Video Saturday – Peter Gabriel & Kate Bush

It seems fitting that in a year of no economic activity and mass redundancies announced on a daily basis, we should visit 1986 and a classic song of a man, his redundant lifestyle and his wife, recorded in a time when the evil witch Thatcher and her Gestapo cabinet had just finished overseeing the death of the British coal and steel industries, a time of dereliction in many communities, a time when one of the evil witches henchmen declared “If its not hurting then its not working”.

But enough of this politicising – Kate Bush, you would wouldn’t you ?

Brian et morte

I found out yesterday that Brian was dead.

You know, Brian from Benidorm, Brian who shared an apartment in Benidorm with my dad, Brian who was Walter Matthau to my dads Jack Lemmon, you remember, this Brian…

Anyway, he’s dead.

Died two years ago actually, its not a very good grapevine around here.

Michael…2

So he could probably see that the game would soon be up for him, after the circulation failed in his legs and they were both amputated he knew that dialysis wouldn’t keep him alive for ever, he was already the longest serving patient on his dialysis ward and the failure of the CAPD method to cope with his illness meant that he was now confined to a hospital bed three times a week.

I’d recently reached an agreement with him to purchase his share of the business and so with his new found wealth he set in process his divorce from his wife and took a holiday to Teneriffe, the first time in his life that he had ever been abroad.

Michael…1

This is a theme that could run and run.

Where do I start with Michael ?

Michael was my dads business partner when I joined the company in ‘84, so he became my business partner too.

I’d known Michael for a lot longer than that though for Michael’s dad had worked with my dad for many years, then Michale had joined the business as a young lad following his dad, just as I followed mine later.

Egging us on…

It was Mick Gambles fault.

It was his good idea that we collect birds eggs, he came to Cookridge with his own collection and we were easily persuaded that we should have one too, and so set about catching up on his his impressive clutch of eggs of all sizes, shapes and colours arranged in a tin biscuit box filled with sawdust.

Of course it is illegal now and the scarcity of some British birds could even be blamed on our 11 year old schoolboy scavenging expeditions in the country side that was just one step from our doorways. It may even have been not legal when we were doing it, still, its done now, and it took us outdoors and taught us the ways of nature and how to observe her and other guff like that in a transparent and very obvious attempt to justify our wicked ways.

Football on a cricket pitch

Its difficult to describe how to play football on a cricket pitch, but we managed to do it, year after year, school holiday after school holiday.

Of course the cricketers weren’t very pleased but we used their pitch while they were at work and we were on our school holidays so although they suspected that we did so, they never actually caught us in the act of doing so.

Billy Connolly – Old Woman On A Bus

Video Saturday – Stevie Wonder

In celebration of the fact that the Stevie Wonder album, arguably the best Stevie Wonder album, arguably the best Motown album, “Songs In The Key Of Life” has been re-released and is now on Napster for downloading (which I may do shortly even with my own money), we listen today to “Livin For The City”.

“Songs In The Key Of Life” was a christmas present in ‘76, an ace album its one of those that grows steadily on you, matures with age like, like, well like me actually. This track isn’t on it of course, this is from Innervisions, an album that Ned bought, in fact when I peruse our joint album collection, which is now totally in my custody, I see that we have a good smattering of Stevie Wonder produce without either of us ever admitting to be big fans – the sign of a brilliant artist when you build up a collection of his without even knowing you are doing it.

A sticky situation…

…so the Ferguson Videostar home video recorder served us well for several years, its huge clunky switch levers building up some impressive finger muscles in the process.

And then I left home for a new life in the North East.

I bought a small flat in a small pit village using £500 borrowed from my dad as a deposit on a £9000 mortgage, yes it sounds like a small sum to pay for a one bedroom flat these days but in 1981 it was a kings ransom for me and just to emphasis the point I had to make the first months mortgage payment with my credit card as I was totally skint, skint enough to have not even one chocolate biscuit in the flat, a sure fire indicator of your level of skint-ness.

The miracle of the video recorder

Whilst we were always the last to upgrade our consumer electronic products, the last to have a colour tv for instance, the last to have a record player in the house as another for instance, we were, for some strange reason known only to my father, the first people in the known world to have an operational video recorder inside their house.