Key

There is a new era dawning...

He's taken his first steps... He's survived being on his own in the big bad world... But from September he will reach yet another milestone.. My son will get his own front-door key!

Yes, with the advent of secondary school, and the careful positioning of our new home so as to be in walking distance, there only the small matter of giving him the ability to actually get into the house to be faced. But am I worried? Of course I'm blinking worried! He's eleven! Not only does he have to remember to take his key with him he will also need to remember not to lose it! And I was eleven myself once!

Actually, for a while it wasn't an issue as my mother didn't work when I was first at secondary, making that long walk back home so as to pocket my bus fare (See 'Intervention'). But when my sister went off to college my Mum decided also to go back to work and for the last few years of my school life I too became a latch-key kid. Difference was that I didn't take a key with me. Instead we had one hidden outside the house.

Rather than the old faithful 'flower-pot beside the door' or the 'on a string through the letterbox' methods we went for the less conventional one of 'in a plastic tub at the bottom of the chest freezer at the back of the garage'. Freezers were just becoming popular then and I'm not even sure your could get upright ones for in the house at the time. Either way what we had was a vast, coffin-like box that would open with a sucking crackle and "Whump!", followed but a rising mist of frozen air that any Sci-Fi film maker would have given their right, rubber tentacle for!

I'd arrive at the house, open the garage door and then close it behind me so that no one would see what I was doing. Then open the freezer, retrieve the key from under the animal carcasses and choc-ices and then wait. Why? Because to my way of thinking any would be burglar spying on what I was doing would think that the process of key retrieval was a far more complicated affair, involving the deactivation of several deadly traps.

"Cover over the snake pit... retract the poisoned spikes... power down laser grid... and lash back giant stone boulder..."

Certainly sounds better than "Lift up Arctic Roll and grab Tupperware!"

Satisfied that the ne'er-do-wells had been put off I would emerge with the key and go to the door. The key itself of course would be freezing cold and one day I decided to see just how cold it was.

Now, there are certain things in this Universe that just cannot be avoided. Moments of destiny which will happen again and again. For decades people have unknowingly attached suction cups to there foreheads only to be immediacy scarred by a perfectly circular bruise that lasts for weeks. Thousand of curious young men have wrongly become intimate with a vacuum cleaner! But one such event surely goes back as far as the Bronze Age. An ancient alumni which I joined that day. The grand order of the "I'll just see how cold this piece of frozen metal is WITH MY TONGUE!"

At first there was no pain. Just intense cold followed by realisation that this very cold thing on your tongue wanted to stay there and just get colder! Picture me if you can, key stuck in mouth, standing at my front door which was still locked! Now this was a Yale key and the round head of which was attached to me so for the merest of moments the thought went through my mind that I could unlock it with my tongue.

I was still yet to have a girlfriend at this time and what kisses I had experienced were of the good old-fashioned English variety and in no way Francais. So my tongue muscles were sadly not up to the task. There was simply nothing for it. I would have to pull it off. Thing was that by now there seemed to be very little difference between the metal and the flesh. You could feel the fusion of ice to tongue. But regardless I gripped the key and pulled...

And did it hurt I hear you sak. Lets just say that any burglars still holding out in their hidey-holes would most certainly have fled from the screams of pain that rushed from a mouth now stripped of a layer of skin and burnt as if by a scalding pop-tart!

So, on second thoughts maybe a nice sturdy key-chain would be the best thing for my son. Welded to his under-crackers, naturally...

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Snag

"The city looks so peaceful from up here."

"Anything is peaceful from one thousand, three hundred and fifty-three feet."

'Ferris Bueller's Day Off'

I am a great lover of heights along with the process of reaching them. I never got into climbing itself but I did scale the odd seaside cliff-face in my youth and when working in the theatre the best place was always up in the fly tower. But for me nothing beats climbing a tree. Is it an inherited gene that makes me want to do the meercat thing and find a high vantage point?  Or is it like all good mountain climbers just 'because it's there'? Or am I simply a chimp at heart? Whatever the reason those limbs of delight have always tempted me.

As already mentioned I've recently moved house and although our new garden is wonderful I was met in it the other day by a very grumpy faced daughter.

"What's up?" I asked. "Don't you like the garden?"

"There are no good climbing trees" she said. And she's right. Although we have five or six trees not one of them stands out as a being particularly good for scrabbling about in.

When I was a kid in my first house in Benfleet had much the same problem. My second house in Thundersly on the other hand was just smothered in good trees. There was an old oak tree which I used to ascend in the company of ants, who were forever trooping up and down. Then there were two large ash trees which protected the front of the house and if you had the bottle seemed to go on up forever. And lastly a laurel that not only had a natural seat at the top (plus a second spot for friends) but also included a glass-bottom-boat style viewing gallery halfway up that overlooked the footpath by our house.The temptation to drop things on people's head was only overshadowed by the exhilaration of seeing without being seen - like the Predator but without the dreadlocks.

