Young Guns

Welcome to a bright but cold winter day in South Manchester. The UK has been battered by a storm called Storm Goretti (named by the French Meteorological Office) which struck the other night bringing 100mph hour winds and tons of snow to various parts of the country. Thankfully it travelled south of Manchester and the only sign that we had here was a slightly breezier day and a little rain. In the UK, we are legendary in our ineptitude at being able to cope with adverse weather conditions. Whenever a storm arrives or we have snow, the whole country comes to a standstill, and such is the case with this new storm. Locally (within about a fifty mile radius) we are okay but the rest of the country is struggling to cope, with power cuts, blocked roads and transport problems. Hopefully things will improve soon. 

This week’s Sunday Stealing takes us back in time to childhood. In my case this is about five decades because I was born in 1962 and grew up, really, in the 1970’s. I guess it will vary from person to person. To be honest, I don’t recall much about the 1960’s apart from England winning the World Cup in 1966 and Neil Armstrong setting foot on the Moon in 1969. I was only three years old when England won but I vaguely recall my dad being ecstatically happy about it. The Moon landing was different because my dad told me that this was an important moment in history and as we watched it on TV he told me that I should remember this - and I do.

By the way. the photo above is me when I was twelve years old. That was over fifty years ago and makes me feel really old

Shall we dive in, anyway? 

1. Tell us about a time when your family got a newfangled invention (your first air conditioner, colour TV, VCR, microwave, computer, etc.).

My dad, like me, was a lover of technology and gadgets. I think if he had had the opportunities and educational chances that I had he may have been the first person in my family to go into further education but instead he had to make do with succumbing to the demands of the working-class principles of the day. He left school at fifteen and immediately got a job in a factory. He was a well- read man though, my old man, and he always had his nose in a book. Whenever he saw something shiny and new advertised on the TV, he would make a mental note to save up his hard-earned money and buy it. 

For this reason, we were one of the first families where I lived to get a colour TV and a VCR when they were released. I remember seeing him walking up the street carrying a box. I ran up to him and, knowing his love of gadgetry, I asked him what he had bought. He smiled and said “Come home and see; we can set it up.”

It was a VCR and I had heard of them but never thought we could afford one. The two of us set it up and worked out the controls and how to record on the timer and then played with it for weeks. We had quite a few tapes and gradually he started building up a library of his favourite shows. My mates wanted to visit just to see it in action. I loved it because you could pause TV programmes and step through them a frame at a time, which made watching football on Match of the Day really interesting. 

2. Is there a particular song that sparks a childhood memory?

There are hundreds of songs that spark childhood memories. Here are a couple:

I loved this song and my dad hated it. I was only about four at the time but I remember hearing it on the radio at Christmas while sitting in front of a coal fire at my Grandad’s house and then jumping up and down singing “She’s giving me Good Vibrations” much to the amusement of my grandparents. I still love the song today. 

This is the first song that I really loved. The Sweet were a British glam rock band who were massive in the UK in the early 1970’s and this song reached number one, which meant that it was played everywhere. My parents and grandparents hated it but we as kids loved it. I have a vivid memory of attempting to dance to it at a school disco with my mates when I was about eight years old. 

Fast forward to 1978 when I was about fifteen years old. I used to do a paper round and had to be up at the crack of dawn. My dad worked shifts in a factory and he would wake me up at about 5:30 am and I would drink coffee while listening to the radio in order to wake myself up. Baker Street was released in the winter and I recall loving it before setting off to wander the streets with a bag full of newspapers in the darkness before the whole of Walsall woke up. I recall loving the tranquillity and peace of dark silent streets as people were gradually waking up to greet the new day. I did briefly consider becoming a postman for that reason and I think if I ever get bored in retirement (as unlikely that this is) I might just think about early morning deliveries. It is very mindful and relaxing. 

3. What is something an older family member taught you to do?

My mum taught me to cook a lot of basic things as well as useful household chores. I am not a fan of cooking now but thanks to my mum I can make a variety of things even without recipes should the need arise. This came in very useful when I left for university. A lot of my mates there were hopeless in the kitchen. In fact, there are lots of mates of mine even today who can’t cook (or maybe that is just an excuse). I certainly encouraged my own lads to cook and now they are both very good. My youngest son's Brownies are delightful (and I have just finished off the batch he made us for Christmas).  

4. Back in the day, what name brands would we have found in your family's kitchen?

A lot of brands have survived from when I was a child and some have fallen by the wayside. We used to have Heinz soup for example.  A few weird things existed though like powdered mashed potato. We had a brand called Smash with the slogan “For mash get Smash”. It had a funny advert though:

Thankfully, we peeled potatoes with our metal knives, boiled them for twenty of our minutes and smashed them all to bits because Smash was horrible in comparison. 

Another disgusting thing that my mum used to buy was condensed milk which came in a can and looked vaguely like normal milk – except that it was thick, sweet, sickly and tasted nothing like milk at all. In fact, there was a Saturday morning kids show called TISWAS (Today Is Saturday Watch and Smile) where they used to take the mickey out of this foul substance by pretending that “condensed milk sandwiches” were a good thing. 

5. As a child, did you collect anything (rocks, shells, stickers, etc.)?

Yes I did. I started off by collecting cigarette cards. My dad was a smoker (as were most people back in the 1960’s and 1970’s) and with each packet of cigarettes you got a little card with a picture on it and you could collect them all and add them to a little booklet. I gave up eventually and started collecting football programmes. My dad was a regular at Walsall football club and every time he went to a game he would buy a programme. I started collecting them in 1973 and I carried on through university and for the first couple of years of work. And then I stopped apart from buying the odd one at more recent games. I actually still have my collection in the loft. I don’t think they are worth anything but certainly the nostalgia factor is still there. I even dug one out for my next door neighbour recently because he knows a former professional footballer who played for Port Vale against my team, Walsall, in the 1970’s and I have a football programme with a photo of him in it and his name on the team sheet. Apparently he was pleased to see his name and face in the programme. 

Here is an example of one of the first programmes I collected: