A voyage of rediscovery

The yellow label.  A plain white paper sleeve.  Black type in sans serif font and a little logo at the top…  names and numbers and things I didn’t understand.  Whilst I’ve often waxed lyrical about the hours spent poring over the 12” cardboard album sleeves of my youth, meticulously exploring the artwork and the unknown song titles, it’s easy to overlook the simple thrill of a first 7” single purchase.  Not just the music, not just the fact that you could bring a song you'd only previously heard on the radio or on Top Of The Pops directly into your living room and access it any time of your choosing – but that very specific, peculiar pleasure to be found in every detail of its physical form. 

It was the Summer of ’76, I’d just turned 13.  With a pounding heart and my pocket money savings in my turquoise purse, I went into Boots the Chemist where there was a little space right at the back of the shop selling records, and I bought Dancing Queen by ABBA.  The yellow label and even the fact that it had a plain white paper sleeve, they're indelibly stamped on my mind… and then, ohh, the grooves of joy in that small shiny slab of black vinyl.   I was so excited!

I think my copy was very slightly warped – weirdly not badly enough to mar the song for me, but just giving it the merest hint of distortion which then became the norm to my ears.  When I hear it now, I rather miss that imperfection, that split second dip in speed in each revolution.   The sound was somewhat tinny too, but it didn’t matter one bit.  I loved Dancing Queen, it made me feel happy, uplifted.  I loved this band of exotic Swedes who had brought it to my TV screen on Thursday nights - they were grown-up and glamorous, but they had a special accessibility.  The song, alongside their image, their presence, just spoke to 13 year old girls like me. 

Just around the corner, punk was looming its head.  Punk found me when I was truly ready to rebel, pissed off with school, seeking refuge for my ever-present ‘outsider’ feelings, needing an outlet for my inner dissenter.   Stranglers, Generation X, Buzzcocks and more filled out my little 7” singles box, I studied their different labels, their exciting picture sleeves, I buzzed to their fuzz guitars.  But, before all that, before the drastic haircut, black eyeliner and a graffitied school tie, I was a double denim (or triple, if you count the waistcoat), Charlie perfume, blue eyeshadow,  ABBA fan - as so many of us were.  And still are?  Well, not the double denim, etc. – but their songs, their classiness, their story – it’s stayed with us somewhere deep down.  So it'll be strange and otherwordly, I'm sure, but I'm really looking forward to rediscovering my inner 13 year old in just under two weeks' time, when I go down to London to see the ABBA Voyage show.  And, hopefully, it'll be just as memorable as that very first single purchase 46 years ago…. 

I shall let you know!

Yes, I know it's so familiar, but, oh go on... 

Christmases past

I awoke and something about the backdrop of dark stillness and the early hour of a Christmas morning effortlessly evoked a series of sweet, random memories. Sensory, childhood memories: sounds, tastes, textures, more.  A car slowly driving by triggered them, I think, and although I could only hear it, in my mind I could see it; as if from a high window, peeping through curtains, a car navigating its way gently through a freshly snowed-on road.  The snowsparkles are glinting in headlights like glitter, the sound of the vehicle's tyres muffled. The scene is vivid from under my duvet, uncluttered by conscious thoughts and the distractions of the day to come... it makes me feel cosy, safe. I let it play through in my mind and passively wait for others to join it.

Next the smell and the taste of biscuits. Biscuits in a big jar, from a variety pack; but they've all been put in there together so the tastes have mingled. Chocolate digestives are tinged with strawberry pink wafers, and custard creams infused with the tang of gingernut. No matter, they're creamy and crumbly and more interesting than Rich Tea, even if a little stale. Their softness, that accidental melange of flavours... it's comfortable. It's sugary-tea and paper-bag-of-sherbet-lemons and a Hot Wheels set and black-and-white-telly, home-from-school comfortable.

