An earlier Weston-super-nightmare?

The recent well-publicised blaze on the Grand Pier brought Weston-super-Mare sharply into the media spotlight for arguably the first and last time ever.  With it, I was reminded of an event that almost placed the same sleepy seaside town in the public consciousness way back in 1975.

Mum and GM took my brothers and I to the seaside!  We arrived at sunny Weston-s-M sometime mid-morning, and my siblings and I, each armed with a plastic spade, proceeded to dig in the sand.  “Not an unusual event to take place on a beach”, you might be tempted to say.  Read on…

We obviously had a plan – for us, this was obviously no ordinary trip to the seaside.  Where some kids might have got distracted, bored, or simply tired, we three intrepid adventurers single-mindedly continued to dig the same single hole throughout the day.  As a feat of endurance, it could probably only be matched by a trans-Atlantic swim, or a jog to Mongolia and back.  And as if the task itself wasn’t difficult enough, we had to contend with the piles of donkey do-do that littered the beach.

Come 5 o’clock, when it became time to leave, we stood back and looked at what we had created…

…a hole that would have had Tony Robinson and the Time Team green with envy.  Honestly, WW1 bomb craters would have been dwarfed by the sheer size of the excavation.  I’ve got to say I have a memory of Mum saying something like “Do you think you boys should fill it in?”, to which the answer would have been something like “But Mum, it took us the whole day to dig it, and it’s already getting dark…”

So there we have it.  We drove off and left this enormous hole in the sand, just asking to have a car, or worse still, a donkey, fall into it and never be seen again.

Where Weston-super-nightmares-happen…

Who taught us table manners?

This question came up the other day, while V and I were enjoying a meal at Betty.  I must have had my elbows on the table, or something….

Assuming we weren’t finished off at a Swiss finishing school (or is that just where spoilt rich girls in 70s summer holiday TV series went?), the most significant influencers on how we act at the dining table must be our parents. Although I can’t remember specific incidents, I can remember the pride we felt as kids when M&D praised us for not letting them down when eating out in public!

The Grandparents too were great ones for “applying pressure” in this department.  To them, table manners (and manners in general) were of the utmost importance… you never knew who you might end up eating with.

So I really had expected by this time to have dined out with royalty, as they implied we would.  Shame.

Friends I used to know (Part 1)

When we moved to BC from CSP in 1975?, I lost contact with the first group of real friends I ever made. These were proper friends – not random 2 year olds I met at the nursery in Rickmansworth!

Subsequent searches on Friends Reunited have not been successful at all.  In fact, I’m starting to doubt my own memory… (dangerous when you consider the potential scope of this Blog/Idea).

OK, names… here you go:

1. Andy Ivy – my best friend up until then (and the reason for my choosing to support QPR)

2. David Johnstone – I remember being driven to his parents’ house for birthday party.

3. A girl – Annabel? Abigail? Alison?.  And I certainly have a memory of a birthday party at her house. Perhaps she was the first girl I fancied…?

I must ask my parents whether they remember any of them.

Pipkins

I have a memory of watching Pipkins (I’m pretty sure it was Pipkins, anyway) after coming back from Sunday School.

We (me, A, M?) were sitting in the living room in BC.  On the programme, they were demonstrating how to design/write a word where the letters of the word illustrated the word itself.

Either the word they used as an example was “hospital”, or I decided to use that word myself.  So I got to work at D’s desk, cleverly drawing (with felt pens) the word letter by letter.  In order to reflect the “idiom”, each letter was drawn in its own bandages.

I must have spent a good half an hour drawing the word. I remember M&D being impressed with the finished article, although a concluding observation that I’d missed out the “s” didn’t go down well.  A characteristic furious violent (but brief) display followed, and the artwork was torn up and binned.

Bloody hopital – stupid idea anyway…

The idea contd.

A key feature of this “site/idea” will be the ability to share different memories among different categories of “friends”.

This particular feature was recently identified as a key ingredient of the next generation of Web 2.0 applications. Current applications such as Facebook and MySpace don’t differentiate between “degrees of friendship” – information is made available to everyone equally.

With memories, however, one wouldn’t want to share all of them with everyone…

Where did all this start?

It started with an idea – the need for a place to record ones random memories; memories from childhood through to yesterday, perhaps.

These memories could then be shared among family, friends (and wider).  Any gaps could be filled in by other readers.  Any similar memories can be recalled, shared and clarified further.

Media can be added to enhance the description… Photos. Music. Smells. Well, the latter might be quite tricky to upload and access online…

Beginning at the end

I think I’m right in saying that, in terms of memories, we are at the end, aren’t we?  Does that make sense?

No, I don’t think so either.

What I’m trying to get at is that our memories start very early on in our childhood (I think my first one was when I was 3).  But our memories end now – this second. Yes that one that’s just gone…

OK, I’ll come back to that.