I'm in the mood for ...

Well I've noticed over the past few posts that I keep returning to the formative years and to the times when we were growing up so as to try and preserve, in my mind at least, a picture of the positive things that I remember from those distant days back in the mid to late 1970s. In some ways it seems like a thousand years have passed by since I had direct experience of those times, in others it feels like yesterday. So, to satiate my nostalgic tendencies for a few days at least, I decided today to collate a little mood board for your delectation. Mood boards rock, after all! I gave myself a couple of hours to assemble my version of those times, in their essence and as I remember them, but strictly in the time allocated (already I'm missing at least a thousand icons - Fizzlesticks, Superstars, The Fonz and Tony Hart have just sprung to mind ... as has Roy Castle ... and Bernard Cribbens!). I've also probably got it skew-ways in ninety percent of cases but, hey, feel free to fill in the blanks or create a board of your own times on your screen or in your head. It's a nice thing to cast yer mind back.

Those were yon days!

What in the Name of ...!

I came across a section about rock bands and how they got their names in that new Brewer's Dictionary I was telling you all about a couple of posts ago. Eh, bizarre is the only word to describe some of the entries I read and I suppose the only way to fathom things is to pretend that the writers probably had, well, maybe Prince Char-less or someone in mind as the reader when they were penning their little summaries of each baptism. Otherwise, I'm at a loss! Unless, of course it was aul Carlos himself who wrote each one! Anyway, here be a few and to wit:

• Siouxsie and the Banshees: from the adopted name of band singer Siouxsie Soux (born Susan Ballion) and BANSHEES, known for their shrieking.
• Smiths, The: a name chosen for its commonness to counter the pretentious portentousness of names such as Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark. There were no actual Smiths in the group. 
• Take That: a phrase implying a sexual invitation to the group's young female fans.
• The, The: a name chosen purely for its minimalist memorability, but also serving as an ironic allusion to the pop music tradition for names beginning with the definite article.
• U2: allegedly a pun on 'you too' or 'you two', implying that all fans could share the Irish band's music either individually or as couples.
• Who, The: a name chosen for its potential to bemuse and amuse, especially in a verbal exchange such as: 'Have you heard The Who?' 'The who?' 'The Who'.

Extraordinary!

More before the end of the month ...

And who might these be then? Ho! Ho!

Nice Ta See Ye ... Ta See Ye ...!

Was reading in the paper there the other day that parents who grew up in the seventies and eighties miss for their own families many of the things that were routine for them back in those days. Things like:

• Taping the Top 30 off the radio
• Watching Top of the Pops on the telly
• Buying singles
• Handwriting thank you notes
• Having pen friends
• Waiting for photos to be developed
• Watching Saturday evening TV with the family (that would, no doubt, include The Generation Game!)
• Making solid plans which do not change as a result of mobile communications

Yeah, they all featured in our house too back then, those and a few more that immediately spring to mind like: waiting for the late edition of the Evening Press on a Saturday and the late results that were over-printed on the front page margin; or buying an ice-pop as much for the joke on the stick as for the clump of frozen hydrochloric acid that was the pop; or maybe pegging a piece of Corn Flakes box to the back fork of your bicycle so that it touched the spokes of the wheel and thus sounded like a motor bike when you pedaled; or maybe adding a spoon of Andrews Liver Salts to your orange squash to make a fizzy drink that lasted all of two seconds. Or maybe ... Gott in Himmel ... Lord Peter Flint! Or maybe Simon Groom and Goldie. Or maybe even Terry Scott and his Curly Wurly. And on and on!

Indeed, none of this seems that far off in the past until you start thinking of milkmen in electric floats or coal men like minstrels with the weight of the world on their shoulders or being told to f*ck off away from the jam tarts and the cream doughnuts by angry men in bread vans; or schoolteachers on Raleigh 20s or neighbours on Honda 50s or new tenpenny pieces the size of dinner plates or even shapers in drapes or bootboys in parallels or bluebottles in Chrysler Avengers or Double Diamond working its wonders, its wonders way back then - a lonnnng time ago!

More in a couple of days ...

Nice ta see ye!

Keep Shorty!

So, I was rooting around in my clothes drawer the other day trying to find the pair of day-glo spandex khaks that I've recently mislaid when I unearthed an old pair of sports shorts way down the bottom which, by the threadbare look of them, had seen many, many better days.

I did a little mental arithmetic and was shocked when I concluded that I bought these very same strides in a K-mart in America back in 1988 and archived footage of me from those days supports my claim. In the intervening years I have moved house nine times and, yet, bizarrely, those shorts have followed me everywhere I've gone. It's a long journey to travel, especially for a garment with such short legs, but the sixty-four thousand dollar question remains: what the hell are they still doing in that drawer? And, perhaps, if I lobbed an extra 50 cents onto that amount I could also ask: why the hell are they still there?

When I think about it, I suppose that, in the same way as any pair of shorts or knicks links the boots and socks on the lower end of you to the shirts and tops on your upper end, these particular ones also serve as a certain kind of link, albeit a more metaphorical one. I reckon that, by holding on to them, the sentimental part of me must be sub-consciously trying to preserve a link to the olden days - days when everything was so fab! And just as general wear-and-tear and changes in styles have now rendered the ole pair redundant as a wearable garment, all that's been going on in my own life and times since has had a similar effect, making me either ignore or forget those fine days and the younger man that once lived in them. So, while the old shorts are not in the game anymore, I keep them because, in a strange way, they remind me of the times when they were in the game. And the further away I go from those times, onwards and upwards so to speak, the more likely they are to stick around! 

