request and spare him the effort of trudging home with the load on his own. True, he could have stopped and rested whenever he felt the need to and taken the weight off his feet by sitting on the stool, but I take no comfort from that realisation and still feel like a bad 'un for being so selfish.
Decades later, the 'sins' of the past yet haunt me and hold me to account. And perhaps that's just how it should be if there's to be any kind of justice in the world for missed opportunities of acts of kindness and decency.
Sunday 23 January 2022
FINALLY - THE FULFILMENT OF A FAR-AWAY PROMISE...
"A promise made is a debt unpaid" is an old but true saying, and I recently fulfilled a promise (and paid a debt) over a whopping 50-plus years after making it. I told you in a previous post how my neighbours, Robert and Elaine, back around 1969-1970, gave me a Santa Claus cake-topper I'd coveted, for which I'd promised them a Christmas selection box in exchange. That was the deal I'd proposed, but because they asked for time to consider, I thought they weren't going to go for it - until said Santa, wrapped in Christmas paper, was pushed through my letterbox five or ten minutes later. In the meantime, me and my brother had scoffed most of the contents, leaving only a Bounty bar to complete my side of the bargain. As I chapped their door and shamefacedly handed it across, I promised I'd give them a full selection box at the earliest opportunity.
There's another old saying - "The road to Hell is paved with good intentions", and I never did get around to fulfilling my promise and upholding my side of the deal before we flitted sometime after. It always bothered me slightly, and I was determined, one day, to do the right thing, but the years came and went without me ever doing so. Sadly, Robert died at the beginning of last year, but (on the run-up to Christmas) I got his widow's and sister's addresses from a mutual friend and sent each of them a small selection box (with an explanatory note) to finally fulfil my long-ago promise. They were nothing fancy or expensive, merely a modest token to show I hadn't forgotten and, if I'm honest, to ease my conscience by doing what I should've done over 50 years ago. I regard the two selection boxes as two halves of the same one, as obviously the original promised item would've been divided between Robert and Elaine.
So am I blowing my own trumpet here and seeking recognition for finally doing the right thing? Not a bit of it, because taking over 50 years to do it puts me in a bad light more than a good one, but I do feel a bit of a weight has been lifted from my shoulders after several decades. Hopefully, Robert's widow and his sister will appreciate the thought behind the gesture, and recognise it as my attempt to make good on a never-quite-forgotten promise that took far too long to complete. And hopefully Robert is looking down and saying with a wink and a smile, "Good on ye, Gordie, I knew you wouldn't let us down in the end." So here's to Robert - I was thinking of him at Christmas and fondly reminiscing about when we were kids with forever seemingly ahead of us.
Do any of you have any unfulfilled promises you once made that nag at your conscience? And do you still fully intend to make good on them one day? Alleviate some of your guilt by sharing them with your fellow Mellows in the comments section.
Sunday 16 January 2022
FRYING TONIGHT - PONDERINGS ON WHAT MIGHT'VE BEEN...
The house with the lit-up windows and dark door was mine |
I was in a local chip shop one night around a year or so ago, waiting on a fish being freshly fried, and the woman who served me lived in the very same neighbourhood that my family moved to from Glasgow back in 1960. She'd been there since 1959 - 60 years, even though she's younger than me, and only just flitted to a nearby flat last November. My family stayed in our house for about 4 years, before moving down the road to another street, and then we moved to another neighbourhood around 15 months later. The assistant and me fell to mentioning a few names that used to live in 'our' street, and there's a couple who still inhabit the same house as they did back then, though their kids flew the nest years ago.
Is it because that, as a mere five year-old child, I thought I'd live in that first house forever (which, in my youthful ignorance, is what I unconsciously assumed) and resented being prematurely plucked from it? Could it be a desire to finally fulfil a then-unfolding fate that was denied to me by moving, or is it something else entirely? Is it because I want to again set my step upon 'the road not taken' due to detours in other directions cropping up along the way and leading me off-track? Did my life unfold the way it was intended to (for those who believe in predestination), or was it flung to the winds, to fall where it will?
