Nostalgia and The Impromptu Gig

It is a great moment when you realise you can embarass your children......

We've all been on the recieving end as children ourselves haven't we? I'm sure The Dark Marge, as he reads this will recall that when we were kids just as the punk era was giving way to a Mod revival Father Dearest on a Sunday evening just before dusk would insist we both join him on a cruise down Southsea sea front (we only lived up the road). So rather reluctantly we'd pile into the Vauxhall Victor and he'd bung on some crap on the cassette car stereo like Jim Reeves or the Platters wind down the windows (by hand of course .....there were no automatic ones then at least not on our budget) and he'd start from Eastney Swimming baths down to Clarence pier hand hanging outside his window singing out loud to the strains of "only you " as we passed trendy looking mods in their trilbies and suits as they sat chatting on their lambrettas and vespas ......I remember mastering the art of sinking into my seat so no one from school would see me...The Marge was even better at it than me and for him at a rough age of 15 it must have been even worse...almost social suicide....looking back Father Dearest must of been in seventh heaven...A Maltese lad, in England out with his boys warm summer evening, music he loved in a City he loved.....he was doing a job he loved too at the time and it was probably his way of unwinding.......unfortunately it wound us up a treat.

Mother Dearest? she was saved from the ordeal by doing the weeks ironing of a Sunday night....Sometimes the top 40 would be on in the background.....in fact one of my earliest memories is on a Sunday night in my pyjamas in the kitchen of our Naval married quarters surrounded by piles of ironing with a toy guitar (purchased from the Southsea show if I remember rightly) pretending I was a rock star strumming to David Bowie's Space Oddity ...the line "ooooh i'm floating in a tin can " being as much as I knew of the lyrics ...I was only about 4!!!!!

Anyway I digress.....So there we were some 34 years after Space Oddity was released sitting outside the violin and piano teacher's house in Bracknell. Mini Minx was inside torturing her violin (actually that is harsh as she too is only 4 and is doing very very well) My 7 year old Rockstar is sat in the car with me I had the window open and I flip through my Ipod (how times have changed)I find "One Way " by the Levellers and play it. Now on Saturday from a mind body and spirit fair in Brentwood I purchased a vietnamese mouth harp...kind of like a jews harp but made of a bullet case....it makes a boing diddy boing sound and I have been driving everyone mad with it but I had 10 minutes to spare so I jammed along to the levellers ....to my surprise I noticed out of the corner of my eye about four school children stood bt the car window really digging this vibe...they were under 10 years of age. I was rockin making as much rhythmic noise as possible and really getting in to it.....I looked at rockstar and he was sinking in his chair he was changing colours and had a look of ...."let me dissappear in a puff of smoke" in his eyes.....I got a clap from the children ......I decided to put it away.....afterall doesn't look good does it? strange bloke in a strange car gathering a crowd of children around him......times have unfortunately changed.......



I closed my eyes and for a moment ....I heard Jim Reeves' "welcome to my world" like an echoe from the past and for a moment ....just a moment .... I was on Southsea sea front again.....in our Vauxhall Victor