Nostalgia

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Pen-palling.

May 19, 2013 in Nostalgia | 4 comments

Sit back, make a brew and I will whisk you back to summer 1991 when I was 7 years old. I was on a family holiday to one of our favourite spots; Seahouses in Northumberland. I’ve only found out as an adult that on the fabled morning that I set this tale, my parents had an almighty row. I think maybe two weeks cooped up in a tiny self-catering holiday home with a scrapping sister & brother was taking it’s toll. So following the row my dad did the sensible thing; escaped the house with my brother and I. Seahouses is famous for it’s boat trips and despite the fact we’d done them so many times we headed out under a blackening sky for another, leaving my mum to have some much-needed alone time. As it was already a dank, drizzly day and hardly puffin-spotting weather, there was only us and another family on the boat and in that family was another 7 year old girl called Clare Foster. The boat trip turned into something more resembling white water rapids at a theme park. A storm rolled in and waves heaved over the boat as it was bashed around the sea. Obviously being kids we thought this was fantastic, but I’m sure my dad and her parents were more green and less happy about the situation. After a stomach-reeling hour the sailor took us back to shore and it was there that on the back of a receipt she wrote her address down for me. (And my parents? My mum had watched us out in the stormy sea and was so happy to have us all back in one piece that all was forgiven. We were the last boat trip to go out that day, all the rest were cancelled because of dangerous conditions!)

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Clare & I were penpals from the age of 7 to 15. We wrote on a weekly basis, if not more. She lived in a little village in rural Cumbria, and I lived in a smoggy urban city. To each other, our lives seemed idyllic and exciting and as we got older we would also go to visit each other in the school holidays. Our relationship was far closer than perhaps some of our school-friends as we could be really honest about all the things that were happening to us as we negotiated those tough teenage years. The letters were more like diaries really, where we offloaded anything and everything that we felt, thought and bought (we shopped aLOT!) in intricate detail. On average each letter was 4 pages of doodled A4. We shared photos, stories and most details of our everyday school lives. I think we did a really good job of maintaining contact for such a long time, but the letters petered off around 15/16 when you discover boys, under age drinking and get a bit overwhelmed with life choices.

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I was such a geek (I know Geek-branded tee’s and Star Trek re-boots have made saying that chic, but I really was and not in a cool way) that I filed tons of the letters Clare sent me, in a very dashing lime green Homer Simpsons folder. Somehow this collection of letters has survived every house move I’ve made; through living in 4 different cities and a whopping 11 different addresses. Mobile phones and the internet barely existed when we lost touch, so it was a pretty permanent thing. I had fleetingly thought about Clare many times; especially when I ended up at uni with two of her school friends who we later worked out I had met on my visits to see her, but I had never been able to find her amongst the many other people with similar names online. By this age I had really felt like if we were going to get back in touch it would have happened, but I must have had a small psychic inkling that our story wasn’t over as her letters remained in a box in my loft.

Then, two weeks ago I got a message on LinkedIn. When I saw Clare’s name pop up I nearly fell over! It was such a rush of emotions and questions and curiosities. Literally ANYTHING could have happened to her in the 14 years we’d been out of contact and sometimes I had wished I could somehow know she was okay. And here she was!

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I hope she won’t mind me including a few snippets of our letters! I just think they are so 90′s and so amazing to read as adults, it’s such another world being that age. Anyway after a quick browse of the internet we discovered that we are both living in London and both bloggers (Clare wrote a really inspiring piece about us getting back in touch here) I guess a childhood of pen-palling conditioned us both into writers even now. Within days of her note on LinkedIn we were planning to meet up, and this morning we headed to Salvation Jane for a delicious brunch and 14 years worth of nattering. I was a bit nervous before she came in, but the second we got sat down the cappuccinos and chatter flowed and two hours zoomed by. To be honest it almost felt as easy as if we’d maintained our weekly penpal letters of news and gossip, it was so natural to just pick up where we left off. I’ve got no doubt that this is the start of a new chapter in our friendship, that started on a stormy day in 1991 and just took a bit of a breather.

I suppose the point of my writing this is to really encourage you to seek out friends you may have lost by the wayside. I know it’s impossible to stay connected to everyone and also you shouldn’t push where relationships have reached a natural end. But in those cases of treasures from your past, I definitely think if you find yourself pondering “I wonder whatever happened to so & so” it might be worth just tapping their name into Google and seeing what happens next.

