Voicemail! It used to be called answerphone but not anymore. Blame it on globalization. I wonder who first thought of calling it that. Presumably someone from a former colony, the good ole u s of a. I don’t mind really though there are some things that could be different. Spellings for one and the fact that quite often when filling in a drop down form online when it comes to the choice of country you often find United States first in the list. Clearly a spelling problem for the software developer who must think that U comes before A though if you follow that logic The United Kingdom, Uruguay and the United Arab Emirates would also be before Australia, Azerbaijan and any other country beginning with the first letter of the alphabet.
There must be another reason that the USA comes first in the list though I can’t for the life of me think what it might be. Must be having a bit of a mental block. Senior moment though obv I’m not old enough to have one of those.
Oh sorry just nodded off there for a bit. Head must have hit the return button on the keyboard. I’ve probably got a back to front carriage return symbol imprinted on my forehead. I know it doesn’t work like that really but the idea is a goodun. In the old days of the typewriter it couldn’t have happened. As soon as your head hit the keyboard, or whatever it was called way back then, one or more of the metal bits with the letter moulded into the end would have sprang up and hit you in the eye. The resultant sharp pain would almost certainly have woken you up and having cleaned the ink off your face you would have continued typing, clacking away clickety clack clickety clack (for that was the sound of the typewriter dear reader).
Reading that last sentence you could be forgiven for thinking that the sound of the typewriter was very similar to that of a train – many readers will not have heard a typewriter in action except maybe in an old black and white movie film.
Reality is very different. Oh yes. A train sound might be described as a clickety clack clickety clack but believe you me it is a far deeper and more resonant sound than the typewriter. Perhaps it needs a different font. I don’t know. A train would also have the occasional choo choo and chuff chuff slotted into the text so that it would really be quite clear that it wasn’t the sound of a typewriter being depicted on the page.
Both are historical entities now though we still have trains. They tend not to have the chuff chuff bit unless you are at a railway museum so somewhere like that. I quite like going to railway museums and riding on steam trains. I once went on an excursion on the Union of South Africa, the last steam train to leave Kings Cross station on a passenger service. It’s a Gresley A4 Pacific – the same design as the Mallard which still holds the world speed record for a steam train. This particular trip was full of anoraks nerds train enthusiasts who had all brought goggles with them so that they could stick their heads out of the window of the moving train without worrying about the soot and grit from the engine getting in their eyes. It was quite funny seeing their faces covered in black soot but with white bits around the eyes – as if they had been skiing. There was another moment where one of the enthusiasts walked quickly through each carriage telling everyone we had just reached seventy five miles per hour. I don’t think we were meant to be going over seventy so this was extreme flouting of the railway authorities. Huh, come and get us, if you can find us…
As it happens we have a train set laid out in the attic. It’s a big L shaped attic, maybe seven metres by seven metres and the layout itself is around 7 metres by three metres. It doesn’t go around the L shaped bit if you can imagine it. There are three loops so that’s roughly 60 metres of train track and we have a number of engines including, wait for it, The Union of South Africa. Get on!
It doesn’t get played with very much. Building the layout was an excuse for a few beers on a Sunday afternoon whilst listening to some old records. That’s vinyl, not mp3 download, iTunes, shared, pirated, streamed or any other modern format. Ok the occasional LP has a scratch but by and large they are ok.
The deck isn’t in the attic anymore though. One of the kids has it in their bedroom. Retro is cool these days and I do have 250 or so LPs to play including Led Zeppelin’s 4th album in green vinyl. I bought it off my pal Rhys at Bangor University. One of my favourite LPs was Frank Sinatra’s greatest Hits which I left on the deck one day. I got back to my room and the sun had melted it. It was all crinkled. I was gutted. I’ve never been able to find that same record again.
That’s life as we know it Jim. I used to watch that programme as a kid but not kept up with the multitudinous series’ since. What was it called? Star Trek that was it. Sorry if I sound a bit dim there. I don’t keep up with telly stuff.
When we were kids we used to watch a lot of telly. Nowadays the kids get chastised for spending too much time in front of a screen but we used to do it all the time. Ok I also used to read a lot but still watched far too much TV. Saturday mornings were great – White Horses, The Lone Ranger, The Banana Bunch. They don’t make em like that anymore. I have a lot of books these days though I don’t read as much as I used to.
When we started to have kids I began to buy up some of the books of my childhood. I wanted my own offspring to share in my boyhood experience. I gave all of mine away which I regret now. I bought a few Enid Blyton Famous Five’s. My god what drivel! To think I used to love them. It just shows how tastes have changed and also how little literature there was around for kids in those days. Blyton was a pioneer.
Nowadays you can get stuff like Alex Ryder that is truly gripping true to life adventure stuff. Well I know it isn’t really true to life but it all feels totally plausible. You should read one or two – you’ll be hooked. Same goes for Harry Potter who is totally believable. I need to get myself one of those wands. You have to use them carefully though because they can do some pretty powerful stuff. Levitation for example. Never saw any teleporting like they do in Star Trek but I guess Star Trek was (is?) much further into the future where technology is that much more advanced.
Harry Potter is in the here and now. It must be. I’ve seen the sign for platform 9 ¾ at Kings Cross Station. QED.
3rd law part 15 here
3rd law part 17 here
[…] I’ll just go and put some more coal on the fire… 3rd Law part 14 here. 3rd law part 16 here. […]
I almost pre-date Saturday morning TV which means that I must also pre-date Tref. My childhood Saturday mornings were rarely spent at home, but I would usually be taken to visit my grandparents who lived near to the ABC Savoy Cinema, in Enfield Town. Built in 1935, it had been a luxury super cinema, but 30 odd years later it became the local fleapit. I was often put in charge of my younger brother and we would go with a group of friends to watch the Saturday matinee shows which included classics like Tom & Jerry and Laurel & Hardy. Also included were screenings of various films produced by The Children’s Film foundation. One such film was Calamity The Cow (1967) and the lead role was played by a very young Phil Collins (he would later become one of my gods of music but who’d have guessed so at the time?). Like most kids, back in the 60’s and ’70’s, the TV soon took over as our prime entertainment source and it was much more enjoyable to stay at home on Saturday mornings where we could watch the wonderful supermarionation of Thunderbirds, Joe 90, Captain Scarlet and the Mysterons, from the comfort of our own warm and cosy sitting room (although I’m sure we missed the pleasure of getting ice-creams in the interval)!
One of my most-read books from the 1960’s is William H Armstrong’s prize-winning story of Sounder (a Puffin book published by Penguin Books). The book was published in 1969 and was for readers of ten and over, which I was (but only just)! The book was adapted to film and it was released in the US in 1972. The film was very popular, earning $9 million in North American rentals in 1973. I guess that Tref was probably too young to read it which is why he might not have discovered it during his childhood!
I have much to say about Enid Blyton and I’ll be happy to add another comment if Tref permits. If not, I’ll just have to write my own blog on the subject! As for Harry Potter, I read the first couple but I think number three may be sitting unopened on the bookshelf… well it was until I chanted “Evanesco”
🙂
Feel free to write an essay Karen:)
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“………Presumably someone from a former colony, the good ole u s of a.”
Gas, coming from a man whose country still is a colony! Alright, Tref!
🙂