Many films are based on true stories, but have been changed around a bit. The order of events may be different; one person may be split into two or more characters, and imagination may be used to fill in gaps in what can be recalled. I have many memories from my past, but cannot place them on an exact timeline, and I figure if films can play around with the details, then why can’t I? Of course the answer is that I can, and I am doing. As I have said in a previous post, it feels good to write. It also feels good to reflect upon childhood experience. So why not combine the two? What follows is the “true” story of what happened one weekend sometime between the late 80’s and early 90’s.
It’s the beginning of the summer holidays. Another year had passed at Ysgol Llewelyn primary school, and there was much excitement about the coming six weeks. A period of time that felt like an absolute age compared to what it does now. It’s Saturday morning. And in our family home, at the top of the wooden staircase, in the converted loft, in the room on the right hand side, is me, lying in bed, feeling very well rested. This is a feeling I often reflect back on. It’s no longer possible to wake up feeling this good, and so full of energy; but this was quite common for this age. I get out of bed and down the stairs, which were affectionately referred to as “the wooden hill” – one of many terms Mum coined over the years.
Through the archway into the living room I walked and put the fire on. This is achieved by reaching into one of the four decorative interiors of the fire (one on each corner), and turning a wheel all the way round. This put the fire on full, and all four panels in the centre started to glow. Sometimes you would hear the sound of gas, but no flame would appear. That’s when the matches would come out. “Why are you putting the fire on full at this time of year?”, said Dad. “I’m cold”, said I. David agreed that it should stay on, whilst turning the television to BBC One. We compromised and turned it down to half.
On the TV came the opening credits of the Saturday morning TV show Going Live. A favourite of ours, which most certainly must be watched every Saturday morning. At least until they cancelled it and replaced it with Live and Kicking. But that was good too. Anyway, Going Live was presented by Phillip Schofield with his sidekick Gordon the Gopher. It was split into many different parts, most of which David and I enjoyed very much. First on the agenda was The Raccoons, a story of the friends in the Evergreen Forest, and the difficulties they faced against the evil Cyril Sneer, who was also the father of their friend Cedric. This episode involved them succeeding in a race, in a solar powered car, which they had built themselves. Clearly messages about the environment were included in these cartoons even then. These messages went straight over my head at the time, but it’s interesting to look back and see what the creators of the cartoons were doing to try to instill good values into children as they watched. The show had very memorable opening and closing credits.
Mum walked into the room. “Okay chums, what do you want for breakfast?”. “What is there?”, said David. “Well there are Rice Krispies, Marmalade or Jam on toast, or banana sandwiches.” “Banana sandwiches!!”, David and I shouted in unison. “But only if they are done as suns and moons”, said I. What this meant was that it was not acceptable to just put the banana pieces into the sandwich in any old way. They had to be circular slices, known as suns, and when a circular piece is cut in half, it is known as a moon. I imagine now that Mum did this for us once, and we liked it, so insisted that it happened every time. This principal repeated itself many times, such as when she would bath us whilst telling us a story. A William story to be precise. Which I now know was inspired by the Just William books she read as a child, and recently bought me for Christmas as part of my “Get me a book that you have read and consider to be excellent” request. At the time though, she just happened to know lots of William stories, and on the occasion that there was an incident with a burglar in it, David and I liked it so much, that we insisted that all bathtime William stories must always contain a burglar. Once she tried one without a burglar, and once the story ended, David and I looked at her in disbelief. “It can’t have ended. There hasn’t been a burglar yet!”
Enjoying our banana sandwiches with suns and moons, the next part of Going Live to come on was The Muppet Babies. I think I knew of these before I knew of the actual Muppets. Essentially the original Muppets were much younger, and played together in a nursery, where they played and exercised their imaginations. They were looked after by Nanny, of who you only ever saw her feet and legs, and never her face. Before this episode began, we were teased by Phillip Schofield (or Andy Peters maybe), who said in this episode we are actually going to see Nanny’s face for the first time. This never happened. How cruel can you get? This show also has a catchy theme tune, and my favourite lyrics from it are “I’ve got my computer, I fly through the air, I play the piano, and I’ve got blue hair.”
Viewers were encouraged to phone in to Going Live to participate in whatever the show was doing at the time. The number for this was 081 811 8181. We never did this, but the jingle for the number was so catchy, I can still sing it to this day. Oh-Eight-One, Eight-One-One, Eight-One-Eight-One. That is until British Telecom ruined it by introducing an extra 1 at the start of all phone numbers. So then it started Oh-One-Eight-One, which was still catchy, but not the same. I do feel like this was the number for Going Live, but it is possible that it was just for Live and Kicking.