 

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Home Ghosts & Snow Sequel

January 26, 2013 in Seasonal, Weekend Escapes | 1 comment

This time last week I thought I would be in London this weekend, pottering around a market or watching Django Unchained and zooming about on the tube. Actually, I am back home in Yorkshire! During the week I spoke to my Mum and had a sudden urge to pay her a post-birthday visit. I started scrabbling through the pages of my already-scrappy 2013 paper diary and with a heady combination of Morocco holiday, NY & LA working weeks, a 30th, an engagement party and two hen do’s (suddenly realising that I am so that age!) I wouldn’t have been able to get back to Yorkshire until April at the earliest, so quickly booked myself a ticket for this weekend and here I am.

It is never a hardship for me to come back home. I’m fortunate enough to remain extremely close to my parents so any real-life time (rather than Skype time) is always much appreciated and only a 3 hour train ride away. I also still get massively homesick for the village, the city, the country and the NORTH that I grew up in and feel like I breathe easier the second I walk through the door to the home I have lived in my whole life. I’m sure nowadays it’s quite unusual to have only had one family home and I appreciate that I’m very fortunate to still be able to bluster in full of London stories and tense work shoulder stresses and dump myself on the sofa and be in the first and only proper home I have ever known. Now that I visit at the age of 28, being well and truly moved out for approaching a decade, it’s sometimes almost like going to a museum of memories. In every part of every room I have existed as a baby, a toddler, a child, a teenager… and sometimes the ghosts of yourself in days gone past creep upon you when you least expect it. I’m a nostalgia sucker anyway and constantly pick the scabs of good and sad times gone by, but the anonymity and scale of London makes it far easier to avoid triggers of past times and constantly recreate yourself and your life. Once you are back in a land of everything familiar and covered in layer after layer of people and moments and heartaches and experiences it’s like opening the floodgates to everything that’s ever happened to you.

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So I seem to have transformed myself into a SNOW HUNTER! This time last week my whole weekend revolved around snow, and this weekend… despite London swooning away in positively balmy sunshine, I have been back out in the snow as about 7 inches fell overnight here. It was my mum who suggested taking the sledge (!) so we bundled up with some serious knitwear (and showing her increased intelligence, my mum opted for waterproofs too, whereas I typically had to slope home with a soggy bottom and jeans dripping in thawing snow). The amazing thing about this snow day was the bright blue sky overhead. I’ve got used to the claustrophobic low mushroomy London sky this week, so it felt like we were somewhere far more exotic and piste-like than Bradford. The snow was so incredibly deep that my first attempt at sledging involved me sitting on the snow, moving about a foot, and then sinking. Clearly my weekly 5k run/pilates/swimming regime has not shifted enough of those Christmas pounds yet!  We had to adopt a very scientific approach to creating a proper sledge route which involved compacting the snow down with our wellies and then sledging over and over again until it was super-speedy and slick. I am definitely a far worse driver than my mum though, as I kept nosediving into snow banks and twice the sledge stopped and I carried on going, getting some classy derrière friction burning.

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We even tried once going down together in the sledge and recreating Cool Runnings. Luckily there weren’t too many people around to see two fully grown women trying to fit onto a tiny piece of plastic and whooping down the hill! Can you see how hideous my wellies are? They are bright neon pink with yellow Mr-Blobby spots and I can very clearly remember buying them when I was 15, so its a good job my feet haven’t grown. That’s another thing I love about my family home, there’s always the odd old item around for emergency weather. After haring up and down our sledge track for a good half an hour, I was scampering about like an idiot and DROPPED my iPhone in the snow! The snow was so deep that it instantly covered the spot where my phone had fallen in, like a vortex. I am ashamed to say that I think I reacted with the speed and fear of a parent who’s child has just fallen in a lake or something! I dove head first and dug dug dug until I found my (white – helpful) phone and ripped the cover off, trying to get the melting snow to stop creeping into all the nooks and electricity ports. After giving it a big wipe with my jumper and blowing on it a bit,  it miraculously seems completely fine? I am aware that after 5 minutes buried in melting snow this should not be the case… so really hope that in a few days it doesn’t die a death, but its charging away and sending messages and happily posting my 1000th photo to instagram, so perhaps I got really lucky.

