Tonight the sun is shining, the grass in the hedges is waist-high, the common weeds in the hedgerow are beautiful and the spinster has a severe pang of nostalgia for that 20 years ago being-17-ness.
I used to sing "Black and Blue" by Johnny Dangerously in Jock's Bar in Bangor Students' Union on folk night (Wednesdays) and I loved all his songs but you can't buy them on Amazon! Why? Why? He is in I am Kloot now but it's just not the same. Rerelease the album Johnny!
In much the same way I am yearning to hear once again "Fanciable Headcase" and "Bombs Away On Harpurhey" by King of the Slums. I have looked them up on Amazon and it says ALL their lyrics are explicit.
Why can I not remember this from my youth? Was I extraordinarily dense, or just inured to expicit-ness? Or has the nanny state gone so far that almost anything is deemed explicit nowadays?
When I was 17 I worked in Greggs the Bakers in Shaw as a Saturday girl. I was slightly in love with Christopher McFaul, the Saturday boy. We used to cut up custard pies as "samples for the customers" and eat them ourselves. Everything was half-price for employees. So if you, for example, went to see the House of Love at Manchester Poly on a Friday night and illegally drank 3 pints of snakebite and black and smoked roll-ups and woke up the next morning with a hangover and had to be in work by 8 am, you could comfort yourself with a cheese and onion pasty (16p) and a cheese salad sandwich with mayonnaise (48p) and a cream doughnut (26p.)
I wanted to work at Martins the newsagents next door, but me and my friend Sara went for the same job and she was quicker at the Maths test so she got the job. I was disappointed at the time but at least with Greggs I got Christopher McFaul and those (oh lost, luscious) custard pies gleaming on the counter.
One Saturday off in 4 you got a day off and this was always spent in Afflecks palace, where they still play "Gypsy" by Suzanne Vega and sell real 1960s clothes, but I don't fit into the clothes anymore and I miss the Joy Division and Smiths posters as you go up the stairs.
Excitingly, I have bought an MP3 player for use in the gym. My first download is going to be "Fanciable Headcase", once I've worked out how to do the downloading that is.
Aw Fi x those were the days x
ReplyDeleteIt sounds a lot more romantic than my saturday job in WHSmith where I once went in with a hangover/food poisoning and projectile vomited into my open till with a long queue of customers and then had to wipe all the money off.
ReplyDeleteI once saw The House of Love at manchester poly. it was 1988.
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