But in the first garden in Benfleet I had the choice of only one tree, a silver birch. Now I love silver birch trees as they seem almost magical with their white bark and silver-green leaves. There is something particularly mystical and elf-like when seen together as a woodland group. Unfortunately their beautiful trunks are very slippery so not good for shinning up and the branches, certainly on ours, started higher than I could reach at age 5. Luckily for me the tree grew right next to our fence which was a good sturdy one, not like the wafer thin things you get today. The fence was made of diagonal wooden beams which were easy to climb and once at the top you could sit on the fence and reach the first branches of the tree. There were no perfects spots but I could wedge myself between any one of the branches and the trunk and merrily sit there for hours listening to the wind in the leaves.

Getting down again was more complicated. Once back on the fence I'd have to execute the one manoeuvre I didn't enjoy which was turning from sitting to climbing position. I would end up either skinning my knees or scratching my stomach or slipping too soon altogether, scrapping down the fence and grazing any number of things in the process. One day I decided that the time had come to simply jump down. I sat on the fence as usual and shuffled along to be clear of the trunk. Then one... two... three... I slid my bottom off the fence and miraculously stopped, just hanging in mid air!

I could fly!!!!!

Well no, obviously I couldn't but my brain was unable to immediately deduce exactly what had happened. In actual fact the belt loop on my trousers was caught on the top of the fence, resulting in my unlikely levitation. Again, it's a credit to the workmanship of the age that the trousers held my weight with nary a rip nor a tare. However, this also meant that no amount of wriggling would release me. Thankfully being a nice day my Dad was seeing to his self-sufficiency vegetable patch. He responded to my pitiful cry for help by making his way from the between the rhubarb and the runner-beans to see what was going on.

"You can fly!"

Actually, I don't think he did say that. But being the excellent Dad that he is he would have given me a conspiratorial smirk at my predicament, collected a step ladder from the shed and unhitched me.

Thankfully there were no scars mentally, physically or arboreally. I continued my tree climbing throughout my childhood, then also at Drama School (there was a particular tree that several Thespians in training made use of) and so on into adult and parenthood. The time may now finally have come to leave it to those younger, more nimble and carrying less weight than myself. And in particular my own kids. To which ends I have my eye one tree in the garden which may not be a climber from the ground up but with some work has another more exciting possibility... tree-house!

But that's a project for another day and possibly another Random Word. In the meantime if you're able I urge you to go climb a tree and let it give you a boost... 

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Radical

As I mentioned in a previous post (see 'Evil') the lexicon of Playground Language throws up some interesting definitions. The word 'Radical' takes me back to my school-days once more and in particular all things BMX...

"Wow! Radical wheels!" "Radical moves!" "That is just soooo radical!"

Sad to say I never owned one of these "Radical" icons myself, asking instead on my eleventh birthday for a silver Raleigh Grifter. On the morning of my birthday it was standing in the hall of my house like something out of a Yellow Pages advert. I remember it was a school day so the bike stayed there until I got home. As soon as I was in the door, and still in my school uniform, I straddled it. As I did so the Blakey on my shoe scratched the paintwork on the hefty central bar leaving a scar which would forever be there to remind me of my bike's arrival.

I somehow equate that bike with taking a step towards manhood. This was no toy but rather a solid and study steed with a twist-grip-handle-gear-change-thingy (with three gears!) With it I made my first solo cycle trips around the streets and paths of Thundersly. I even went as far as taking it to the wooded playground of my youth - The Glen. It would have been there that I discovered the first big drawback of the Grifter. Its rugged frame and big, thick tyres gave it the look of an off-road vehicle but unlike the BMX a Grifter was much, much heavier. It was therefore "Radical" going down hill and "Reasonable" on the flat but "Ruddy Ridiculous" trying to go back up again!

Most of my friends at the time lived at the bottom of Bread and Cheese Hill or beyond (see 'Intervention'). Therefore I wouldn't normally take the Grifter with me when I went round to play as the trip back would no doubt have killed me. However, I did have one friend who lived near by who was a couple of years younger me and one day he told me to come round and bring my bike. When I got there I found that he and some other younger kids from his school were all cycling around the driveway of his house, being a large concrete affair, as well as in and out of the road, which being off the main drag was always relatively quiet.

A game of two wheeled Follow-My-Leader began with each of us trailing along in a line copying the route of the person in front. The bikes in use by the others were either small kiddie bikes with one or two BMXs thrown in. Finally someone in front swung out into the road, turned back to the footpath and pulling up their front wheel bumped back over the curb. The trail of bikes duly followed with myself currently towards the rear. As I approached the curb at speed I lifted my body and pulled up hard on the handle-bars to raise the front wheel but the Grifter refused to move even a millimetre. My front tyre hit the curbstone and my body, already standing on the pedals and off the seat, was thrown violently forward!

Luckily the Grifter was designed with a soft foam rubber cover between the handlebars which my chest bounced off harmlessly. Unluckily the two inch diameter bar between my legs had no such padding to cushion the similar blow to my testicles! My younger, prepubescent biker pals stared in confusion as to why a little 'knock' had somehow left me with a stunned, red face and open mouth from which issued a note to make Aled Jones proud. This was in no way "Radical" but rather a word previously heard but not yet endured - "Rupture!"

I can remember carefully dismounting before laying down in the garden. Eventually, when I had recovered sufficiently, I made my apologies and walked my bike homeward with watering eyes and a stilted gait. In retrospect I wonder if the Grifter wasn't looking to get a little payback for the time I'd scarred it. It certainly marked a change in the relationship between us. It may not have been a "radical" change but where manhood was concerned it was certainly less of a "step towards..." and more of a "swift kick in the..."

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Blackout

It's funny how some drinks immediately put you in mind of the people drinking them -  Pimms and Lemonade, Gin and Tonic, Champagne Cocktails and not forgetting Snakebite and Black.

To the uninitiated Snakebite and Black is a delicate blending of lager, cider and blackcurrant cordial. Don't ask me why such a drink came into being or who was responsible for it - although I do know that my sister took it a stage further by mixing Special Brew and Merrydown to make a concoction called Merry-brew! I also know that Snakebite and Black was the drink synonymous with my late teens and the beverage of choice at the only truly alternative nightclub in my part of Essex - The Pink Toothbrush!

Essex gets a bad press - blonde hair, white shoes, ford fiestas and the like. But there has always been an undercurrent of Essex-onians outside that particular bracket. And, I'm glad to say, I to finally managed to move to the dark-shoe side. But it wasn't always the case as at school I was at a lost fashion wise. Although thankfully I never fell into the set we knew as the 'Casuals' - those folk who only wore clothes sporting a known 'label' (along with white socks!) It took until I was about seventeen to finally hit the mark, aided in my conversion by my sister and other friends.

Overnight I went from a lanky, specky, geek, with a school-boy hair cut, pastel shirts and stretch jeans, to a long coated, 501s and check-shirted wearing, monkey-booted alternative. My hair was cut to a flat-top (great for having the ladies come up and stroke the back of your head), however the arrival of Bros put an end to that. Instead I went the other way to a long-haired look - which the girls also took delight in by holding me down and giving it the full Robert Smith treatment. My friends agreed that I'd found myself and sealed the deal by taking me along to the aforementioned nightclub.

The Pink Toothbrush was situated in Rayleigh and was a Mecca for the unconventional. Originally called Crocs (with live crocodiles on stage apparently) the place changed hands in the early Eighties and eventually changed name (as well as putting the crocs out to pasture). To enter The Brush was to leave the Essex everyone knew behind, strangely passing a bar (called Palms I think) that had so much ultraviolet light and people in white that you could probably see it from space! You'd pass through the doors, check your coat (if didn't mind waiting a hour to get it back again at the end of the night), move past security and finally fall through the looking glass into a beautifully dark alternative.

This was the land of the Goth, the Punk, the Psychobilly and a hundred other indie strains. Also a small crew of New Model Army fans were on hand for wrecking duties during the evening and invariably taking centre stage to stomp along to 'Vagabonds'. 'Alternative' covers a wide spectrum when seen together in one place but amazingly I don't recall any trouble in The Brush. It was as if we gathered to dance united against a common enemy. The floor would fill to the sounds of The Wonder Stuff, The Smiths, The Housemartins and The Cure. Knackered and happy we were finally rewarded with a trip to the bar, there to partake of a pint of the blackcurrant-beverage, presented to you with two straws to further speed up the enjoyment process.

I've lost track of how many nights I spent in The Pink Toothbrush, partially due to the memory lapsing side-effect of SB and B no doubt, but mostly because there are just too many to mention. Sadly after a few years my friends and I began to move on or away to university and work. On a visit back home during my Higher Ed years I drifted into The Brush one night. I was glad to see that the place was the same but I could feel I was changing once more, as no doubt we all were - new lives and new venues awaited us. At that time my family also moved away from Essex and I never returned.

However, I was pleased to learn, upon starting this entry, that The Pink Toothbrush is still going strong and still keeping the alternative faith alive. So if you're close enough and feel young enough please go along this weekend and raise a plastic-glass of the true-blackened-brew in my absence...