It's 1972 and I have a (surprise) kitten for Christmas! She's delivered on Christmas Eve, in a big box. I open the lid and reach in to find the sweetest, lightest – feather-light! - fluffiest ball of sleepy kitten softness, all huge ears and round eyes that look just a little too far apart.  Cleo, I call her.  Middle name Olga (after Olympic heroine of the year, Olga Korbut). She's white with black splodges; three big black spots in a line on her tummy look like buttons of coal on a snowman. When she licks my cheek I feel the unexpected raspiness of her tongue and get a faint whiff of pilchard Kitekat. If this nine-year-old child could see into the future she might be surprised to know that Cleo would be with her for the next 19 years.

Then I think of Nanny and Granddad coming to stay, a memory which conjures up more tastes and smells: the floral scent of Nanny's face powder, like talc, and the taste of Granddad's diabetic chocolate (oddly, a treat, just because it was different.) Nanny drinks Guinness and sleeps in the afternoons, Granddad wears a huge gold and black signet ring on one of his fingers, his hands have big yellow knuckles and, sadly, a few too many scabs, from woodworking wounds which don't heal as fast as they should. (I don't like to see the scabs.)  He makes pictures from flat wood pieces, like one of a house all formed from geometric shapes in different shades of brown.  With a steep roof and a large chimney, it's set against a background of chequerboard fields.

This is my Christmas past, locked somewhere in the late sixties and early seventies, a mash-up of moments experienced through senses.  It wasn't actually snowing when that car went past yesterday morning as I lay in bed... although they say it may do tomorrow. I can't wait for the muffled sound of the tyres on the road when it does.

Cleo (cats dig vinyl)

Es war im Sommer '69

It was the Summer of '69. I got my first real six-string, bought it at the five-and-dime.... no, no, NO! Begone with you, Bryan Adams, aarghh!

Where were we... ? The Summer of '69 and in my case, for three weeks anyway, in Germany. I've written a little here before, about travelling around in the back of a racing green Jaguar MkII and having a wobbly tooth in a thunderstorm. Today I stumbled across an old photo, the only one I have from that trip, of Micha and me reunited for a day. Micha and her family had been next door neighbours for a couple of years before they moved back to Germany. I loved Micha - she was my first, proper, best friend. When she left, she gave me her gold-painted bike 'Dobbin' and a little elasticated bracelet with pictures of alpine flowers on each of the white plastic links.

The lovely Micha on the left

It's funny what you remember, isn't it? For instance I don't remember a thing about the food on that trip, or much about the weather. My recollections are like sparse cuttings from a magazine, as if someone has gone through pages and pages full of detail and imagery but has only snipped round a few sentences and a handful of pictures, then stuck them in a scrapbook and thrown the rest away. Every time I flick through this mental album I see those same snippets, I see them clearly, but I can't fill in the blank spaces between them.

So I remembered about the wobbly tooth and the thunderstorm. I also remember staying in a house which had wooden shutters on the windows and I became briefly obsessed with them, “Mummy, can we put shutters on the windows at home? Can we? Please?” (Of course we never did...) I also loved the fairytale theme park in Ludwigsburg where they had a Rapunzel Tower. Rapunzel was my favourite story of all time, albeit that was only a six year lifetime in my case; still, it was magical. My Ladybird edition certainly was well loved.

Just as the Prince did in the fairytale, we had to call up, “Rapunzel, Rapunzel, let down your hair!” (“Rapunzel, Rapunzel, lass deinen Zopf herunter!”) and as I waited so excitedly, holding my breath in anticipation, a big plait of flaxen rope hair came down slowly from the one high window. It didn't come down quite far enough for anyone to actually grab it and climb up it, which was a little disappointing, but not so much so that it tainted the experience. I just imagined she'd need to grow her locks a little longer and then maybe I could go back one day and actually touch it when she had.