The next part of the show was Double Dare. This is where older children take part in a gameshow, and at the end they get covered in gunge. Watching them get covered in gunge never got boring. This led into one of my favourite cartoons, Chip and Dale Rescue Rangers. I liked this, but I have a feeling David didn’t like it as much as I did. Of course, it also had a catchy theme tune. Recently I discovered that my Polish dance teacher also remembers this cartoon, and just the other day was playing it too me with the Polish lyrics. This of course is not the same, so here is the “correct” version.
After school yesterday we had been to Kwik Save to do some shopping. Most importantly, we went to get our Saturday night sweets. David and I took too long to get ready. “I’m in the car”, said Mum. “You are not in the car. We can see you are still in the house”, we replied. Soon enough we had gathered outside the house next to the car. More specifically, next to the Volkswagen Scirocco. It was silver, and had many blemishes on it, largely due to the number of repairs Dad had undertaken. I lost count of the number of times I watched him cut away rusted parts of bodywork and replace it with some sort of wire mesh, covered with silver spray paint. Probably not as many times though as I watched him take the battery out the car, put it on the driveway, and connect it to the charger. I sometimes watched, from a safe distance, the fine bubbles in the battery acid with great fascination as it charged.
Mum reversed out of the driveway, curving to the right on to the street, then we went down Ffordd Derwen to the supermarket. On arrival Mum realised that she did not have a one pound coin for the trolley. We bumped into the store manager, who she explained our situation to. “We lend pounds on such occasions”, he said. I thought this was nice of him, and that not all stores would do this. We got the trolley and I climbed into the child seat. “You’ll be getting too big for this soon”, said Mum. Up and down the various aisles we went, collecting things that made no sense to me whatsoever. “When are we going to get to the sweets?” I thought. First we had to go into the chill room. These no longer exist, and all chilled and frozen items are now conveniently lined up along the aisles of Tesco and Sainsburys, but here it was not the case. In order to pass from one end of the aisle to the other, you had to push the trolley through floor to ceiling dangling plastic flaps. This was very exciting. And being inside there felt like quite the adventure. A bit like being in a very cold tent. Now to the sweets section. “What do you want for Saturday night sweets this week, James?” “I want a Bootie Bag”, I replied. The Bootie Bag was the best choice because it contained a variety of different sweets. Including the infamous Black Jack, which nobody ever wanted. Just like no one ever wanted the Coffee Creams left over in a box of Quality Street or Roses.
That was yesterday (Friday). Today is Saturday, and Going Live has just finished. Time to play on my Commodore 64, I thought. There are three games I’m choosing between – Wonderboy, Buggy Boy, and Midnight Resistance. All excellent games. Wonderboy I became quite addicted too, and once spent most of a holiday in Tenby playing, with breaks to spend some of my very generous £5 daily pocket money on strawberry ice cream. On one of the nights I refused to leave the arcade machine, even though the staff were trying to close the arcade. “This is the furthest I’ve ever got in the game, and I can’t leave now.” There ended up being a small crowd of people around me, in the otherwise empty arcade, who I like to think were routing for me to get as far as possible. In reality they were probably wondering when the game was going to end so that they could go home. “I’ll give you your 20p back”, said one of the staff. Here is the video from the Commodore 64, which is different to that in the arcade. At 1:44 into this video you see the blue twirling people, who David said were called Mr and Mrs Wynne. Who are named after his (and later my) year 6 primary school teacher and his wife.
Buggy Boy, was the family favourite and it involved guiding a car (or buggy I suppose) around one of five courses – North, East, South, West, or Off Road. For some reason we only really cared to play Off Road, and the others were relegated to only occasional use. This game had been bought for me by a friend at my recent birthday. When I was about to open the cassette (yes, cassette, really), he began jumping up and down shouting “I know what it is, I know what it is, I know what it is.” He was very excited about me opening his present. Dad would become particularly competitive about Buggy Boy, and announce on more than one occasion that he was the best, and had the highest score. I would reply that I was the best, and in fact it is I who has achieved the highest score. David said the same. It would be a lesson in keeping notes, except for one peculiarity about the game, which was that as soon as you went over 100,000 points, your score went back to zero. Quite an oversight by the game’s developers, and since this had happened to all of us, it would not be possible to tell who had the highest score. This did not stop the claims being made however.
