Guest post by accident....;)

For those of you who don't read the comments.... well sometimes you really should, you're missing the best bits......

Courtesy of

dickvandyke

"Ah Primary School. It was the late 60s for me, but the sentiments remain the same ....

The schoolyard. Aged 4. Short pants. Tarmac, trepidation and snot.

I remember the obligatory boy with the white patch of sticking plaster over one eye. His hideous black-framed NHS spectacles sat upon his wart-infected ears. My new shoes were rubbing already.

The older kids in the corner mischievously sang that summer's bizarre novelty hit, "There Coming To Take Me Away Ha-Haa!" Mum had cut my hair around a basin and I had a lop-sided fringe. I smelled of camomile lotion following the recent spotty Chicken Pox affair. 2lemon bon-bons gathered lint in my pocket.

The teachers looked about 55; looking back, they were probably 26! 'Maybe they'll teach me how to become a real Thunderbird?' I wondered. (I had imagination - what more would I need in life?)

And the girls. Lots of girls. Mostly pig-tailed, missing their front teeth and ugly as sin; but one or 2 were worryingly pretty. Handstands against the wall with knickers on display. It was all too much! I'd never considered that girls existed before. I had football, a dog and a tortoise - girls had never been necessary.

The bell clanged. This was it.

"You're a big boy now. These are the best days of your life". (Had I known about God then, I'd have asked him to help me). I so desparately wanted to cry when my mother said goodbye. That wretched stomach through a mangle feeling.
She spat on a handkerchief and wiped my grubby face one last time and she was gone.

I noticed a pile of freshly steaming sick was being covered by a man with a shovel and a bucket of sawdust. Some boys were still sobbing into their mothers' aprons. My bottom lip wobbled precariously - but I must've somehow realised that future playground pecking order and classroom kudos could not be gained by wailing like a 'puff'.

Besides, I'd previously learnt how to be 'mummy's brave soldier' when TV's Andy Pandy show ended, and the heart-wrenching signature tune had played .. "Time to go home, time to go home .. Andy is waving goodbye ... Goodbye".

On that very first morning at school, I remember learning 2 important things:

Lesson 1 - If you're happy and you know it, clap your hands.

Lesson 2: Don't sit next to the boy who's shit himself.


As I've said before kiddo, you're not alone.

Much love."

London Bridge Is Falling Down

I've been looking around myself this past year. So many things have changed as I turned 40, before and after. I'm not looking at the same landscape I was last summer. New arrivals, big changes at work, at home. Friends have left town or are leaving. Other friends are leaving each other.

This week my old primary school burnt down. A huge chunk of my life gone. Probably the last marker of my childhood gone. My old part of town has been knocked down and built up so many times. You don't expect bricks and mortar and concrete and glass to be so transient.

Anyway I'm sitting here, watching Field Of Dreams, a beautiful film about the past and putting things right, coming to terms with who we are and what we have done. And I'm reminiscing and getting a little blurry.

Lets see, what was there going on back then? What do I think of when I was at Primary School? The summer of 76, too hot to sit out in the playground, everyone sticking to the shade, water from the taps being too hot to drink.

J, (like a Lloyd Cole song most of the important women through the ages have been inital J...)who was in the same class as me throughout. Looking back over old photos she was a pretty little thing but she grew up to look like her mother. Who looked like a potato.

D, my best friend at primary school, whose surname was the same as the first name of my best friend at secondary school. One day I went to knock for him and the flat was empty. He had moved and hadn't told me it was happening.

Monkey, with one of the best theme tunes ever, the talk of the playground the monday after.

Another D, the school nutter, from a family of nutters. Who for some reason always liked me so I never felt the terror of his presence like some people did. He looked like Paul Weller, which put me off The Jam for a long while. He ended up in prison and came out a preacher.

O, who had a huge crush on me and whose brother was in one of the Guy Ritchie movies years later.