I remember my big sister getting a mosquito bite that flared up really badly and had everyone worried for days, and I remember feeling worried myself when looking down from the top of the Television Tower in Stuttgart – I really didn't like it at all. “Look at the tiny cars down there!” my sister exclaimed as we peered nervously over the edge. I have a vague memory of a trip to a musty old castle with lots of steps, and another of driving along the Autobahn and my parents arguing because my dad had missed the turn-off and my mum was supposed to be navigating. In a shop where we went to buy some souvenirs there were some toys with the laughable name 'Jobbies' - you always remember that kind of stuff, don't you? I didn't come home with a Jobby; instead I had a little doll with red hair dressed in a dirndl. You also never forget the holiday romances and it's true, I had a brief flirtation in a restaurant with a young German boy who seemed to have the hots for me. Sadly the only thing I was able to say to him, over and over again as I remember, was “Ich spreche kein Deutsch” (carefully taught parrot-fashion by my mum – at least I think that's what she'd helped me to say to him) but I still recall how nice his cheeky smiles made me feel, even then.

There were people, lots of people – friends of my parents who let us stay in their houses, took us to places, gave us presents, like Heidi, and Gudrun & Franz, and Theo and Rudolf.  And Micha. Micha who posted that photo to me in England on our return, with a little note on the back.

Some time in 1981 (part two)

It's June already, I can't believe my 18th birthday is only a month away!

I've spent some time this week rearranging my bedroom and it feels more like a little pad, I pretend it's my flat. Now I just have my mattress on the floor and I saved up and bought a stereo (turntable, tuner and cassette deck).  New albums I've been playing to death lately are the Au Pairs 'Playing With A Different Sex', Psychedelic Furs 'Talk Talk Talk', Kraftwerk 'Computer World' and Positive Noise 'Heart Of Darkness'. I've put this great Nosferatu film poster above the bed. Scared the life out of me when it fell down in the middle of the night and I awoke suddenly to find a vampire on my head (although Klaus Kinski does look rather cute in a bald, pointy-eared, fang-toothed kind of way).  So now it's stuck back with an entire packet of Blutac.

He looks a bit rough in the mornings

College is ok - Jill came in to visit the other day, I miss her from the Foundation Year but she's fine, she's gone very London now and has been hanging out at Le Beat Route - I feel very provincial now by comparison!

Been a strange year without Dad in the house but Mum is a lot better after her breakdown. It was the worst she's had, we're used to her depression when she stays in bed all day but we knew that things had got bad when she started saying/doing really odd things again as well.  She obsessed about painting her bedroom orange and wanted us to do it for her. Orange! Then she suddenly started reading the bible - we have a really old one in the house inherited from Dad's side of the family but nobody ever looks at it.  We're all so non-religious and this just wasn't like Mum at all, the way she was talking about stuff too.  It was a few months ago now but anyway A called Dr Lewis, he came over and arranged an ambulance - they took her to hospital that same afternoon. It was horrible seeing her wrapped in a blanket and wheeled out to it, like she was physically ill even though she wasn't. I actually think she was relieved, though. It was as if she was feeling, “I don't have to try any more. I can just give in to it” - like she'd reached rock bottom but at the same time a turning point, a time to let the doctors step in I s'pose.  A and I both cried after she'd gone but we were relieved too, and then we were fine on our own, in fact it was really nice having the house to ourselves for several weeks. We worked out our menus (macaroni cheese every Saturday) and we kept the place clean, it was like being a true grown-up with a house of my own (but sharing with my big sister). Hospital visits were hard, I hated going.  But anyway she got better, came back home and things have returned to some kind of normality. I haven't seen Dad in ages, don't know what he's going to do about my 18th (maybe he'll visit, that might be a bit strange).

Great news today! P has bought tickets to see Kraftwerk at Hammersmith Odeon so K and I are going with him and L. It's on the day after my birthday and I can't wait! Now I'm just wondering what to wear.

Some time in 1981

Got the bus into college today as usual, chatted to that girl who's on the secretarial course, she was enthusing madly about my eye make-up. I showed her my big green eye pencil, it's so fat it's like a kid's crayon, I love it! I draw around my eyes like I'm painting a picture, then smudge the black underneath them into it so it blends gradually, quite an art.

First session this morning was photography with Alan. He's a funny man, I don't know whether I like him or not, he's inoffensive enough, though. He's always telling us stories about how he used to photograph sixties models. Today he mentioned Celia Hammond, and there was another one whose name I've forgotten already, but he said that they had to give up on photographing her in the nude because her skin was so translucent that, although it looked alright in the flesh (literally), in the photos you could see all her veins! She must have looked like a road map.

