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.
Middle aged Man, trapped in a downward spiral of unproductive nostalgia and angst.
