Tag: nostalgia
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About 30 years and a plastic cover to you, chief!
I’m regressing. For the past several years I have resolutely continued to buy CDs, even though I very rarely play them – I just rip them to my home server and stream them from there (plus load the MP3s to the 128gb removable SD card in my Blackberry (suck it, Crapple fanboys!) so I can listen to them at work). I know I could just buy the MP3s and save myself some money, but I like the tangibility of CDs. I’ve also never bought into the idea of ‘buying’ zeroes and ones that sit on ‘the cloud’ somewhere (here’s a… Read more
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Beginning To See The Light
OK, maybe it’s time to admit that I’m finally too old for all of this. Last night I went to see another band – The Black Angels – and I’m starting to feel like I don’t belong. It’s not the music. The band were excellent, and I was shuffling along as enthusiastically as the next person (apart from the guy who was flailing his arms around wildly and making guttural grunts of appreciation at the end of every song, but I put that down to his superior drug intake and not the quality of the music – he would have… Read more
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This Lost Boy, Back From the Wilderness…
Many years ago (1988), I took my girlfriend-at-the-time to see Roy Harper play live. He was supported by a young singer/songwriter/guitarist called James Varda. The gig was excellent, and I was so impressed with James Varda, that I bought his debut LP, Hunger (direct from the record label , as HMV didn’t carry it). It didn’t disappoint, with the best lyrical imagery this side of thin-wild-mercury Dylan, and some powerful use of a semi-accoustic 12-string. I must have all but worn out the grooves on that album. A year or so later the girlfriend left me and – I found out later… Read more
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Still got game
A couple of days ago I was rummaging around in one of the many boxes of crap piled up in my study, when I found my old Nintendo Donkey Kong game (you know, the old orange clam-shell one). I don’t know why I’ve still got it – maybe out of sentimental gratitude for all the dull church services it helped me through during my boarding school days. I showed it to my 8-year-old son (Finn) who was distinctly underwhelmed, until I told him that this was the ‘original Nintendo DS’ (hey, it has two screens…), and explained that the little guy was Mario of Super… Read more
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Raising the (Chocolate) Bar
For some reason I’ve got this real craving for Toffos. Unfortunately, being some 10,000 miles from the nearest packet, it’s likely to remain unsatiated. Despite globalization and the flattening of the world, some things just don’t seem to travel intercontinentally – and sweets (candy, snoep, what you will) seems to be one of them. Although there’s not much I miss about England, sweets are something I certainly do. Not enough to move back there, you understand, but enough to give me pangs of nostalgia. Or of hunger. It’s difficult to tell, this late in the afternoon. I spent several years in… Read more