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As we were leaving there was a mum with two toddlers setting about a sledging session herself, and I was really tempted to point out to her that she could very well still be doing this in her sixties with her grown up kids if she was anything like us! Considering I had no idea or plans to be here this weekend, it’s definitely turned into a memory I’ll always treasure and never forget. I better go retrieve my clothes that are drying in various places all over the house and go get an afternoon bath (such a guilty pleasure) and attempt to finish my current book. I’m reading The Night Circus by Erin Morgenstern which fits well and truly into the modern fairy tale genre that am a total fiend for (if you haven’t read any I’d recommend Of Bee’s & Mist, The Man Who Rained & The Snow Child). Sometimes a book comes along that just captures your attention and heart immediately, and The Night Circus is definitely one of them for me. The writing style is incredibly evocative and uses every sense to ensure you feel that you not just reading about the circus, but that you’re actually a part of it too. It so vivid that I’ve had three dreams about being at the circus from the book now, and quite like the way it’s dominating my sub concious slumbering (way more fun than dreaming about keynote presentations and VFX job jargon). I’ll be quite sad when I finish the book but I have to stop dawdling as I am falling way behind in my pesky 51 book challenge.

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The Tragic Demise of The Point Horror!

December 23, 2010 in Book Club 2010, Nostalgia | 23 comments

Is everyone getting a little sick of Christmas chat? I thought I’d have a  day off, since strictly I can’t really feel in full festive swing until my plane lands safely tonight in Northern Ireland and my two weeks of lie-ins, boardgames, FOOD and family fun starts! And I’m still at work today, poor me.

So; this is just a shameless excuse to talk about my all time favourite thing growing up, and put out a plea to see if there were any fellow obsessives like me.

From the age of 9 to about 12, I was single-mindedly obsessed with one thing and one thing only. Both myself and my sister were in fact, regularly pooling pocket money and Christmas present opportunities and tag-team scouring car boot sales and charity shop shelves. No it wasn’t Sylvanian Families, or cute Care Bears or wholesome Enid Blyton stories. Our lives were consumed with the world of POINT HORROR BOOKS!

  

   

The Point Horror phase of my life (yes it deserves official ‘phase’ status) started when the portable book library came to school. I’m not sure if this was just a Yorkshire, Northern or UK thing but once a year, this glorified shelving unit on wheels would pitch up to your school and you could purchase cheap books from it. I guess it was an initiative to encourage reading, and it was definitely one the most exciting days of the school year for freaky bookworm kids like me.

I was still stuck in the lame old land of Babysitters Club books, but my older and way cooler sister picked up a copy of The Boyfriend. It was a book that basically took a pretty weak storyline and stretched it over an entire 80 pages! I would describe the storyline, but only the amazingly cheesey blurbs (that used to make my heart leap!) can do it justice:

Wealthy, beautiful, spoilt Joanna Collier has it all, including her boyfriend Dex. But then she breaks up with him – the gorgeous Shep seems more her type. When Dex dies in a terrible accident, Joanna’s sorry, of course, but it’s not her fault is it? She never loved him anyway – he was just another toy to be used and thrown away. But now Dex is back – from the dead. And he wants one last date with her…

What is there not to love! The mega-cool American names Dex and Shep (so exotic), the romance, the passion, the TERRORRRRR!!! I remember we passed this book between us until it was literally falling to pieces. And then we discovered that this book was not a glorious once-off, but part of a collection of books in the Point Horror genre.

   

   

Various different authors published under the genre, the most profilic being R.L.Stine, Caroline B Cooney, Diane Hoh, Carol Ellis and Sinclair Smith. I don’t think we were fussy about the author, although the randomness of seemingly anyone being able to write Point Horror books did mean you occasionally got a real STINKER by some newbie, such as The Phantom by Barbara Steiner… run on Babs! You’re no RL Stine!

It is seemingly worrying that at such a young age we were obsessed with books based around sereal killers, death, horror and terror! But the books seemed to mainly focus on a girl with an issue to solve (not pretty enough, not popular enough, no prom date, no boyfriend, too many boyfriends, too popular, too pretty… you get the picture) and I guess alot of the appeal hinged on this more than the spook-factor.