I end up choosing Midnight Resistance. This might have been because of the catchy theme tune (something that clearly influences me quite considerably). This is a platform game where you control a man walking to the right, holding a gun, and shooting the green and brown bad guys that come towards you. When you shoot a brown one it leaves a key in his place, which you collect for use in the weapons room later. You arrive at some steps and are attacked by lethal balls of slow moving light that emit from some sort of cannons, operated by more bad guys. Getting past these you hit the hardest part of the level. And to quote Dad. “I thought I was doing well, but then this big tank came out of nowhere and ran me over.”
“Auntie Liz is taking Gareth and Anna round to see Nana. They’ll be there shortly. Would you and David like to go.” “Yes, of course.” We left Dad to look after Ben, our pet dog, and back to the Scirocco we went. This time reversing left out of the driveway, up Diane Drive, along Pen-Y-Cefndy, up Rhuddlan Road, on to Pendyffryn Road, past the school where I’ll be going to in a few years, along Tynewydd Road and over the bridge (something Gareth probably knows a lot about). Here we got stuck at the traffic lights. “What did you do your last days in school, James?”, said Mum.
“I was one of the first in my class to write with a fountain pen, instead of a pencil. The teacher finished reading Matilda by Roald Dahl to us. I wrote a story about a kite, which the teacher said was very good. We finished making a papier mache hot air balloon by blowing up a balloon and covering it with gluey paper. We drew shapes and put them against one another, which the teacher said was called tessellation, and because yesterday was the last day, we all played with toys. The other children really enjoyed playing with the games I brought in – Kong Man, Mr Pop and Pig Pong.” (Note: Pig Pong is a game where you hold plastic pigs and squeeze them, causing them to exhale air through their snouts, which use use to propel an very light foam ball over a net. It’s like a slow motion game of badminton).
“That’s is a lot isn’t it”, said Mum, as we cleared the traffic lights and turned right on to the Coast Road, and right again into Brynhedydd Road. This is where Mum and my three auntie’s grew up with Nana and Ganger (David couldn’t say Grandad when he was very small, and said this instead, and it stuck), where Dad proposed to Mum at the bottom of the stairs, where David and I spent many a New Year’s Eve with Nana and Auntie Jane. And Gareth on the occasion that after the celebrations had finished, David and I kept jumping on his bed, and Auntie Jane came in and sat in the corner to make sure we went to sleep. I look back on this and laugh. But I think he looks back on it and sees it as an act of unacceptable behaviour.
As we pulled up outside the house and got out of the car, we saw the front door open. Auntie Jane stepped out, stretched out her arms, and greeted us with her trademark “Hiyyyyaaaaa!!!” We entered the house, said hello to Nana, who led us into the cold room. Gareth was in there playing with the piano. He wanted to show me a little tune that he could play, which I still remember now. Meanwhile David followed in with his box of records, sat on the floor and set up his portable record player, which he is bound to be doing for most of our visit. After a brief session on the piano, I take David’s Munchman game and sit playing it while he browses through his record collection. Anna sits next to us watching intently, but also playing with David’s mini keyboard. This keyboard had a demo song on it, which we played far more often that trying to learn the keyboard itself. I can still hear this demo song in my head, and I’d like to know what it is called so that I can play it again. David had told me that the opening lyric to the song was “The dog was walking down the street, and I said to him…” followed by either “Good Morning” or “Ah-ha-ha.” I can’t remember which it was. I didn’t know how he knew what the words were, but my big brother couldn’t be wrong. Just like the time he said it was a good idea to eat mud pies, or to steal a toy windmill from the next door neighbours garden.
Auntie Jane peeps her head around the door. “What would you like to drink?” I asked for a Dandelion and Burdock. The others went for orange juice. These shortly arrived in red plastic beakers. “What happened to the small orange mugs that we usually have?” I thought.
Lunch time comes and we move into the living room. We eat as we normally do, sat on the sofa, using the nested tables. David and Gareth share the largest table because they are the oldest. I get the medium sized table, and Anna has the smallest. Anna’s ham sandwiches arrive first. They are cut into bite-sized pieces. The rest of the ham sandwiches arrive, and they are not cut as small. “Why can’t I have mine in bite-sized pieces too,” I thought. Whilst eating we watched TV. It was Going for Gold hosted by Henry Kelly (This link shows Daphne who I recognise from Egg Heads. I didn’t realise how long she’d been appearing in TV quiz shows). Going for Gold was probably aired on weekdays, but for the purpose of this story it is on a Saturday lunchtime. This show had contestants from different countries in Europe, all competing against one another. It was split into three rounds, of which I liked the last one the most. I enjoyed watching the graphics showing what the scores were. I later found out that the theme was composed by Hans Zimmer, who was asked if he feels embarrassed that he did it. His reply was that “We all need to put food on the table.” Or something to that effect. I have a very strong feeling associating watching this on TV and being at Nana’s. This equally applies to watching Countdown with Richard Whiteley, and Blockbusters with Bob Holness (or Bob Hopeless if I reference the play David wrote for a competition).
