Remaking the Pink Floyd Collection

Recently Pink Floyd Records, the groups own label have started a new vinyl record campaign with newly cut versions of their albums.

This suited me as I had over the years lost a number of my Pink Floyd lps so here's a little about my collection.

Meddle released in late 1971 was an example of an album with a main work spread over one side and shorter pieces on the other.

My copy is a original Canadian one I bought from a friend.

My older brother had a copy of Obscured By Clouds from 1972 which broke the Pink Floyd on American FM stereo radio and I recently bought this 1978 copy and cleaned it using the clean I wrote about.

Dark Side of The Moon is the 1973 multi-platinum selling album, home of the track Money, often played at hifi shows that came with stickers and two posters.

My late 80's copy got it's jacket clawed so I bought this 2016 new copy which sounds just great.

Wish You Were Here from 1975 was an album I borrowed a lot, and is really about how the music business exploits musicians and I bought this for the first time on vinyl a month ago in this 2016 edition.

Animals, the 1977 album looks at conformity, small town small mindedness and how societys values are shaped by those who run it.

I did have this on record in the early 80's but lthat went so I bought this newly cut version that came out last month.

The Wall was a massive seller looking at the effects of losing a father during WW2, the way some schools abused any child who had a genuine spirit, how playing in a band location to location for months on end takes its toll on the mental well-being of stars.

This is the first vinyl copy I have owned and is this years newly mastered version which sounds most vivid.

The "Barney" Mysteries

The old adage "You can't but a good book down would seem to apply around these parts of late  as some more new to me books by Enid Blyton arrived recently.

These copies are actually editions from the very early nineteen-seventies where while still in hardback form they have been cheapened by printing the frontispiece and spine direct to the jacket and missing off the rear of what would of been the back of the paper dust jacket the original hardbacks had.

 There are six novels in this series of mystery adventures that feature Rodger and Diana Lynton and their cousin Peter, orphaned, who goes under the name "Subby" in the series and his dog Laddie who are also joined by Barney an motherless circus boy who has been on a quest to find his absent father and who has a money called Miranda.

The "Barney Mysteries" is the title these usually are grouped under although some use "R Mysteries" with the "R" coming from the R in the names of all the titles.
The children visit sleepy villages and seaside towns that it transpires are riddled with intrigue and it's that they look into.

One of the strengths of this series is the stories are full of atmosphere and good humour, the strong characterization making for much more depth  than most of her work and more sophisticated language that made it the only series Enid herself recommended just for those of eleven years and upward being very suitable for boys like me.

Away day schooling

 It's a bit of a while since I wrote anything around the re-creation of schooling a form of words I'm now a bit more for as "school based role play" for me implies in part I am role playing the child at school and with me this whole whole thing is more like I have that child running 24/7 in me.

Effectively you've created a school with all the things I recall of my education that I just attend.

One of the things I did involved having a math  lesson taught to me by a person being  a teacher doing what was called "chalk and talk" where they would talk away but write important concepts and any questions on the chalkboard for you to do.

For my part I was dressed in a traditional black tunic (Brit speak: "Gymslip") with tie and school socks as they prefer me in feminine boy attire at a equally traditional wooden desk with a  hole for in, grooves for your pens and a lift up slightly sloped lid that before flat "Go-Pak" stacking school furniture such as tables became popular you had together with matching wooden chairs with an S shape bottom.

Like most I was taught metric units as my home country went metric during this period  although for somethings imperial never went away like road distances and part of this lesson covered an introduction to Imperial weights and measures that I had to sit and write down from the chalkboard including the questions set on each unit.

This covered ounces, pounds, stones, hundred-weights  and tones when it came to Mass, inches, feet, yards, cubits, chains and miles in linear measurement.

I also had set some multiplication and division work too that I had to copy, answering all the questions.

The work from the point of view of presentation, neatness of writing and showing of workings out was examined in addition to marking the answers to questions set and my attitude toward studying.

My work was then written on in red pen.

Overall I hadn't done too badly but I had made a few mistakes down to not being as careful as I should of been as when asked to show how I got the answer where I had made mistakes, I did get it right first time so it wasn't a question of not knowing or comprehending.