My favourite trilogy of books was The Cheerleader, Vampires Promise and Vampires Return; although they actually were just one storyline rehashed for three seperate books. In them a plain, unpopular, unattractive girl is desperate to be a cheerleader and popular. She moves into a new house and there is a vampire living in the shutters of her bedroom (I know, I know) who offers her the chance to become beautiful; but she has to chose an already beautiful/popular girl to lose their looks and ultimately; life. I mean COME ON! When you are 12 and a pretty uncool, not particular popular girl  (me) of course a book where the character gets to become instantly popular and hot is going to appeal… as you sort of spend 90% of your life fantasising about the exact same thing.

And yes this photo is only half of our collection circa 1997; at that point we owned every single one that had been published up to that point. I kid you not. In each new purchase; we would proudly cross off each one we had from the full list of released titles that they printed on the opening page! We would also write ‘helpful’ marks out of ten and little reviews of each one next to the title; in case we leant them to friends. It got very messy if we both wrote reviews, especially if they weren’t in agreement.

I think my alltime favourite Point Horror was The Babysitter. Hardly the most original plot (OR blatent rip off of the babysitting urban myth about crank calls) but still, a classic!

I’m not sure what happened to Point Horrors. How me and my sister didn’t SOLELY keep them in business I do not know! For a time there were Point Crimes (bit weak), Point Romance (too slushy and WAY racier than Judy Blume – Forever, which is really saying something) and Point Sci Fi (snore). They then began a series called ‘Unleashed’ which was marketed as a slightly darker, edgier genre of Point Horrors. I remember excitedly getting the first one of these books called At Gehenna’s Door and it was so scary I started crying whilst reading it and it had a bit about eating someones brain from a skull and I was like woah woah woah where are all the cheerleaders? And dates? And the pizza parlours? It definitely went over my fear-limit at that age and they never published anymore non-Unleashed Point Horrors so the dream was over.

I have to confess, I still have quite a hefty chunk of the books at my parents house, so often whenever I’m home in my old tiny bedroom, with my single bed, I sneak a few in and re-read my favourites such as: The Invitation (RSVP or DIE!), The Snowman (A cold-blooded killer.), The Funhouse (Hear the fear!), Camp Fear (The past can’t hurt you, it can kill you.) and Dream Date (Sweet dreams and rest in peace…) absolute guilty pleasure.

 

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Nick & Norah's Infinite Playlist

August 14, 2010 in Movies | 2 comments

I watched a great movie recently, so thought I’d share as it’s one that by DVD box alone you might pass over as a load of American teen angsty mush in which Michael Cera plays the exact same character he does in every movie ever! (Despite this massive flaw, I have to say he is still up there on my number one crushes list. Is that legal? Am I old enough to be anyone famous’ mum yet? Probably not, so probably ok…) 

Nick and Norah’s Infinite Playlist takes place in the neon, bustling New York underground indie scene as Nick (recently dumped dorky bass player) meets Norah (insecure daughter of a mega music producer) and through a series of coincidences they end up spending a sleepless night hunting for their favourite obscure bands secret show.

If you like a lot of action in your movies… well, this is the anti-action movie. As in, well, NOTHING happens. But, don’t let that put you off! It’s quirky, it’s very sweet (without being saccharine Dear John nauseous) (I haven’t seen Dear John; but the movie poster was enough for me to make this judgement!) and it is so absolutely accurate in it’s portrayal of awkward blossoming teen romances. 

Nick and Norah bond over a love of epic mix tapes and we all know how much I support mixtapes! From there they have to battle a series of obstacles such as wailing drunk best friends, broken down vans, band mates’ practical jokes going wrong and bumping into evil exes. The acting and chemistry is spot-on because it will have you daydreaming about times when nothing mattered except what gig you were going to after college, whether the colour of nail varnish you were wearing was grungy enough and how to get your drunken friend home without arousing suspicious parents!

Also, at that age, dating is tough and I’m sure everyone has had one of those nights where you meet someone you think absolutely rocks your world and therefore do not want to leave, but run out of places to go and things to do as you still live with your parents, so end up wandering aimlessly just happy to be chatting and finding out 101 things you have in common. Ah! Young love, this movie will definitely warm your heart and make you gaze wistfully for a few days as you download your teen anthem tracks (hello Silverchair and Sublime for me!)

Oh and as the name alludes, the soundtrack is pretty A+ too!

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This is the first song for your mixtape and it’s short just like your temper.

March 28, 2010 in Nostalgia | 15 comments

RIP The Mixtape.