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Examiner

There was always a thin crack between the curtains in the living room of my childhood home. On really sunny days, when we weren't all in there, my mum kept the curtains closed so as not to fade the furniture and carpet. On such days I can remember standing for what seemed like hours staring at this slice of golden light and in particular the dust particles that danced there.

I would pick out one mote and follow its progress for as long as it stayed within the beam, breath held for fear of disturbing it's flight. I imagined it to be a spaceship, navigating an asteroid field. Or a microscopic superhero, flying to the rescue. Or simply saw it for what it was, a miniature piece of natural wonder. It would swoop and shift and spin on eddies too small to be felt.  Eventually it would vanish as it flew back into the darkness of the room and I would move onto the next glowing subject.

It was at about this time in my life that we discovered I had poor eyesight and I can now see (if you'll pardon the pun) that this may be the reason for my episodes of Dust-watch. I'm short-slighted, so only those things close to my face are clearly defined, and the give-away to my parents was how I'd watch television.  I would lay on the floor in front of the TV, half underneath it, with my knees hooked over the cross-bar of the set's legs. I thought nothing of it other than I could clearly see 'Top Cat' from there. But a visit to the opticians was to prove otherwise.  

Although it was hard to be a small child wearing glasses I did enjoy those visits to the optician; the dark room, the trays of lens, odd machines, mirrors and lights. The whole place was a cross between a magician's cave and a mad-scientist's laboratory. My optician even looked the part. He was short and wore what I seem to recall as a three-quarter length grey-brown, lab-coat. He was bald on top with a half-crown of hair (like Lobot's headgear in 'The Empire Strikes Back') and was immensely calming, due to a soft, sing-songy voice that could relax away a years worth of 'Four-eyes' based abuse.

All my family attended that optician at one time or another and his catchphrases became part of our lives:
"Is better 1... or 2... 1... or 2... or not much difference"
"Look at my shoulder... now look away... now look at my other shoulder... now look away"
Today a visit to a small, impersonal booth in Boots or Specsavers just doesn't have the same magic.

I am now a full time, card carrying specks wearer (and proud of it) and ironically I also spend pretty much all day with my face staring at a screen much closer than my old TV set. My life is far too hectic for hours of idle contemplation (although some might say otherwise) and I'm currently at a disadvantage when it comes to sunlight, as my office has no external windows. Instead I will have to hope that, even without my vigilance, somewhere the light still shines so the dust may dance...

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Intervention

Fate often tries to step in - but once in a while it does you good to tread on it's toes! MW and I are currently sitting in limbo waiting to hear which school our son will be attending next year. Having done all the Fate-bashing we can on his behalf I'm put in mind of my own transition from primary to secondary school.

At the time my home was in Benfleet, Essex at the bottom of the famous Bread and Cheese Hill (not my claim but that of a group I once saw on Facebook). The slopes of the hill are covered by a cemetery, which is apparently slipping slowing down the slope (not so much your walking as 'luge-ing' dead) and a large wooded area called Coombe Wood. I attended a primary school in Benfleet and the base of the hill was the playground of my youth: Rhoda Road North where we raced (and crashed) go-carts, the waste-ground just before the cemetery and among the graves themselves (it amazing what a lack of game consoles and nine million cartoon channels reduced us to back then). Occasionally we would travel further to seek out the pond at the heart of Coombe Wood...

About a year before leaving primary school my family moved - a short hop up the hill to Thundersly (now that is famous - check the lyrics to Billy Bragg's 'A13, Trunk Road to the Sea' if you don't believe me). When the time came for secondary school my parents thought I should attend Thundersly's King John but I was adamant about going to Appleton back down in Benfleet. My sister was at Appleton already and the majority of people from my primary school would be going there as well. The distance to both schools was roughly the same, however to attend Appleton would mean coming back up Bread and Cheese Hill each day. But I dug my heel into Fate's plates and got my way!

Thing was I never really enjoyed it once I got there. Whether this would have been my reaction to any school or just this one I'll never know. My arguments for attending fell apart quite quickly. My sister, being that much older than myself, left almost as soon as I arrived. As to my old friends I lost track with most of them partly because even if I saw them at school the hill got in the way at night, cutting me off from 'Playing Out'. The hill became a barrier between me and my old life (and Fate sniggered all the the way to the podiatrist!)

Thankfully It wasn't all bad. I came away from secondary school with good grades and an interest in acting (which would shape my future). And I can't feel any animosity towards the hill, which was one of the great stomping grounds for my dog and I. In fact Bread and Cheese Hill became quite lucrative as I would invariably pocket the bus fare home and walk back though Coombe Wood.

Moral? Can't think of one. But if you find yourself stuck up a hill, don't bitch - just enjoy the view...

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