Dress up and play

I'm technically away this week so obviously you do have to think a bit about what to pack cos you can't take everything with you not least when, like me you have carry it on and off the train with all the luggage restrictions it brings.

Given there's a mixture of more child-like things I'll be doing even if may have to do a few more grown up bits it's best to have a more mix and match set of things that can be worn in a variety of ways.

That does include gingham dresses apart from short pleated skirts and long sock of both the just under the knee and over the knee variety which as a sissy gurl really are so so me.

The other element is of course play although play with me because of my past would of included cowboys and indians and cap guns to play at firing in imaginary stories.

I'd love a modern girls dress up set for being a cowgirl with a leather waistcoat, boots,neckerchief, and hat I could play with others at.

Play with me is less stereotypical than some but in the end it's all girls play and this gurl loves her playtime .

Summer Specials rebooted

Summer for most British boys and girls growing up in the nineteen seventies and eighties meant going away and the ritual of buying Summer Specials of our favourite comics to  read and laugh at during that six weeks or so of school hols.

While I had mainly boys and co-ed comics I did manage to see some girls comics despite the very rigid gender code enforced restrictions of that era and how that affected feminine boys like me so comics such as Jinty were not unknown even if we couldn't possess them.

The market for comics for older girls as with boys declined during the nineteen nineties as glossy tween and teen lifestyle magazines such as Bliss! and More! took hold but this year Rebellion Publications who own the rights to a number of now deceased comics and comic strip series made a new Summer Jinty and Tammy summer special with all new content.

These were stories set in schools that talked of friendship and tricks with the one more modern take added being Rocky of the Rovers, that rectified  an injustice of the era I grew up in that girls were not allowed to play football in the we as boys even feminine boys did.

In the rebooted world of Roy of the Rovers following on from the acclaim given to Jamie Johnson novels for the new series of Roy of the Rovers, the Roy we knew and loved was rebooted as modern teen wanting to be signed up Rocky has been born as his sister and like modern girls plays football too

I'm glad Rebellion care to bring back a quality comic for Summer Special that is relevant to todays girls (and feminine boys).

Proms 2019

Today sees the resumption of the BBC promenade concerts in person and live on radio, television and online for this one hundred and twenty-fifth season where mainly classical and a small amount of popular music music will performed by various orchestras, conductors and soloists.

For me it's a season where for most nights there will be music on, some I am familiar with - you don't really want to see my cd collection!- and some not that you just take in with thousands of others and explore.

It also is a continuation rather like most things of a childhood ritual where even as a nine year old, I'd listen to the odd prom by myself and indeed my 'transistor radio' spent almost as much time tuned to 247 metres (the then home of Radio One) as 464 metres (the then home of Radio Three the arts and classical music station) as a junior school child and where possible by the time I was at high school I was even tape recording whole concerts on reels of tape.

This Friday we'll hear the Czech composer Janacek's Glogolitic Mass, Dvorak's The Golden Spinning Wheel and the newly commissioned by the BBC  Long Is the Journey – Short Is the Memory by Zosha Di Castri that marks the 50th anniversary this week of the Apollo 11 mission to the Moon.

Our first school trip to London

Seeing school is out I thought I'd write an account of a junior school trip

One thing I do remember is the J2 school trip to London.

We started off with our teachers and the excellent headmaster, Mr. Smith and some parent helpers on the chartered coach where we all were put into pairs and the first tellings off would start for such breach of school rules as having ring pull cans of pop.

It wasn't always our fault: Your folks would put in your bag for you oblivious of School Rules.

We'd arrive getting off to the sound of "Sir, Keith's bag is dripping, sir" as he'd put fizzy pop in a container the pressure of which had blown the plastic lid off, putting our hands over mouths as mercilessly we laughed at his predicament. Thankfully his sandwiches were triple wrapped so he still had something to eat.

Eventually  we'd be frog marched to the underground (aka The Tube) subway to make our to the Tower of London going on a guided tour having been head counted to ensure nobody got lost.

The Underground is super busy even outside the rush hour.

