Friday 15 May 2015

Magic Wiffle Waffle

          I used to go to London to get my hip serviced cos it was ill. When i was 6, or something. It was an annual trip, or something. I smelt a perfume the other day that boinked me right back to being small in a massive city, not entirely aware of what was going on. I always felt very safe. I think, though, that the city was smaller in my head then than it is now. I guess as a yungun you don’t picture the world as a map, as one contiguous place. You just get from one location to another and it takes a certain amount of time. Distance isn’t really a thing. That perfume mixed with the warm electric musk of the tube (THE tube. The London one. Not A tube for safely storing posters or funnelling liquids, or something) fills me with indescribable bliss. It makes me feel safe and excited, tiny and cared for. It makes me feel special and loved. So special, it seems, that merely in attempting to recall it i believe myself quite capable of describing an allegedly indescribable feeling.
      
My dad and I, no doubt after a trip to Madame Tussaud’s or the Planetarium, or both if i was lucky (that is said with no sarcasm - i boinking loved going to both of them and i hammered the keys pretty hard when i wrote ‘boinking loved’ there), found ourselves in a video shop. Real life VHSs. NOOO it was on the way to Hamleys. Another absolute treat - where i had the opportunity to trial play Sonic 2 on the Megadrive, destroy flippable remote control cars and where i got my magic pack of cards (they weren’t actually magic, they were a trick. Real magic costs more than £4.99). I still treasure them to this day. I also very much recall the smell of the plastic/rubbery magic balloon blower stuff (again, not actual magic) that you used to whack on the end of a straw thing and make sticky balloons, until it all got into a horrible mess, dried out and it got sneakily thrown out. It was also in Hamleys - and there is no mistake in this memory because i was mortified - that i did a fart in a populated elevator. I did that because my uncle did a one a few weeks before and it seemed to be received with great positivity. I thought it was ok. It is one of the few times in my life where my pops chastised me. ‘Control your bottom please’, were the words i remember being directed into my ear with sternness straight after we got out of the lift in front of the demonstrator for the rainbow magic (same shit) drawing board. Wise words, indeed. Stick by those words until you involuntarily lose control of it. Anyhow, it was a lesson learnt. Now i only let rip with great consideration (if i am certain i will not receive the blame; If i am on my own or if there is a small child around). 
       
I was in TJ Hughes the other day. It wasn’t actually the other day, it was before christmas. And there was one of those cringeworthy promo vids on about the Twisty Worms. Heres a link to where you can buy a pack of 300- thoroughly recommended. 300 times the fluffy magic (ffs) fun. This was another great memory as a kid from Hamleys. So i got my nephew one, from TJ Hughes, before christmas. For christmas. If you work as a toy demonstrator in a toy shop, please don’t think your job pointless/soul destroying. You bring so much pure, unforgettable joy to the kids you try n flog your wares to. It is such an important job. You have had more of an impact on me in my thirty years than Buzz Aldrin and Elvis Presley and Gandhi and Princess Diana and Pat Sharpe combined. And i boinking loved Fun House.

      Anyway, this video store. We got 5 videos for a fiver. Which, i am sure you agree, is a bargain. Even in yesterday’s money. Amongst those videos was Teen Wolf, with Michael J Fox. I had seen a snippet of that movie on the TV, and begged my dad to get it, amongst 4 other probably not-so-great movies. About 45 minutes in, the video glitched and restarted from the very beginning, only to run out of tape where the glitch occurred before. I have never seen past 45 minutes of Teen Wolf. Though those first 45 minutes i have watched many times. 

       I think i might watch the rest of Teen Wolf tonight because it is on Netfl*x. I wonder what happens. I expect he gets a bit power trippy, boinks the blondey, makes a fool out of himself, but ends up with Floof or Tiff or whatever her name is, and then makes amends and wins the basketball match that brings much joy to the highschoolers and the somewhat laid back coach. I’ll tell you what i remember very vividly about that movie - every character is so very likeable. That house party scene with the wAckY friend leading the party games tho!!!!! Even the extras are likeable. Not like the movies today. I know it was shot in a goofy manner, and the whole thing is a bit slap sticky. But the acting is GOOD. And surreal and excellent like a good story should be. And don’t get me started on the most excellent sound track. Ok, do. Man, nothing screams ‘wolf transformation’ like weird disjointed synth slap bass. And the fat brash brass synth is used in the most bonkers of places. It’s like the director had a mathematical john cagey aleatoric approach to soundtracking it - pick one synth demo track at random, match it with a scene at random and that’s it done. I love it. I absolutely love it. And i am a big fan of ending a scene with ‘Look, i gotta go’ *person walks off*. I wish that was acceptable in real life.

