Surrounded by ghosts

It dawned on me the other day that I spend far too much time surrounded by ghosts. The films I love to watch are predominantly full of actors no longer with us. The authors whose books populate my shelves no longer breathe. The people who created the music I listen to are now eternally silent. The hands that made the art I adore are forever still. Even the house I live in is a constant reminder of other, happier days, when everyone I loved lived and their laughter filled the rooms. Slowly melancholia takes over until it fills my soul with its soft incessant murmuring. Time is going by, time is over, time is moving on. And am I? I don’t know.

The prompt for this latest bout of sadness was, funnily enough, the nicest feel-good musical known to mankind, Singin’ in the Rain. I saw the stage show in London's west end recently, and it was so fantastic it tipped me straight back into the film. Although I always delighted in watching Gene Kelly and Donald O’Connor dance across the floors (and chairs, tables, off walls), it’s only now, as I have practised more dance myself, that I am thinking all kinds of holy wow at their talent. So I have been dipping into YouTube, watching clips from distant television specials and black and white films, and it’s so un-nerving to go from seeing Donald O’Connor aged ten tap-dancing with his brothers for an audition to – one click! – his last ever performance as an elderly man. One click – he was born! Next click – his obituary. A whole life – boom, bang-a-lang – and then that’s it, folks. Show’s over, and no amount of applause will coax an encore, not this time. Not in this life.

This sort of thing gets me every time – from well-known actors to people glimpsed in social history, from documented famous lives to unknown faces fading in second-hand photographs. I find myself looking at people coming to the end of their twilight years and thinking ‘how was it for you?’, hoping that the answer is good, as our journeys through living time are so relatively quick. One tick, here. Next tick, gone. And the meter keeps running no matter what. Who pays the bill at the end? I guess that stays a secret.

When melancholy gets too heavy I have to step out of the past and surround myself by my contemporaries, by people who breathe. And so I make a point to watch films with actors who see the same sunset as I do, and read books by authors who wake each morning to tackle a new page. I add new tunes to my playlists by musicians currently recording, and go to exhibitions by artists who are alive. Remind myself to look around every so often and see the world as it actually is – right here, right now – not a sepia reproduction but a living place with possibility.

Sometimes I spend so much time looking backwards that I forget about looking forwards. I have to surprise myself, take future-thinking unawares. I’ll make a sneaky plan and then jump ahead a little, and am almost surprised at getting a step closer to my goal. Deep down I really want to look ahead, but layered on top are years of conditioning that tells me to be wary, that unpredictable things are always bad, that if you do that you will fall, that if you take risks you will sink. But I’ve been working very hard to make this conditioning diminish – even if it doesn’t totally leave me, I can make it lesson, take its power away. And keep facing forward.

Toys from 1976

An artist has uploaded the entire contents of an Argos catalogue from 1976. Let’s explore the toys...and prices!

Electric Washer and Cash Register

I love the description of this cash register: ‘Decimal currency price flags raised by 13 button control.’

Thirteen button control!  My friend had one of these. It was great fun pushing those thirteen buttons, I seem to recall. What a shame it didn't come with real money.

I am gutted I didn’t have the washing machine. I could have played The Game of the Missing Sock and Who Dyed My White Shirt Red?

 
Toy Electric Washer. Tumble washes and spins. Operated by batteries. £3.45
Cash Register. Spring release drawer and paper reel. £2.75

Scooter and Bike

This was my scooter. There were no brakes. You just held on for dear life when going down a slope – in fact, I don’t think its wheels could cope with slopes. I seem to remember I always fell off, usually because I was attempting An Ill-Advised Stunt.

I may have also had this bike, which is described as a ‘Pony’ Pavement Cycle. Pony is British slang for rubbish... but I liked my bike! It was certainly not rubbish. It got me from A (the school driveway) to B (the alley behind my house) by way of C (the brook). ‘C’ wasn’t meant to happen. I was cycling down a slope which led to the brook and wondered what would happen if I cycled with my eyes shut. The result of my experiment was my 8-year old self went straight into the brook, and then the bike fell on my head.

Bantel 3-wheel scooter. £4.25
'Pony' Pavement Cycle. Detachable stabilizers. Front wheel cable brake. £17.95

Kojak board game

I didn’t have the Kojak game with its ‘Beretta’ type plastic gun. (Yikes!) Nor did my brother, which was probably a good thing as I just know those sucker darts would not have been aimed at that board.

