I've Been Remembering

I remembered, in the week, a thing I and my friends used to do in primary school. When it happened I wondered to myself whether or not the remembering process was the same one that Peter Kay goes through when he unearths his gold from the gas-filled mine of his memory. It occurred to me as I saw kids engaging in an activity that was needlessly foolish, not naughty or dangerous, just slightly annoying in a "WHY!?" sort of way. I can't remember what exactly they were doing which triggered my recollection, which is partly why I am unable to engage in observational comedy, I am too ignorant.

During playtime, when we'd got to the age where we were taking our own bottles of pop (fizz/soda/etc) in our bags, we'd all gather round and conduct what seems now to have been some sort of communistic experiment. Between us we would have amassed quite an array of various pops, from the simplistic blank sheet of lemonade, to the refined dandelion and burdock, to the more extreme limeade, the absinthe of the ffisibop world.

A huddle would occur, where the bottles were opened, and the tops traded around chaotically, before we began the haphazard, messy experiment. A dash of limeade would turn the lemonade a weak green, raspberry and strawberry would combine without changing colour, but making both flavours bizarre. The frantic yet meticulous exchange of liquid from differently sized bottles through dissimilar necks would ensure that most bottles were inevitably covered in the sticky sheen of spilt pop. The thoughtless, joyous experimentation would end with the floor awash with spilt specks, the bottles drained from wastage, and the remaining pop in every bottle reduced to a vague, mucky brown, regardless of the original base content. Simple fun.

Perhaps tellingly, the only other time in my life where reckless mixing of drinks was involved heavily in fun was during University, where an ill-advised punch often coagulated in an ad-hoc manner. This potent brew also invariably ended up a fetid brown colour. This is probably down to the marketing genius of Ian Coca-Cola, leading to the drink being unavoidable in daily life.

This fluid-mixing-based memory led me on to another similar remembrance. As far as I can remember I have always loved bathing. I use the time primarily to read, with having a wash becoming a handy side-effect of the process. As technology advanced and I became more reckless with it, I began factoring gameboys (that is the handheld gaming console, not young males who were up for it) into the bathing experience. This morphed into the DS and PSP, which I occasionally take in, should I be addicted to a game, to the chagrin and frustration of people who understand the cost of a pound. In all my years of taking things into the bath, I have only ever dropped something in once, it was a book. Someone else's. I put it on the radiator afterwards and it dried out (badly). Apologies can be worth $7.99RRP between siblings. I used to have a more expensive bathtime hobby, though I couldn't have realised it at the time.
I used to use shower gels, shampoos and whichever other lotions live on the bathroom shelves as the ingredients for my amateur bathtime alchemy. I very much enjoyed mixing the clear green of Timotei with the reluctant viscosity of conditioner. I probably wasted a hell of a lot of product. And, of course, I never discovered gold or the secret of eternal life. But my hands were always soft and clean.

A friend of mine came home briefly as he had finished his Uni course, and I went to visit him, in the process taking a walk I took often a number of years ago. It was easy, on autopilot, to regress to feeling like the jittery teenager I had been when we used to hang out most of the time. I was delightfully brought up to date by a trampolining child at the end of my street. The pavement goes right past a garden, which the trampolining child, and the trampoline, were in. Not taking a gap from his bouncing, the small boy, possibly around 6, piped up; "Hello". "Hello", I replied. "Hello, old man", spake the child.


Now, a jittery teenager I may no longer be, but I would like to this that my occasionally haggard and bearded visage still holds the glow of youth. I suppose to a child of 6 I might have looked like an ancient giant of olde, traipsing the land in search of the bloode of an Englisheman. Either that or he was a little shit.

Either way, I was amused and gently smiling to myself as I went on my way.

The path that leads to my friends house is overhung with trees, and was heavily overgrown in the olde days whither I did wander to his abode, overgrown both with the trees and with the pickies and stingies. The council have, in the intervening time, laid a wider concrete path there, and trim the encroaching growth back from time to time. I vaguely remember hearing that something dreadful happened to someone in there (some form of assault probably) and so they took steps to make the path less dreadful in the night. It hasn't really worked. The path is devoid of electric lighting, and so if it is nay a night where the moon is fat then it is in complete darkness. 'Mor tywyll a glo' (as dark as coal), we would've written in Welsh, as we lazily avoided using our imaginations to concoct fresh similes. You genuinely cannot see your hand if you hold it up to your face in such circumstances, which I delight in telling people.