Anyway he brought in his professional lighting equipment and was teaching us about how the lighting can change the mood of a portrait photo. Lighting from above is quite flattering, bringing out the shadows under the chin and nose, but lighting from below can give an almost malevolent look. Then he picked one of us to demonstrate on. Of course he bloody went and picked me, didn't he? I felt like a right wally sat there in the middle of the room while he ponced about with all these lights and everyone was looking at me. Wished I hadn't worn my baggy grey jumper, but at least I'd covered up the tatty neck with Mum's old green and blue scarf.  It still smells of her perfume.  I've got some spots on my chin, though, fuck it! Anyway he told me to sit with my head tilted upwards and look to the side for a classic portrait, really serious. I don't know quite how I did it without laughing, although I know I went a bit red. Thank god they'll be in black and white.

We're developing them tomorrow in the dark room, that should be fun, always feels like we're bunking off because there's so much waiting around time, always feels like a secret place too, must be the red light!

Katy was naughty at lunchtime. She'd brought in some dope. Apparently it's Red Leb. I think it was Black Leb that she had last time, that was when I tried it and ended up feeling so ill I thought I was going to have a heart attack. I was all over the place, I remember making some comment about Joseph and the Technicoloured Dreamcoat but I'd said Multicoloured Raincoat. God knows what the context was, I just remember that bit. Anyway Katy was well into smoking this Red Leb at lunchtime but after the last experience I didn't fancy it. I'm just not cut out for that stuff. Wish I was. As usual she rolled up some spliffs very ritualistically in the studio while John and Ray kept watch at the door. She doesn't care what she uses to roll them up on – she'd brought a Frank Zappa album in to lend me and she used the sleeve, bits of baccy everywhere. I'm not sure what I'm going to think of Zappa, I've heard of him but I don't know much about him, all seems a bit old to me. Katy keeps going on about a song with the line “Catholic girls with a tiny little moustache”... makes her laugh because she's Catholic.  But she hasn't got a moustache.  She looks like Kate Bush, and she never wears a bra. Anyway I'll give it a listen some time.

This afternoon we were working on our book cover designs. I'm quite enjoying being a bit abstract on this project, I've made a marbled design with ink and oil and I'm going to superimpose some kind of face on it.

Kris is doing the most amazing drawing for a Raymond Chandler book, from the perspective of looking up at someone, it's technically brilliant, I don't know how he does it. Bob, meanwhile, is doing a Jackson Pollock. He put large sheets of paper all over the floor and just splattered them with paint. He was pissing himself., getting paint everywhere, attacking it like a madman.  Don is running this session and he wants us to be proper graphic artists, all neat and tidy, and it's really winding him up that Bob is doing what he's doing. To make matters worse, Bob keeps coming up with all this brilliant bullshit about how that splatter there represents this and this blob here is meant to be that and he's just making it all up as he goes along, but there's nothing Don can do except twiddle with his beard.

Anyway that was college. Got home and Mum was in a bit of a funny mood. There was a pile of ironing in the linen basket and it was a load of Dad's shirts. I don't know why she's still ironing his shirts. Perhaps he hasn't got an ironing board at the place he's staying at. I know the landlord is a bit weird because he's not allowed to use the phone in the house, he has to go to a payphone. Not that I care. I hate him right now. I'm not going to fucking iron his shirts, that's for sure.

Number 2

Built in 1967, it was a classic example of a well-designed house from that era.  Spacious, with wide, large-paned windows, it had frosted glass in the front door which was sheltered outside by an open flat-roofed porch.  There were glazed interior doors downstairs, the kitchen was big and square, and the upstairs landing so broad that it could almost have been a room in itself.

I was only three (and a vital half) when we moved in, but some memories of the first few days there remain intact:  the shock discovery of a hole in the corner of my bedroom floor which had to be fixed by the builders before the carpet could go down, and Mimi’s anxiety at being in a strange place for the first time.  Poor thing shat in a kitchen cupboard, but at least she didn’t use the hole in my bedroom floor. Mimi was the cat, by the way.

