Wellll alrighty then.
Who knew that a demented scribble about Wombles at 11 o'clock at night would turn into the most viewed blog entry of the month?
Needless to say, when I went walking this morning, I turned on the Wombles' Greatest Hits to power me along. Something struck me, while listening, that only I could possibly find it important enough to tell you.
I mentioned that geeky but sweet little Wellington Womble sometimes dreamed of being a spy. This idea has been lodged in my brain by the song, for which there is unfortunately as yet no Youtube video, To Wimbledon With Love - a clear but clever pastiche of the James Bond themes of the 70s. Listening to it again today, there's no clear indication that this is meant to be a Wellington song at all - and indeed, much of the Wombles 'inner fantasy life' - if such a thing isn't too demented to contemplate - was the responsibility not of the sensible, diligent Wellington, but the sleepy, greedy, slack-assed but adorable Orinocco...so, my apologies to Wellington if he feels I've miscast him at all there...
When d read last night's entry, she looked at me sideways.
"Oh I don't know," she said. "Right now, you're sort of half-Wellington, half-Tomsk....maybe if Tomsk and Wellington had a love-Womble..."
I blinked at her.
"Thanks," I said.
"That's my childhood retrospectively ruined..."
It's been a weird day for nostalgia, all in all. This morning, I eschewed my normal circular walking route and went up an entirely different hill (Merthyr, as I may have mentioned once or twice before, is pretty much like Rome's heavy-shouldered, snot-nosed younger brother - a town built on seven hills...and then some). This was (with apologies to the non-Welsh), Heolgerrig Hill, which I once nearly killed Karen Pulley and myself by driving down at 90 miles an hour (+ gravity) in an automatic Mini on three wheels, on the wrong side of the road, into the path on oncoming traffic...which is what used to happen if you asked the teenaged me 'how fast does this go?"
As I powered up the meanly-angled bastard, it all started looking weirdly familiar for another reason.
Like many kids of my generation, my first job while still in school was as a mobile news delivery executive - or a paperboy as we used to call them. And this had been my route - the Heolgerrig Hill and its (allusion entirely intended) back side, which is known as Brondeg. Never having mastered the necessary balance for pedal power, I walked those streets every weekday morning before I was properly awake, braving snarling dogs, snarling owners, spiderwebs and slug-trails and the general drudgery of honest toil. All in all, I'm fairly sure it was on those mornings I decided that making an honest living wasn't for me, and determined to become a writer instead...
Also, I'd forgotten that "Womble" is something of a familial nickname for the males of my bio-dad's family. First given to my uncle (who, by another of those strands connecting small town life, at one time had the inestimable good fortune to go out with Karen KrazeyKlaws, or Miss Slinky, as I shall now always, with an unwashoffable grin, think of her), the nickname pretty much spread to my bio-dad, and then to me, in recognition of what appears to be our family's genetic predisposition towards short, stumpy barrell-bellied men...which incidentally always made us look a little suspiciously on my elder uncle, who was neat, and sober and thin as an anorexic whippet. Hmm...
And then tonight, continuing the nostalgic theme, I'm taking d to my old high school, where I allegedly spent the happiest years of my life...which is interesting, cos most of them were bloody miserable, consistingly mainly of getting the shit kicked out of me, being stabbed with compasses, slashed with steel metalwork rulers, getting involved in the occasional riot - we didn't have proms at my school, we had the end of year riot....ahh the memories of overturned cars and rampaging mobs... - and generally being 'the fat kid with a big mouth'. I only really came into my own at 16, when the thugs and the gits took the first available opportunity to escape the clutches of education and gave me room to breath without having to constantly be running away.
What's more, I'm taking her to see an amateur dramatics production (which I used to do - in fact, my first few times on stage were on the stage I'm going to be watching tonight), starring Karen Pulley, who's been my friend since the 80s, in a production directed by a guy called Ian who I not only used to know, but who entered my life as 'the boyfriend of my friend Rebecca', and in which position I have to admit I thoroughly fucked the poor guy over in my role as 'scheming Machievellian bastard with Rebecca's ear'. Ahhh, the good old days...
What is perhaps most of all, the show we're going to see is called "Back To The 80s..."
I think, possibly, one more straw of nostalgia and we start bending space-time.
Hmm...I'm wearing jeans of a size I haven't been able to fit into since 1983, does that count?
Hey...what's that?....ooooh......
...urrrrr.....ummm........
.....wHooooooooooaaaaooaooaoaoaoaooaaaaahhhhhh.....
Where the Hell am I?
Come to that...when the Hell am I?
Oh God....please don't tell me I have to do puberty again, cos that sucked!
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