 I didnt mind this glitch on the VHS. It was part of watching it. Knowing fine well the ending wouldn’t happen. It was just accepted. Leave the rest to our imaginations! The sky’s the limit! That was our Teen Wolf video. No big deal.

        WHY this trip down memory lane now? Well, this perfume smell, along with Teen Wolf being on Netfl*x along with seeing a real life Twisty Worm (i thought them to be extinct) along with feeling sad about dead animals and our new government made me hanker after a time of feeling safe and excited about the world (and the magic it contains). I thought adults were great. I trusted them. All of them.

   I had a happy happy upbringing. The fact that my mum and dad never left my bedside during the hip disease time is a small illustration of that. I was in Poundworld on Tuesday. Poundworld is similar to Poundland (pronounced like ‘foundland’ from Newfoundland). Presumably, despite the way it appears in our realm of consciousness, Poundland is one of, or the only, landform in Poundworld. There may be poundoceans. Full of poundfish. Which you would cook in your poundpan, pop on the poundplate, and feed to your poundwife with a poundtiramisu for poundpuds. Perhaps in Poundland, there is a PoundNewcastle, with rival cheap poundshops. Called Poundpoundland and Poundpoundworld. Etc. 

  In Poundworld i was buying some Penguins. The biscuit. Obvs. But i always like to go and check out the other bargains, for example a spatula. So i went to look at the cookware. Opposite the cookware are the toys. These toys are deliberately placed at toddler height by EvilCorp. So the toddlers ask their mums to buy them. So a toddler did ask his mum to buy them. It wasn’t really his fault though. But he was asking for her to buy them for his sister, because he thought she would like them and he already had got some crisps. They were pink toys. Girly toys, if you will. I will, but will quickly apologise to my girlfriend for doing so. 

   This was a delightful notion, i thought. His (not thin) mum replied with-

  *massive over the top sigh* ‘What the boink are you doing? Shut up. Put it down and shut up.’

Apart from she didnt say boink she said fuck. Then, whilst clinging on to her 10 packs of pork scratchings, waddled away from him with purpose, as if abandoning him was a good method of disciplining. I made note of the snack preference and quantity, because i’m a nosey little busybody. 

    Immediately i wanted to take that boy next door to TJ Hughes and demonstrate a Twisty Worm to him (thats sounds euphemismy. Stop it) To try and make the world feel magic and safe, because if he doesn’t think that now, he never will.

      Now my hip is hunky dorey and I dont get to be taken to Madame Tussaud’s anymore. But on the plus i imagine i wont get told off for prrping in an elevator. I will give it a shot tomorrow. To see if anything has changed. My family has new kids in it. Kids that are getting to that same magical age, when the seeds for future nostalgia are sowed. What’s great is that there are people in their lives that bring them joy and i hope create those memories that, as insignificant and obscure as they seem at the time, will boink them in the face later in life when they smell a perfume or see a toy. 

          Maybe not knowing the ending of Teen Wolf is a good thing. Perhaps if i watch it then what remains of my childhood faith in humanity will disappear, and i will turn in to a despondent, inert shell. My dreams and wishes and possibilities for the future will shrivel as they cheer Michael J on the basketball court, Floof (or whatever her name is) giving him a snog, as the blondey jealously looks on. As predictable as humans eventual destruction of the planet and each other. 

           Or maybe i’ll just shrug, fart and blame it on the dog, or something. 

         I don’t have a dog. 






Everything at the Teahouse is great. We feel on top of everything at last. Our staff are wonderful, and our customers even wonderfuler. 

As ever, thank you for your continued support.

QB x


This post was brought to you today by the words magic* and boink.


*not actual magic.