The Dump, the site of a demolished Victorian tenement, where my little gang congregated on weekends, having wars and reading our treasure trove, a stack of porn that somebody had stolen from a nearby newsagent and thrown over the corrugated iron fence of the Dump to pick up later. A stack that we arrived one Sunday morning to find burning.

And Star Wars. Batman (parka hood up, buttoned at the neck). Spiderman. Never being chosen for football. Playing kiss chase one last time on the last day of school. Getting a slap around the face from J because I finally kissed her.

And then there's my mum, bringing my sister and me up single handed, with all the things that brought, including my inclusion into the free school meals gang. Getting called a tramp was a quick way for the person doing the name calling to get a punch in the face...

London Bridge is falling down but they'll keep building a new one in it's place.

Giant Steps etc....

Out of all the big events of the 20th Century, the one my mum talked about most was the moon landing. Apparently on that night she held me up to the sky to look at the moon and told me all about the astronauts being up there. I was five months old. And I can just imagine what she'd be telling us about if she was still here!

I'm about to step outside and see what I can see now forty years later and then I'm going to tell Alfie all about it!

Still Alive

I had a message asking if I was still alive this week. Well, I am!

It wasn't swine flu in the end, but it was a particularly nasty infection with some symptoms that were very flu-like. A couple of weeks later and a course of antibiotics and I'm up and running again.

Now, I hear you ask, where is the blogging? Where is the music? Well, not really been up to doing much of that lately; in fact I'm not sure what I've even been listening to. It is a blip at the moment though, there's a lot of things going on obviously at home and at work so... and besides which, all my music is on a separate drive and I'm sitting in another room on a laptop. Really can't be bothered to unplug things and replug them. Sigh.

I'm hoping things will settle down somewhat in a few weeks. I may be hoping in vain mind you!

In other news I've just discovered one of you lot (Mr Planet Mondo himself) is working about thirty yards down the street from where I work. I'm not quite sure whether to buy him a pint or stalk him. :)

Anyway, here's a tune I did have to hand, and it's a cracker. One of my most favourite remixes ever, and the moment when suddenly the world joined the dots between eras for me. A real lightbulb moment!

Happy Mondays - WFL (Wrote For Luck) - Vince Clarke mix

Flying Pigs

Well, I appear to have flu. And, in a borough of London that has a high Swine Flu count, there is the possibility that I too have become one of the many statistics they quote on the news. I think the last time I became a statistic was when I was unemployed years ago.

Anyway, I have to stay at home, to reduce the risk of spreading the disease. And I may be receiving a swab kit in the post so I can be checked out. Only maybe however, they don't have enough to send to every body with possible symptoms.

And so, one of my all time favourite bands reforms and plays a gig in London, and I can't go.

Damn it.

So if I can't go out then I'm going to throw open the windows and turn up the music. A classic little Northern Soul tune, that as far as I'm aware isn't available anywhere right now; full of summer. Enjoy!

Ginger Thompson - Boy Watcher

The Moment: Live!!

One of my all time favourite bands, covered in these pages last summer, The Moment, are reformed and playing live in London this Wednesday July 1st, at The Fiddlers Elbow in Camden Town.

Go to this very page of the blog for details about them and to hear some tracks:

http://thesongsthatpeoplesing.blogspot.com/2008/08/moment.html


Should be a damn fine evening!

Blow Away The Cobwebs

I've been in a little bubble for a little while now, months maybe. I'm going to be exposed to the real world on Monday, none of this purified air any longer, only other peoples germs and bad moods. I really do need to find a new walk, a new swagger to deal with this strange new planet I find myself on. But in the meantime the old tunes carry enough weight to lift me up ten feet high.

"First lets hear somebody sing me a record that cries pure and true"

Deep breathe in, breath out slowly. And relax.

Or alternatively, as somebody I know said earlier today:

"Gram of billy and half a bottle of vodka comming right up !!"

Dexys Midnight Runners - Let's Make This Precious