Soon after we moved in my mum put her design stamp on the place:  parquet flooring under three matching squirly-patterned rugs in vivid shades of green and yellow, the cylindrical linen lampshades on sculpted clay bases, and her own framed oil painting of a sunflower on the wall opposite a print of Picasso's Blue Nude.

The living room curtains were an exotic shiny gold, and the kitchen curtains - I’d have those kitchen curtains now if I could.  They were wonderfully 1960s, with scratchy black line illustrations of domestic objects – kettles and teapots and vases, I think – against a textured, copper colour background.  Gorgeous.  On every flat surface downstairs there were ceramics, wood-carvings, sculptures and pot plants, and the focal point in the corner was a Monstera that was taller than my dad.  Mind you, he was only three foot eight.  (No, no!  He was nearly six foot.)

There was a rather exciting cupboard under the stairs.  Well, it was exciting when I hid in it – horrendously scary when I accidentally got shut in it.   It smelt of polish, and at various times over the years it housed a stringless violin, a cricket bat and some badminton racquets, the powder-blue upright vacuum cleaner, my mum’s honey coloured camel-hair coat, a dusty bottle of Cointreau (no idea why) which I'd sometimes go in the cupboard to secretly open and sniff, my sister’s long black PVC platform boots, and my navy blue anorak with its narrow decorative trim.  We had a groovy coat rack on the inside of the cupboard door (which I took with me when I moved out, having transformed the spheres into eyeballs with my paintbrush.)  I think you can buy repro ones now.

I can picture the wallpaper in my bedroom, with its repeated motif of large bright poppies, primroses and violets.  They were comforting, familiar images, like floral guardians, watching over me kindly as I looked up at them when I was ill, which as a child I frequently seemed to be.  Later my pride and joy on that wall was a big colourful map of the world.  Later still it was a poster of Donny Osmond.  And then a Paul Simonon centrefold. And then a wonderful Nosferatu film poster, a picture of Lydia Lunch and an article on Bauhaus from the NME, etc. You get the idea.  The only permanent adornments to that wall were the hard, dry remains of the Blutac.

The one problem with that room was the carpet.  My parents had thriftily decided to re-use some from the old house; it was a dark shade of red, with harsh black linear patterns.  I suppose mum thought it picked out the scarlet of the poppies on the wallpaper but  I hated the colour.  I also had a – fairly understandable – phobia about decapitation after I’d seen something on the telly about Henry VIII and the Elizabethan penchant for beheading, and I started having terrible nightmares about heads being chopped off, which somehow linked themselves to the dark claret carpet.  There was no doubt in my mind that it was red from the blood, the blood from the headless bodies.  If I could have changed one thing it would have been that, erm, bloody carpet.   

In my teens I did get the chance to change it and opted unwisely, in that typical folly-of-youth way, for a pale cream one,which didn’t fare too well under the frequent spillage of green nail varnish, various lurid hues of eye shadow, hot cigarette ash and crisps.  At least my make-up stains didn’t show up quite so much on the bathroom floor which, by the seventies, had been changed from grey lino to purple carpet tiles.  These went well with the dark purple wall, but not so tastefully with the pink suite.  At the same time, my sister painted her bedroom in contrasting shades of lime green and chocolate brown, which set off her Ché Guevara and Black Sabbath posters beautifully.  And mum hired Mr Dunstan to decorate all the downstairs walls in a fetching shade of mustard.  I don’t think there was any such thing as subtlety in the seventies.

I’m always dreaming about that house, so vivid is its feel, so deeply entrenched in my subconscious;  but I was set off on today’s particular mental visit when I heard about a tip from a creative writing course for exercising your mind and visualisation technique.  The suggestion was to think back to a house where you spent a lot of time in your childhood, and slowly imagine you’re entering the front door and going around all the rooms, taking in all the details.  It’s amazing what it unearths - I recommend it! And I so want those kitchen curtains, I just never appreciated them at the time.