Incidentally, the assistant told me her family had moved into the house when she was only around 3 months old, the scheme having been only recently completed, so it's likely that my family were also the first tenants in our house. It gives me a good feeling to know that we were the first family to live in what was our first house in a New Town, having lived in a tenement in Glasgow's West End prior to that, and I feel even more 'connected' to the house than previously. Every other house - bar the one we lived in from 1983-'87, where we were also the first residents - we were the second family to live there. (Not that I feel they were any less 'mine' for that.)
Wednesday 5 January 2022
FINE BY THE FIRESIDE...
Calendar illustration for January |
Sunday 5 December 2021
RAMBLING REFLECTIONS OF THE RATHER REMOTE KIND...
When you're in your early 20s, you feel as if you've been around forever and can't even conceive of a time when you didn't exist. You know there was, of course, but it just doesn't feel like it. (The same thing could probably be said whatever age you happen to be - at least in my own experience.) I'd lived in five different houses by the time I was 20, and due to the furniture being the same from house-to-house, they all had pretty much the same ambience. In memory, therefore, those houses (the four I remember anyway, as I was only one-and-a-half when we moved from the first one) are preserved in amber, as there were no significant changes in their furnishings during our time of residence in them. (The occasional addition, but no deletions.)
When I first moved to my current home it was the same, but eventually (several years in) some furniture was disposed of and replaced, and the house now no longer preserves the 'vibe' it once had, the interiors having evolved a different look and feel to that of my earliest years here. It now has a different 'personality' (while still retaining a few remnants of its old one), and its current ambiance no longer precisely matches that of any of our previous residences. I therefore often find myself casting my mind back to earlier times, which isn't difficult considering the sheer volume of replacement toys, books, comics, and records I've managed to obtain that remind me of my early days.
When my gaze falls upon those doppelganger items from yesteryear, I find myself yearning to return to those times and places, and since the majority of my collection reminds me of one house in particular, I tend to find the notion of one day moving back there quite an attractive proposition, because they'd all be 'at home'. The only trouble with that though, is that I'd be bound to miss the houses before and after whenever I looked at items that preceded and followed my residence in the home under discussion. So while I'd feel I belonged there whenever I looked at a replacement comic or toy I originally owned at the time, I'd most likely feel out of place when I looked at a comic or toy from a later time in a subsequent house.
As I've said before somewhere, it's a case of missing what you don't have, but if you reacquire it, you then miss something else. I miss my previous houses because I no longer live in them, but if I were to move back to one, I'd miss the others - including the one I currently inhabit. That's why I moved back here 34 years ago after living elsewhere for over four years, having previously stayed here for 11 - I missed it and wanted to try and turn the clock back. Now, strangely, I even miss the house I left to return here, though I didn't at the time - it took around 17 or 18 years for that feeling to finally kick in.
Anyway, I began this post several hours ago before getting distracted by other things, so I've now forgotten precisely where I intended to go with this. All I know is that whenever I look at one group of toys or comics, the prospect of again living in the house I inhabited when I first got them seems extremely appealing to me, but having lived in a number of houses in my lifetime, I feel the same way about every former abode whenever I look at or handle other groups of items first acquired during my terms of residence in them.
I suppose posts like this aren't fair on you poor Mellows, due to the fact that if I don't quite know what I'm trying to say, then you can't be expected to either. Hopefully you'll be able to make something out of it.
Tuesday 31 August 2021
A DIMINISHING BACKDROP OF DAY-TO-DAY LIFE...
Isn't it strange how the 'backdrop' to your life can change without you being aware of it until after-the-fact? Example: There's a fella and his wife lived in the flats around the corner from me (same street) for at least 35 years, possibly longer. He was there when we moved back to the neighbourhood after four years away, and for all I know he might've been there when we still lived here the first time.
The pair of us were part of the local doggie-walking club in the late '80s until either the dogs or the owners gradually died. Out of about 14 of us, maybe only about four yet survive (all the dogs are gone), though me and Martin (as he's called) were the only two still in the area. I'd often run into him when he was out walking his new (relatively-speaking) pooch, or when one of us was going to, while the other was coming back from, the local shops.
Anyway, last week I was sitting on a bench in the shopping area, scoffing a soft buttered roll with link sausages and fried onions (yum), when I spotted Martin and hailed him. During the course of our chat, imagine my surprise when he told me that he and his wife had moved from their flat to a house in another neighbourhood quite a distance away around five weeks or so before.