The path overlooks a park, which has had most of its appendages switches since I yobbed around there as a vagrant teen. Gone are the simplistic features; the slide, the swings, the roundabout, the see-saw and the frankly dangerous rocket ship which a bigger kid pushed back and forth and the little kids flew backwards and forwards in the middle crushing themselves against the dividing bars and sustaining severe rib injuries. In place of these classics there are shiny multifaceted items, colourful pieces which are a slide, swings and monkey bars all in one, and as fun as none of them by themselves. If you take out the classic, simple, plain swings, then where oh where are nervous teenagers going to hang around in the night and have their first clueless cackhanded pseudo-sexual experiences? SELFISH COUNCIL! Just because the kids don't have a vote! It's immoral etc.

Behind another, larger, fence, there is an outdoor swimming pool, which I think actually does open during the summer, but to me will always be an empty circle filled with discarded strongbow cans (not mine, I hasten to add). I have a hazy memory of a time where, after a day spent playing football in the adjoining rugby field, a group of us spent the night in our pants playing water polo in the pool after hours. I was fairly certain of this, as I walked the path, but the memory is distant, and my first thought was of how cold is must have been, which in my sensible jumper, seemed an insurmountable issue with late-night water polo.

There is no place in my memory of that night for the cold, only the irreverent fun of the moment, and the probable bollocking I received when I got home. And yet as I walked and remembered, my first thought was for the cold, focusing on the reasons against, rather than the reasons for, getting involved in such a silly thing.

"Hello, old man", indeed.

How Fast?

One of the highlights of this week, for me, was when I managed to finally rediscover an 80s cartoon I had been internet-crusading for on-and-off for roughly a year. I had originally seen the show on VHS tapes over my nan's house when I was young. The show I was looking for made up a collection of kids tv tapes that varied wildly, it included Rainbow, Super Ted and a black and white Tom and Jerry-style program which was terrifying.

In later years, as the number of grandkids increased, my nan bought new tapes, stuff like Fun Song Factory and other shiny singalong evil designed by evil people to make kids evil. What's wrong with Super Ted!? It was good enough for me, and look how I turned out. I turned into an eloquent, if solipsistic, internet loser. I function in society, shut up.

The show I was looking for, in my memory, was based around colourful fighter planes, I didn't really remember much else apart from the gunfire from one particular plane was animated with two lines which were intercut with horizontal lines across them, like a railway track pattern. I remember thinking that that was mense, and it was. On my original attempts to unearth the series I had scoured through lists of series titles, hoping that something relating to planes would come up, but no such luck. On a random impulse in the week, I typed in '80s cartoon fighter planes' and within a couple of results I managed to find a logo which I knew was correct. It is unsurprising I hadn't found it looking through all the lists, the title has nothing to do with planes.

It is entitled 'Ring Raiders'.

I actually took this name at face value as I read through the wikipedia entry, and it was only at the point in which certain characters were called 'Ring Commanders' that I began to wonder whether this series was merely an elaborate fundamentalist allegory about anal sex. It isn't. The show was made, as a lot of shows were back then, to market a series of toys that were already in existence. I think Gundam and Transformers were the same, although I could be wrong. Pokemon definitely was, as the original incarnation was the Gameboy games. I hope that is correct after I have waded in so confidently.

Anyway, the story is that there is an evil organisation wanting to do something evil and so goodies have been given rings which unlock special powers in planes so they can be cool and save the world from evil. Cool, wicked, awesome. This didn't resonate with my now-sophisticated futuristic brain and sensibilities. Although I was tempted to buy the VHS megatape of all the episodes (it hasn't been released on DVD). There were only 5 episodes ever made, all mean't to be pilots, because a full series was never commissioned. But this isn't what excited me. OH NO! It was an old 80s cartoon, and as with all 80s cartoon it is legally obliged to have an amazing opening theme. OH MOTHERHUFFING BOY, did this theme bring back some awesome nostalgia for me.

I think one of the things that really makes an 80s cartoon theme for me, after having looked at this example case of 1 cartoon show, is rampant and surreal, illogical hyperbole. Skies above! Nobody does illogical hyperbole like the 80s. Here is my transcription and deconstruction of the exultant and victorious chorus of the theme song:

RING RAIDERS!
We're faster than eagles!

Fair enough, fighter planes are LITERALLY faster than eagles, no complaints there, solid opener.

We're faster than sound!

My knowledge of science is so lacking that I don't want to comment on this with any confidence, but I think planes going faster than sound, yes. You see them flying, and then you hear the rumble, that makes sense, right?

We're faster than evil!

I don't really want to comment on this, because I feel that the proclamation is so inherently ludicrous that I am just impressed by the scale of out of the box thinking.

Ring Raiders later claim to be faster than both 'Light' and 'Crime'.

I fucking love Ring Raiders.

When Two Become One: Rooms I Mean

It is an intimidating thing to have the rest of your life on your hands.

This is an apprehension I have had since leaving University, where the ever-present, unquestioned cycle of September – June education, that I have been unthinkingly involved in since before I can remember, disappeared. I have discovered that what I do when left to my own devices is astoundingly uninspiring, involving reading, moping and low-level internet symbiosis.