Before leaving to go home, Nana finds one of David’s postcards that he sent to her during a recent holiday. I think he regarded these as very serious pieces of writing, but in fact everyone found them extremely funny. She reads this one out loud.
Later we had arrived back home and were preparing for an evening in front of the TV. We did seem to watch a lot of TV. No wonder I’m less inclined to do so now. “What do you want for tea? Chicken In A Basket or Chips On A Big Plate?” “Chicken in a basket, with Dinorben Arms bread and butter,” I replied. We had previously been for a family meal at the Dinorben Arms and had eaten this same meal, and from that point forward the chicken and chips were always presented in a basket at home, just as they had been on that evening. An evening as I recall had finished up with Dad driving us home in the dark, round windy country lanes with woods on either side. Something I found to be very exciting.
As we tucked into out chicken and chips, Noel Edmund’s House Party had started. We found this incredibly funny each week, and on this occasion there was a joke played on Richard Whiteley. In part of it the 9 letters were O M E T H I N G S and the contestants only managed to get 5 and 6 letters words. He in surprise remarked “Surely there’s a 9 letter word there isn’t there?” After finishing the food I moved to my favourite place, lying on my front on the floor in front of the fire, facing the TV. David said “I want to sit by the fire as well. You can’t take the WHOLE FIRE.” On this occasion it was deemed my turn, and I proceeded to take my place. This was all just in time for Catchphrase with Roy Walker, and I reached for my Bootie Bag and can of Vimto. Just as I was opening the bag I feel a pressure on my ankles and I felt myself being dragged slowly backward along the carpet. “Dad! Stop doing that!” I returned to my place. A minute later it happens again. “Dad, will you stop it!” as I look over to him with the big grin on his face. Eventually I’m able to enjoy my sweets, whilst listening to Roy Walker saying “Say what you see”, or “What’s Mr Chips doing?” David offered me one of his chocolate eclairs. Not the Cadbury’s ones but I think the brand was Needles. I remember this because David used to get me to act things out, including one time I had to stand in the driveway and a do a TV commercial to promote these very sweets. He told me that “doing this would get me ten points towards getting into the Sky.” The Sky, I was to understand was an amazing place I got to go to if I did all these things. I never did find out what was there though. Only now do I wonder if this was based on the Christian idea of heaven. I accepted the chocolate eclair most gratefully, and offered David a Blackjack in return.
Catchphrase came to an end and it was time for stories in the big bed. Before the stories began, we would first played a game of Submarines. Dad, David and I hid under the covers and assumed our position in a submarine deep within the ocean. These parts of the ocean were renowned for having many monsters who could attack you at any moment. “I hope we don’t get attacked by a monster,” said Dad, before starting to whistle very loudly. The whistling stopped and we all began to listen, on tenterhooks. There was a distant noise. It got louder and louder. Oh no, there was a monster coming towards us. Suddenly, THUMP. Something had landed on top of us. “Oh no, the monster has got us,” said Dad, as Ben came under the covers and licked our faces. I don’t think our dog Ben realised that he was supposed to be a scary monster.
We sat up against the headboard and relaxed for our story. Dad continued reading to us The Valley of Adventure by Enid Blyton. Over time he read all of her adventure series to us in this way. This one was the best though, and it was also Dad’s favourite book in school, and his teacher had him read the first chapter to the class. As the story resumed the children had travelled on a mysterious airplane to a deserted valley. They discovered a secret place behind a waterfall, where they would hide from the bad men. Whilst exploring a cave they discovered stalactites and stalagmites in one chamber, and glow-worms radianting as green dots on the ceiling within the darkness of another. This part of the story really captured my imagination, and I would think about it many times afterwards. It wasn’t until my New Zealand trip a year and half ago that I thought about it again, because we were climbing down into the earth through a caving system. At one point our guide asked us to switch off our head torches so that we would be in total darkness. Then looking up to the ceiling were green glowing dots. They were glow-worms. I had a strange feeling of familiarity come over me.
I don’t recall how the story ended because I must have fallen asleep, feeling very cozy, to the sound of my Dad’s voice. The next thing I know is I’ve woken up in my own bed the next morning. “How did I get here?” I thought.
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