Because it was that and nothing to do with my actual learning limitations which are NEVER a reason to, I was instructed to bend over the desk at each unit where this had occurred to be spanked either by hand with a slipper or for one which was more around not paying sufficient attention to the work, the tawse.

This needless to say did hurt persisting for some time but to be honest, it is what lead to it that really is more the problem: I don't take the care I could to produce work that limitations aside I am actually capable of, that reflect my abilities rather than my disabilities.

In that sense what might in the past of been called "school based role playing" has real benefits in helping to change because it identifies in real-life situations those attitudes and behaviours that need correcting and delivers the lessons that in all honesty people who were less centred around the dis in my disabilities excusing me and more on abilities and training me to use them properly in same way my peers were really should of done.

For me then this bit of the weekend away was really beneficial.

Think pink

 

The Pink Panther was a childhood favourite of mine both in the Cartoons made during the sixties that I saw as a child and also the Peter  Blake directed movies staring Peter Sellers as the hapless inspector on the case.

I collected a lot of merchandise as a child such as plushies, notepads, toys and calendars and bought Pink Panther themed bubble bath so you could say it was an obsession of mine. 

The fascination with pink or plushies didn't end at the Pink Panther they went into Hello Kitty, pink dresses and panties as while the seventies turned into the eighties I explored my sissiness.

Malory Towers revisited

After all the excitement of last weekend out I'm writing what in some ways is a continuation piece from a 2011 entry of mine that kind of gives you an idea of just how long I've been blogging.

When I wrote way back in more or less exactly five years ago about Malory Towers, the  six part series of novels by Enid Blyton, I remarked about a couple of things I had noticed since originally encountering them in childhood.

One was about the illustrations which I feel is relevant not least in the Country I presently reside in because for a school based series, you see, you may well have personally even worn, the uniforms many schools have so have a mental image of what a school boy or in this case a school girl generally looks like. 

The tendency for cartoonish illustrations in particular used on the  first decade of this centuries editions of this series  particularly made them look cheap and detached them from their era.

I'd never of bought them as a boy cos I wanted something that looked presentable and clearly hooked me into the story.

I saw the paperbacks with those images and bought at the time a nicer looking set of softbacks from 2004 that served me well until something else came very much to light.

Like with a good number of her books, the text had been altered with no clear indication and so I did pick up a 1987 omnibus edition of the first four novels published by W H Smith but printed by Methuen Children's books under license.

I didn't actually realize Dean's who were an imprint of Methuen's  did a complete  set in the form of two hardback books until very recently and given these were from the early 1990's was a bit concerned about those troublesome alterations and updates.

The first volume not so imaginatively titled Malory Towers came out in 1991, a year later than the separate six volumes issued in their Rewards series with more modernish but generally tasteful front covers.

I did check the text over as in the first novel, First Term at Malory Towers, there are clear references both to Darrel's behaviour that are toned down in modern editions and the threat to spank with a hairbrush common enough when first published but removed completely in newer editions. 

That was big shock I found moving to the 2004 set to that incomplete omnibus late 80's edition because it does alter the feel of those schoolgirls in a boarding school, like I was, and makes the adults responses more understandable.

This 1991 set surprisingly uses the same text as if they had used the same typesetting as that and had carried it over to the 1990 Rewards too and keeps a good number of the original black and white illustrated plates by Jenny Chapple.

While the cover looks slightly too contemporary to my eyes, the advantage of having the second volume over the 1987 is in part less weight for having just three novel per volume compared to four and again it uses a less modern so-called politically correct text.

My suspicion are that actually these three in one omnibus editions and the 1990 separate ones are just repackaged editions of the versions Methuen  had out during the 1980's with newer covers for sale by certain book sellers who specialized in discounted hardback books aimed at adults buying for children.

 Now that is the original hardback dust jacket from Third Year at Malory Towers which I feel sums up the feel of playing sports together at an all girls school wearing era specific uniform.

While to be honest I'd sooner they had used front covers more in that style for these two three in one omnibus editions, they do make for a good way to get relatively recent pre-political correct text versions often been found for just a few pounds each in good condition.

They do match my St Clares and The Naughtiest Girl Dean's omnibus editions being from the same era with their vanilla coloured spines.

I was very glad to spot these just before I went away.