I never thought I’d say this, but I think I need to face up to the facts that the mixtape is dead and even as someone still attempting to live the Sony walkman dream… I am fighting a losing battle. Nobody wants a mixtape these days. When handing over that glorious rectangle shaped present to people; I get a blank expression. Followed by a “what the hell am I meant to do with this” face. How can I upload it to my ipod? What am I meant to play it on, my laptop doesnt take cassette tape? Argos don’t sell walkmans anymore? And then I’m sure it just languishes unloved and unplayed on a coffee table like some sort of archaelogical artefact.

As I had a little weep to myself about this momentous realisation I dug out my collection of all the mixtapes I’ve received over the years and I guess they do look a little alien these days; with their fiddly little wheels and spindly brown tape and clunky cases. I know these days you can give somebody a Spotify list, a Lastfm link or a USB packed with tracks (even one of those oh so hilariously ironic USBs that look like a tape cassette) but how can that even BEGIN to compare to the LOVE someone must have for you to spend an entire day layed on their belly, surrounded by a mountain of albums and tape inlays – pressing play&record, and pause, and writing out the tracklisting in the teeny tiny gaps, and agonising over which order to put the tracks and then hyperventilating when the tape FINISHES in the middle of the best track on side A. Do you start it again on side B? Start it from where it’s left off? Not bother putting the rest, but risk the tape receiver thinking it’s a crappy song? I’m having trauma flashbacks just thinking about it! With all the newfangled technology, you lose the charm of the mixtape too. Remember the clunk of the pause button sometimes recorded onto the tape (hated that) or the telltale chatter of a radio DJ interupting the music would reveal that you were a cheapo who had recorded this track from longwave radio atlantic 252…

This is my last attempt to say hooray for mixtapes and revive some interest. Mostly mixgtapes were the currency of my teenage relationships. You had to REALLY like someone to bother making them a mixtape and it felt like an incorrect track choice could most definitely end a blossoming romance. (True tragic mixtape story: On my 17th birthday a boy I had been dating for a week made me a mixtape. Whilst handing over the lovingly decorated masterpiece, he also told me he didn’t want to see me anymore. I guess somewhere between liking me enough to make it, and actually handing it over, he’d gone off me… but had invested so much time in it that thought he’d hand it over anyway. I pulled all the tape out in front of him & it decorated the floor like really bad, sad party streamers for the rest of the night.  The youth of today can never have these incredibly teen angst soaked moments with an mp3 can they?)

This is what we used to listen to in my day – AKA Old Fogey Music!] A present from my sister Meg (ten years older than me and therefore forever 10 years maximum cooler than me) when I was 15. Felt slightly vomity and woozey when I realised she made this for me when she was the age I am now, which makes me now a certified old fogey I guess. She shared pearls of musical wisdom with me such as The Cure, Blue Oyster Cult, The Pixies, Nirvana and Radiohead which would prove vital in impressing future friends and lets face it,older boys.

Your a star shining bright] (ah! I am old! because these days I would rather someone didn’t compliment me at all, than did it with incorrect grammar) From Tom, my first boyfriend at the age of 15. He had dreadlocks, he was in the year above me at a DIFFERENT school (so excotic!) and I think he made this for me about a week into our 6 weeks together. It was during a rare UK heatwave summer and I’d lie to my parents about where I was and go to his house to sit on the roof listenings to smashing pumpkins and learning how to play guitar. We split up because he found a note I’d written to a friend in my school planner about “luvving” someone called Jonny. To this day I have no idea who the heck Jonny was, and Tom still has my school planner. Un-nerving. Still, blinding mixtape – definitely the first place I ever heard Concrete Schoolyard ♥

Bees Tape 1, 2, 3, 4 & 5] When I was 18 I went to university in Sheffield and for many reasons, was pretty miserable. One of my best friends Kerry went to university in Preston and for many reasons, was miserable also. So we set up in informal mixtape club and every week a lovingly crafted package would dutifully wizz off to each others halls of residence mail boxes. It didn’t matter that we quite often put on the same tracks as each other (Tori Amos, Jimmy Eat World and The Flaming Lips featured pretty regularly and heavily I recall) those tapes, at that time, rescued me and reminded me that there were people out there who loved me and were rooting for me to keep going. The familiar music provided a soundtrack to such an unfamiliar city and these mixtapes will always be so special.

So is the end nigh? Or could mixtapes be something that come back with a vengence when enough people pack their bags and head off on a Sunday nostalgia trip like me.

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