Unproductive Nostalgia

While I was growing up in the house, there was a drawer in the kitchen that was filled with stuff, all sorts of articles that could not find their own place on the planet, besides a drawer full of similar lost and unused orphans.

In there, medals, an eyeglass, an old pocket knife, a cigarette case, an ammeter, ronson lighters with no flints, emery boards, a map of Liverpool, an AA key or two, a magnifying glass, an assorted medley of Yale keys, a padlock without a key, chains and old broken watches, knobs and buttons, lost years and dreams, secret wishes and dashed hopes, smiles tears and heartache, love.

I always found those medals, I think they were my dads, he was in the war you know, well, when I was my age they all were.

In Palestine, my dad probably never thought that one day he would have a medal for driving his half track around the Middle East, a force of British Men far from home and their loved ones, shocked by the hardships and horrors of the preceding seven years of war and the ongoing bombings at hotels full of civilians.

The King David Hotel. July 22nd, 1946.

Those medals, I believe, meant nothing to my dad, he threw them in that drawer, after keeping them in another drawer, in our previous house in Liverpool, a long time after the Ministry sent him his wartime parting gifts along with an ill fiiting demob suit and a cardboard suitcase.

Thanks.

Medals in drawers through time.

Wait a minute.

So, those there Pussycat dolls, five or six fine, fine, women. Absolutely fantastic, but unfortunately, only one of them (the old bint in the tight spandex camel toe pants) seems to be singing and the other lot are just flapping in the background.

I'm having a go at no talent, but I have to congratulate the rest of the current crop on the countdown, fantastic music and I'm not going to harp back to the eighties and make comparison, as, for all those kids out there, this is their eighties.

But what are they going to call it. The zero's?

Back in the zero's, those groups that could not be surpassed, those Billy Talents, the romantic Chemicals, Three days grace, the Killers, good Charlotte and all those american Idol losers who made it good.

And the supergroups.... oops, there are none.

Music has such energy at the moment, elements of my eighties, times when the clock was ticking but no-one was taking notice, when an extra pint wasn't a waistline worry and we'd never dream of not having more food at midnight.

Sitting here, listening to todays countdown, its cool and warming to think that its still going on out there, while I quaff my wine, relax in my oversize pajamas and think of staying up a minute past eleven o'clock.

It's the rebel in me.

And yes, I'd shag all those Pussycat dolls, even the old one with the voice.