Perhaps the most active I have been since moving back from a student house was when I had to juggle two rooms worth of tat into one room. The cloying sense of pseudo-claustrophobia is perpetual, though it is counterbalanced by my feeling of superiority over these ‘things’. I am the master of this room, I have fastidiously put everything away, and there it will stay. I hope I am able to raise the bar in terms of achievements before I die, as I am loathe to be remembered as the man who was able to fit an excessive amount of needless flotsam and jetsam into his sleeping chambers.

I had a number of mini-epiphanies whilst being the foreman of this gargantuan shuffling project, most of which I am sure will reflect relatively badly on me, or at least highlight some pathetic compulsions and neuroses that impact on my day to day existence.

In order to fit the contents of two rooms into one it is necessary to make material sacrifices, and though I would willingly spill the blood of a small marine type animal in order to have enough space for everything, it was necessary to throw some stuff out. In all honesty, this should have been easy, as there were a number of technological gadgetry type items hidden away in cupboards that, while hipcool in their time, were now ponderously outdated. Looking down into the whimpering displays of three portable Discmans it was extremely difficult to deposit them into the refuse. The particularly pathetic aspect of this tale is that the portable CD players in question were all broken. They were merely totems of a less futuristic time, when going jogging with a portable music device was impossible because even thinking about coughing would cause the device to skip and jump. Strange that this purported step forward from cassettes would make portable music enjoyment more difficult. Is it even possible for cassettes to jump? Regardless, the appearance of the tiny yet mighty iPod now makes all other sort of music enjoyment redundant, and even finding the pathetic remains of my old iPod was a difficult one to part with, even though it too is broken, and has been for years.

Music is a strange thing, with a stereo that plays cassettes, CDs and radio also being relegated to the top of the wardrobe, to gather dust and moth-carcasses until eventually it too is laid to rest in a rotting filth-Valhalla. Who needs a stereo when you have a PS3 which can do all the same things and so much more? (Okay not cassettes).

Another piece of redundant tat that I discovered was a large batch of floppy discs. It is astounding how little memory is on one, where it would now be quite difficult for a disc to store even text based files from up-to-date word processing programs. What is perhaps more astounding is the fact that I have a computer that is capable of reading these discs, though that computer itself only works when the rings of Saturn are parallel to the forest moon of Endor.

I also ended up with a sack full of plugs, which is good because if I ever need plugs then I know where they are.

So after throwing out Discmans and floppy discs, and after meticulously removing painstakingly self-printed inserts from out of jewel cases (also redundant, nobody has noticed yet though), I was starting to feel as though I was essentially throwing memories into the bin. My fragile composure was further tested when I attempted to categorise the items I was tidying away.

Now some things go together perfectly, with very little thought needed; books go together, as do DVDs, CDs etc. Important documents; payslips, bank statements, contracts etc, all go together. Paper, files and stationery also stay together. Things get slightly more complicated as you journey into the land of less symmetrical items.

It is impossible to categorise a roll of wallpaper, an amp and a breadbin satisfactorily. So then they end up with each other, in what it is necessary to unsatisfactorily label a 'misc' section. There’s something about it that makes me angry. Fucking misc.

When I was organising my room I had bought headphones, which, for some reason, had come with a free boomerang. Which raised an interesting question:

How do you classify a boomerang?

It had come with headphones, so perhaps it goes in with music, or perhaps with the amp, or a microphone? Perhaps it is a leisure throwing type item, and goes with kites/Frisbees/Nerf balls (none of which I have), so can it go in with the football or the pump, sporting equipment? Historically a boomerang is a weapon, though I have no other weapons which it could accompany, save perhaps a rounders bat. I ended up just throwing it in the wardrobe and uttering the following curse: Fuck you, Phillips, fuck you. I don’t care if you are Australian, don’t give me useless stuff, I have enough of that as it is. If you wanted to promote your Antipodean heritage you could have sent me a kangaroo or a koala. They would have been easier to categorise (Pets: Kitchen).

Do maracas go in with the bona fide musical equipment?

I can see the guitars laughing at the maracas with their snooty giraffe necks, and I’d hate for the maracas to be bullied. Similarly, a tambourine is just a shaky thing with bells on. But if we’re being reductive, a guitar is just a strummy thing with strings on. Musical politics is tiring.

The advancement of music hearing technology is quite frightening, in terms of its evolution to the point where it is possible, perhaps usual, to have a million and one songs on one small device, making it the musical equivalent of satellite/cable television. Unfortunately it also suffers from the same downside, which is; often there is so much choice to be had, but nothing worth experiencing.

At least with the iPod, it is my fault.