Chad Valley 'Kojak' Target Game. 'Beretta' type plastic gun and sucker darts. £1.99







Tiny Tears doll

I did have Tiny Tears, the doll that wouldn’t stop weeing. You fed the doll water and then it would drip out of the other end, so to speak. Everywhere you put the doll would be damp. If only I had the washing machine toy. Missed opportunity there, mum.

Casdon 'Bernie and Bath' set. Soft vinyl doll with rooted hair and accessories. £2.99
Palitoy 'Tiny Tears' Baby Doll. Drinks, cries and wets her nappy. £4.75 

The entire catalogue can be found by following this link

Timewarp

I feel very unsettled recently, and keep having Deep Thoughts about Life, the Universe and Everything. You know - those sort of thoughts... quick run to the hills! It all began with an innocent idea to look at old school photographs…

If I had a super-hero name, it would be The Archivist. I keep a large collection of various ephemera from my schooldays – including cassette tapes that I used to record the sounds from a typical school day. Yes, I was a little strange. The idea behind it was an urgency that nothing would last, and that one day all this would be just a memory. This was no doubt prompted by the unexpected death of my father when I was 12 – mortality hit, and my response was to keep everything I could get my hands on – no matter how small, I carefully treasured it. None of it has any value except to me – unless in the future a museum would like to know what a day in the life of a comprehensive school sounded like in the late eighties. Loud, mostly – ‘norf landen’ gobby teenagers trading insults and frenzied laughter between lessons so dull you can practically hear the boredom.

The other reason I kept everything, fuelled by the feeling that nothing would last, was because I wanted to be able to remember what it was like to be a teenager if I was old by the time I became a writer. I had the idea I would grow up and write for teenagers (as when I was a teenager all my stories were for my contemporaries) and I didn’t want to forget how it felt. I kept a lot of diaries around this time as well – gut-achingly awful things to re-read, but perfect for wanting to remember how awkward life was back then. Perfect in fact for research, as long as I try and pretend that the hopeful voice coming from the diaries wasn’t mine.

The unsettling part of this post, apart from the fact looking back can always be a double-edged sword – is that I started to wonder what my contemporaries back then would think of me now. I am still in my childhood home where some might remember knocking for me, outwardly nothing has changed. I am like some weird pickled version of Miss Havisham. What would I think of them – if they were still in the same place as back then? My first thought might be ‘what on earth happened to you?’ like the theme song to the TV show ‘Whatever Happened to the Likely Lads’ - one of those shows that trade on nostalgia and the whiff of regret, sentiments sometimes too close for comfort.

Hey what happened to you?
Whatever happened to me?
What became of the people?
We used to be
Tomorrow's almost over,
Today went by so fast,
The only thing to look forward to is the past.

I tried to analyse it (as that always makes things better, right?) and I guess my biggest fear is that they would all think I am a loser. Which means, as I don’t really care what faces in photographs think, is that ultimately *I* think I am a loser. And if that is what underpins everything, then it is really hard to change. I try so many tactics to not feel this way – I do try to trust that everything I do is for a reason and one day it will all work out swimmingly, but this is a whispy confidence that is hard to hold.

I think I put too much pressure on my story. I want it to save me… and I think I need to work out how to save myself first. I want the book to sell so it can take me away from all this – I want to buy a little place of my own, I want to justify my life, and prove that if you keep trying enough you will succeed. But these shouldn’t be the reasons – the reason should just be I have a story to tell. That was the original thought – and on the way it has instead become my saviour that will rescue me. I think that is what is piling on pressure and why I am finding editing so hard. I need to step back somehow, and convince myself that it is all alright, and just telling a story is a fine thing to do.

So feeling like this, it probably didn’t help that I found 28 consecutive episodes of Home & Away from 1989 on youtube. I used to love that show back then, as when everything else around me seemed insane and confusing, it (and Neighbours, and Grange Hill) was a constant reassuring presence. So I have been watching shows last seen when I was 14 (helping to add to the weirdness) and it was strange and somewhat lovely to revisit them again. Apart from finding out the actress that played (and still plays) little Sally Fletcher is now 30 years old. Google has a lot to answer for, sometimes.