Late night memories…
No, I'm not talking about another of my ilk kicking the bucket, it's about space invaders.
But, lets think about the word ilk for a moment.....
ok.
When I was spending a lot of my precious time learning the last bit of my Higher National Certificate, HNC, at Wigan and District Mining College, I was also spending every last ten penny piece on a game called Space Invaders.
Until Galaxian came along.
1980 was a year, that's for sure, with the end of my education, the destruction of my drafting career at the mining company Gullick Dobson (despite Arthur Scargills later win) and of course, no more job and no more money for the pub games.
At Gullicks, I'd slip out at lunch time and play a game at the arcade called Lunar Lander, there was a big throttle lever, a pair of massive stereo speakers and a big vector graphics screen. It was an Atari game I think, and it was the cat's ass.
Not the Bee's Knee's as that was a pub up the road in Wigan town centre.
If I could go back and play one of the hundreds of games over the last (almost) 30 years, it would still be Space Invaders, and the venue would be Bluto's night club (upstairs) in Wigan, circa 1979. If ever there was "a kind of" magic, it would be that little night club, Space Invaders on the wall and a little known group called "The Police" walking on the moon in the background.
Oh, and a pint, don't forget the pint.
There are three batches of wine on the bubble at the moment, the first two are up in Sechelt, one at Wine & Roses and the other at a place called Eddy Banana's. The third is being rather aromatic in our kitchen hissing away in it's bucket.
Mother made wine, wine out of what appeared to be almost anything, berries, apples, crab apples, elderberries and elder flowers. I think father actually tried a rice whiskey one time, but I never found out what that was like.
Mother would slip a three or five ounce snifter in front of the young fool, probably I was less than a dozen years old and she'd slip me the mickey. If it was elderflower then I'd have no chance, a sweet, syrupy concoction, probably about 15 percent alcohol. It was like drinking perfume, but it was drunk, and after one or three, so was I.
I can imagine this would amuse her no end, seeing little David, always a fool, become a wobbly one, and it was joy and it was life and it was home. The wine cellar, always full of demijohns, popping away as the yeast did it's work and made joy and relief out of everyday things like fruit, sugars and small rodents.
In the coming months I'll try to continue the tradition, as the good lady said today, she knew someone who even made wine out of Christmas Cake.
Hey, I'm up for it.
I'm not missing working one bit, even though some people would think it was a bit like killing the golden goose, you know, prime earning years and all that. I just think that between the age of 50 and 60 should be the prime living years, and with luck, way past that if I master these local walking hills and trails (once I find my boots).
The downward spiral of my mum and dad following my brothers death was so quick, so rapid that it underlined how fragile we all will be at some point. I'm not being morbid about it, but we all really need to make the most of it all.
I've no fear of "going too soon" or "premature ejection" as we like to call it.
In the last three or four days I've started to "get it" or what this retirement thing means, and well, Friday was a good example. Woke at 9.00am, had a coffee and then put a kitchen blind up, then put a bedroom blind up. We'd been over on the ferry to North Vancouver on the Thursday, zoomed around big box stores, took a big fat lunch at a brewpub and caught the late, pitch black ferry back. Fresh air and complete darkness, the hum of the ferry engines and the smell of the sea.
Friday, was a case of install them blinds mister, then as it was cracking the flags, we went off down the road for a walk, the Antique place at the bottom of our road was open and they had an awesome oak desk for my wifes room, so, we bought it and me and the antiques guy hauled it up to the house, he turned out to be the brother of the lady who lived in this house and he knew the guy who built the house, that's the sort of community this is.
So, then, after struggling up the stairs and installing the desk the Weldons went off on our walk again, down the road to Molly's Reach with lots of waterfront action, boats and tugs running backwards and forwards, we took some pix, then walked back up the hill to what has fast become our home.
After about an hour or so, we walked back down to Gramma's pub at the harbour in Gibsons, on the way down we saw a wild deer, a buck, in someones front yard about seven feet away, he looked at the pair of us and then went on with his business, unhurried.
At the pub we had a dozen 40c wings and a couple of cheap jugs of microbrew beer "Howe Sound Landing Lager" and then grabbed a bottle of wine at the off-sales on the way home, walking up the hill with thousands of stars and then back home, with new blinds, a warm house with a log in the fireplace and glasses of wine.
It was a good Friday.
It was a song by The Fixx that came out around 1981 and was always in my mind, it was there in 1985 when I was enjoying pie and peas in the Kings Head pub at Santa Monica while drinking frozen Newcastle Brown ale, it was there in 1987 when I was drinking imported Labatts Blue and planning my escape to Canada from what had been an unfriendly and dark Britain and it was there in 2000 when we buried my dad and the drink of the day was Jameson's.
And it is here now, in late 2007 as I make my home in British Columbia, on the edge of the Pacific Ocean, a place where I can actually reach the beach and a time for a new chapter in the fools life, I know some of you read this and I want to change the direction somewhat, still reporting on the nostalgia of it all, but also reporting day to day observations of "going coastal" and what it's like to stop work too soon, what it's like to wake up each day with too much time on your hands and what a daily pint in an old codgers hands means.
Welcome to the new chapter.
The job is (just) about done Christmas Rant.
Well, yes, it is only September and the time of great seasonal indulgences appears to be far off, but, circumstances have encouraged me to write the rant early, a sort of advanced copy of something that won’t be coming in your stockings at the end of the year.
I don’t usually mention names in these finely crafted creations of inadequate wit and poor grammar, but, as this is a very special and premature installment, I will.