Subconsciously, I'd yet imagined he and his dog were still traversing around the local environs when, in fact, his daily routine now unfolded somewhere else entirely, and that it was unlikely that either of us would run into the other when heading to or back from the shops. But there was even worse news to come. After being in their new house for only around three weeks or thereabouts, Martin came home one day to find his wife Isobel dead from a massive heart attack.
Sadly, I didn't know her very well (only saw her a handful of times in 34-odd years), but what a bummer, eh? He's no longer in the flat where he and his wife brought up their kids and made many happy memories, but he's now in a house where he was denied the time to make any meaningful new memories before she was so suddenly and cruelly taken from him.
I prefer to think that Martin still lives around the corner from me and is yet exercising his doggie around the neighbourhood, and whenever I look out of my window, I sort of imagine I've just missed spotting him by seconds. That way I can pretend that everything is as it's always been (for the last several years at least) and that the friendly face of a decent bloke is still out there to say hello to, instead of in another neighbourhood that I'm unlikely ever to visit.
Two more long-term residents in the street are soon to flit from it, and I'm beginning to feel isolated from friendly faces that have been part of my everyday existence for decades. It's no fun seeing them all moving (or slipping) away, especially as I well-remember when my family was the new one 'on the block'. That feeling is long-gone, but somehow I find myself wishing I could re-experience it - without having to flit somewhere else in order to do it though.
Any of you fellow-Mellows ever feel the same? Or am I just bonkers? And spare a thought for Martin, eh?
Monday 31 May 2021
I HAVE OFTEN WALKED DOWN THIS STREET BEFORE...
The street in which I live is a long, winding, twisting, turning snake of a street with nearly 200 homes in it. Towards the late '70s, I had two friends who lived in the street, but nearer the beginning than I was. In fact, one lived in number one, the other half-a-dozen houses further up from him. Neither of them live there now, having moved out decades ago, but their parents (then, with the passing of time, a parent in each case) continued to inhabit their long-term domiciles.
Last year, the father who lived in number one sadly passed away. He was a very well-educated and extremely intelligent man and whenever he saw me, he'd say "Hello Kid" (yes, even my friends' parents usually addressed me by that singular appellation), and I'd stop and have a blether with him. Sometimes, on my way to the shops, I'd chap his door to see if he needed anything, but his family, though no longer in residence, usually made sure he was well looked after, so there was only one occasion when I was of use to him for a couple of items of shopping.
Anyway, since he died, whenever I've been passing his house, I've always looked over and given a nod in its direction, just out of respect for him. Yesterday, however, I saw a 'sold' sign at the entrance, which surprised me as I'd never seen the 'for sale' sign that would normally have preceded it. It's sad that my slight historical connection to the house has come to an end now that it's passed into the possession of another owner, but I don't think I'll ever be able to pass it without giving it a nod of acknowledgement when I do.
Today, I went around with my camera and snapped a few photos of the front and back, as it's unlikely I'll ever again set foot on the path and steps leading up to the front door. Casting my mind back, it was in one of the bedrooms of the house that I scored my first '180' at darts sometime around 1982, and I well remember the apoplectic fit my friend's brother had in frustration at me gubbing him at the game he seemingly thought he was superior at. And maybe he was, but not on that particular day. Ah, happy memories.
However, I'm becoming all too aware that, with the passing of time, more and more familiar places are passing beyond my reach - or disappearing altogether - and it's a sombre and scary reminder that all things must pass, and that eventually there'll be little or no signposts to my youth left to take comfort from. I used to be able to visit my old primary schools whenever there was a jumble sale, but they were demolished around 6 or 7 years ago, so I can no longer walk the halls of youthful academia. Friends have moved or died, so I can no longer revisit the interiors of their houses I was so familiar with when I was a kid or teenager.
I don't know about you, but I miss being able to reconnect with certain aspects of my past due to people or places no longer existing, or for whatever reason it might be that prevents me doing so - like a friend's familiar house now belonging to someone else. Previously, I knew that if I wanted to chap the door of the house under discussion, I'd be made welcome and given a cup of tea and a biccie. The fact I knew I could meant that I didn't avail myself of such hospitality as often as I might have, but now that it's forever beyond me makes me kind of sad.
Any of you feel the same way when such things happen to you, or am I just a great big overly-sentimental wussy-boy who should toughen up and just get on with things? Make your feelings known.