So if you're doing naught else, have a think about some garment that's been hanging in your wardrobe or buried deep in your drawer for aeons and ask yourself why you still keep it. Could turn out to be the greatest story you've never told! And we're all ears!

More soon ...

Meet my shorts!

Easy for You to Say!

I got a nice present for my four hundred and eightieth birthday from my better half there the other day - the latest edition (the 19th) of Brewer's Dictionary of Phrase and Fable - a fine gift and a fine tome, presented to me, no doubt, on account of the unyielding number of references to fables, cables, ables and tables on the pages of this here blog a mine. Brewer's Dictionary has been 'much loved for its wit and wisdom since 1870' according to the blurb on the back cover and is described as both a 'scenic route to knowledge' and as a lexicographical 'treasure hunt' by the kind of people that would know these things. So for today's post, I've decided to put the Brewer to the test and see what it comes up with by way of 'linguistic miscellany'! And off we go with a random flick through its 1480 pages which lands me at the word:

honorificabilitudinitatibus! 

Sweet dee-vine! With, perhaps, the exception of my buddy, Soc, I would nearly chance a fiver that no one that I know has ever heard of that word - or if they have, then they most certainly would be the lucky winner of the FREE pint of Tuborg that coolly fizzes away on the counter in the bar of the Beggars Bush as I type - were it on offer, which it isn't today! Anyway, - honorificabilitudinitatibus - is, according to the tome, a 'concocted word' found in Shakespeare, which, to parpahrase, supports the theory that the works of Shakespeare were actually written by Francis Bacon. One kiddeths one not! And if you don't believe me, the word itself is an anagram of the Latin hi ludi F Baconis nati tuti orbi - which translates as 'these plays, F Bacon's offspring, are preserved for the whole world.' So now! Once again get thee to thy pipes ...! And how do I feel after enlightening you all with such a scintillating bijou of literary gold? I feel like Frank Muir, is who!

Frank whoooo!? :) More soon ...

I say, a fwee pint of Tuborg you say?

Able and Wireless!

Here's a yarn for y'all. A true story too. Me and my band of merry ukulele maestros were playing a wedding yesterday way down in County Wicklow, a good couple of hours drive from our home here in Baile Átha Cliath. We arrived at the venue an hour before we were due to play, unloaded the gear, started setting up the PA and realised - aaaaagghhh - we'd left all the the leads and cables at home!  A simple algorithm: No leads and no cables equals no connection to the speakers equals no sound coming out of the speakers equals no gig equals blind panic equals rapid and random apportioning of blame equals the liberal use of unnecessarily strong language equals resorting to physical violence equals public mortification equals finding appropriate place to hide for rest of life. Equals the humblest ever pie any person will ever eat!

There we were, five hollow-brained musical eunuchs, dressed like spivs, just about to ruin the biggest day in two young people's lives with no way of changing anything and with nothing to offer by way of an excuse. Nada. Zilch. Sweet foot ball!  Lord, I have to say it was the closest I've come to utter panic in a long, long while ...

Then, a bum note from an out-of-tune soprano ukulele sounded the Eureka! moment! It lingered on the air long enough for us to realise that the place we were standing, the place that we were assigned to perform in, had the natural acoustics of a Royal Festival Hall or a Red Rocks Amphitheatre and all it needed was a little boost from a pair of PC speakers, which we occasionally use for monitors at louder gigs, to get the show on the road. So we tried it and it worked and we got started and we played our hearts out and it went down a storm! And the bride and groom were beaming as we finished! And the job was a million cubes of Oxo! Aaah!

So there. I am now convinced there is a God and I am born again!

Us, recently and without cables!

Scary Monsters?

I read author John Gray's superb review in Saturday's FT of Yuval Noah Harari's book Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind, 'an absorbing and provocative' work that as well as examining where we, as a species, have come from also 'peers into our post-human future' in this here Scientific Age. I'll certainly be adding this title to my short-term reading list as I was particularly taken by several of Harari's fascinating ideas on where we are headed and how we are likely to get there. To wit and to wisdom:

• The power of the human imagination has turned our species into self-made gods, but gods which lack self-restraint ... and with new technologies increasingly enabling humans to create artificial forms of life and alter their own natures, they don't or won't or can't really know how to best use the technology they have created. And, as the author asks, what can be more dangerous than irresponsible gods who don't know what they want?
• At present we tinker with genes, develop artificial limbs and explore artificial intelligence in order to cure or prevent diseases and enhance human longevity but with the effect of these interventions accumulating and magnifying over time, there is likely to be an alteration of the human species.
• The future incarnation of our species will probably be more different from us than we are from Neanderthals.
• If other species, and eventually humans themselves, are reshaped by new technologies - the process will not be guided by any type of ordered, across-the-board, intelligent design but rather by rival governments, competing corporations and, more scarily, by organised criminal and terrorist networks. Any alteration will thus be unplanned and chaotic and, as a result, our future and our ultimate destiny will be impossible to control.

Sheesh!  A bigger than average dose to put in our pipes and smoke today!

But fluffier stuff soon ...

... deffo on my Christmas list!