Has anyone noticed how big Ron Barlows ears have become? – at one point in the past I convinced John Oh that Ron was a retired boxer and that his ears had grown to enormous size from the constant pounding over the years. This may not be obvious to those in the reading audience who have been giving other parts of their bodies a constant pounding over the years (normally during works time) without any increase in size, but, in the case of boxers ears, they always seem to grow bigger.
But, as you all know, there are bigger issues than Ron Barlow’s ears.
The ship has reached the point of no return as far as taking on water, as you read this I’ll be climbing into a lifeboat on the starboard side, unable to help, or hinder for that matter. As your fearless Captains/Emperors remind you that it’s all up to you, to make things work, I’ll be wearing a nicely constrained yet fashionable Victorian button up number and be using a flare gun to celebrate my departure while toasting my chestnuts.
If you’re expecting the rescue ship Carpathia to arrive before dawn, then good luck, however, in reality the water is extremely cold and the unthinkable truth is that most of you are not going to make it. The ship is going to sink.
The comparison with the Titanic and the Carpathia is perhaps a little off as the crew of the Titanic did fire off as many SOS messages as they could, plus exhausted their supply of flares, to no avail.
And of course they did not wear denim flares, even on a Friday.
It appears that this corporate ship is going down without the crew even considering raising a flag of warning, hundreds of unwilling crewmen, wrapped in silence, incapable of criticism of a regime that has resulted in the destruction of what was perceived as a productive environment.
Although, it could be said that the Flying Squirrel Emporium had the same effect in the late 1980s.
I’ve said it before, and by golly I’ll say it again, the emperor has no new clothes, he is, as the French say, buck nekkid and it’s about time that all of you raised your eyebrows and concerns about what’s happening here onboard and point firmly at his winky.
After all, they can’t send everyone to Peterborough can they?
The Scottish contingent of the escape committee told me the story of the schoolboy visiting the zoo who sees a bear sitting in it’s cage, visibly upset. The schollboy asks why and the zookeeper explains that the bear is sitting on a nail. Why does it not move inquires the young lad? Because, answers the zookeeper, it does not hurt enough.
I looked this story up on the interweb and it continued that there is a lack of what is called chaos for the bear to make the move; actually to want to make the move. So just as the actions have been going on of all time, the bear will continue to sit in it's same place, in the same way, doing the same things; until that moment when chaos is encountered in order to make the bear move.
You’re waiting for your own personal chaos, without it you’ll continue to uncomfortably sit on your nails and hope for the daily darkness to arrive quickly or for prime time programming on NBC to improve dramatically.
Mind you, Graeme Wright is barking mad and spends most of his time relating his world to his childhood heroes of Sooty, Jimmy Clitheroe and Johnny Morris. (For those not familiar, the bear, the schoolboy and the zookeeper) – just a paragraph to make the Scotsman smile.
The last straw on the camels back, or chaos, can arrive in your lives at any point and it can be as simple as an unfortunate miscalculation on managements part about how little money is required to keep you on your nail. This is the ongoing feature film between the downtrodden, exploited proletariat and the smug, controlling bourgeoisie, set to a Rogers and Hammerstein soundtrack.
So a decision is made about how green the grass is and you jump onto another nail at another country club while continuing to contemplate that age old question of exactly how do we solve a problem like Maria?.
John Lennon described us all as “fucking peasants” and that if we wanted to be a working class hero then we should just follow him. Well, I don’t know about you, but moving to a cold city where no one gives a crap and being violently gunned down by a complete stranger is not my cup of tea, hero status or not.
That may still be my fate, although my nemesis may be a tumbling thermos cap followed quickly by the pointy end of a logging truck.
On a much lighter note, the changes in our structure have brought about much merriment, especially the record breaking mid-year musical chairs colocation. I’ve searched the interweb for this word but have found it’s definition elusive when applied to humans.
Although, my colon has been aching with all this movement…..
In a miserable diatribe like this with the cross pollination of Ron Barlow, a 1912 shipping disaster, Danish fairy tales, Marxism and the Sound of Music you’re going to come to the conclusion that it was about time that the cynical curmudgeon shuffled off under his mushroom and turned off the lights.
I agree with you.
As my lifeboat moves off to the horizon, those with sharp eyes amongst you will notice that my Victorian dress has turned into what appears to be a red lumberjacks shirt and trousers, I’m wearing a toque and the lifeboat has morphed into a jet boat.
Call me Nick, call me Relic, but please, don’t call me to find out how to run your programs.
Dave Weldon has left the boat.
Good luck to all of you who deserve it.
It's been 26 years in the making, but, it's about to happen. Within a month, without any major castastrophies (tm)....
I'll reach the beach.
Relax, take it easy.
Every one of us has a place on the map, that's what we're placed here for, it's nothing to do with mum and dad, or brothers, sisters, kids, dogs or cats. It has to do with the global jigsaw puzzle and where we fit in, perhaps for some of you, it's a cubicle at work, perhaps for others it's a hot cup of tea at the two mills with beans on toast on a Sunday morning, perhaps it's right here, right now.
And if it isn't, then do something about it and stop whinging.
I watched a Canadian Soldier come back to Trenton on the evening news and I was transported back to my younger brothers funeral in 1992. A cold hard day in North Wales, a hint of rain and a gaggle of twenty-somethings with red eyes and knots in their stomachs.
A brother who was eleven years my junior, killed in a senseless way and my entire family hit by it's own personal tsunami.
I miss him, my dear mum, my dad and I miss the boy I was before it all started to be washed away.
Middle aged Man, trapped in a downward spiral of unproductive nostalgia and angst.