We saw the Beefeaters, making up spontaneous corny jokes about them and the 'bloody tower' with Traitors Gate enjoying hearing about how they killed. We weren't screamish.

We went into the Science Museum first having been given an hour and three quarters to look around while the staff and helpers went in the café there. 

Perhaps we'd driven them crazy?

I went to look at the exhibits about radio and photography while one group went to look at the exhibits about time and ironically we lost one boy, the one in that group WITH a watch as he was so absorbed with time he'd both not realized it was time to go AND he's not noticed his group had left him!

He got a flea in his ear for that! I'm afraid we didn't have much sympathy for him as we could of lost time to go other places.

We found a spot to have our sandwiches in the sun.

We went to visit the Natural History museum  meeting Dippy our favourite Dinosaur as we were fascinated by them although I did look at the Big Cats and Birds before going to Rene's Cafe where we'd a pre-booked fish and chip tea to eat as our Headmaster looked on shaking his head to the helpers at the number of us who didn't know how to eat with a knife and fork.

After then we walked passing Soho that was seen by us as 'dodgy' and today I'd call seedy at the time back to the coach for trip home here in the Midlands.

Computing adventures

 This week there's been a few computing related things on my mind.

Sanriotown.com is a place I visited rather a lot from around 2007 because it had a variety of things under one roof such as a Multiplayer game set in the Sanrio world you could play, a fairly active forum where people of all ages talked about all the different characters tv shows and merchandise, not just Hello Kitty but Twin Little Stars, Chococat and others too.

You could send e-cards - and I certainly did - based on the characters, download screensavers which I also did, have a blog there and have email accounts with your name@any of the sanriocharacters.com such as hello kitty.

All in all it was great place, ideal for a little too if you used a bit of commonsense when it comes to sharing spaces.

Over the years bits have fell off such as the game but this last few weeks not only has the email been down with "Down for service" but the whole site has too like this morning I couldn't connect even to the homepage.

I just get this feeling it's terminal.

One advantage in having your browsers information used with your Google Account is it always stays in step across different machines so if you've been as online as long as I have you can whip out the old laptop and edit the bookmarks as sites either lose all interest to you, Tumblrs get removed or sites have shut down for good  in the knowledge every machine you use will now be updated.

This probably is something I should of done a while back to be honest but the idea of doing to separate machines one by one put me off.

That said the new Chromebook is working out fine for things like chatting with my BFF when the laptop isn't just overkill but takes a while to boot up and then runs warm which on a day like Saturday when it was almost 30 degrees C is the last thing you need as your sipping water by the beakerful, trying to stay cool.

The Rollers Singles Collection

I've been using that new Chromebook this week across the week working on my Tumblr of which is just over six years old which was marked.

Something else that is an anniversary is it's nearly a year to the day Alan Longmuir of the Bay City Rollers died and as you know it was one of few occasions I made a post about music here because, frankly it mattered as part of my boyhood past.

This is something I had for Christmas in 1975 as did many boys and girls particularly in with a copy of that years Blue Peter book and the fact I still have my copy with my childhood penned contributions says a lot about what being a BCR fan meant to me and how connected to that past I am.

Last Friday, Cherry Red Records almost by co-incidence issued a three cd set by the Bay City Rollers that sets itself outside of a good number of compilations and the cd issues of the first four British albums in 2004.

Entitled The Singles Collection, it collects in chronological order every British bay city rollers single (aka '45) issued from 1971's Keep On Dancing right though 1981's Life On The Radio and Set The Fashion from the Ricochet album recorded as 'The Rollers'  and featured in the Burning Rubber movie of the same year.

One of the things I like about it is it has the b sides of all the singles following the a (or main) side so for instance after listening to "Bye Bye Baby" you hear  "It's For You" which was the UK b side before moving to "Give a Little Love" so it's like playing all the original vinyl 45's the we did as kids.

Some of the earliest singles like Manana were hard to find even in the mid 1970's as they had been deleted but they are all here.

That's one from my original childhood 45 collection which I still have and I will say as a Rollermanic the American edition has added strings on it as did many of the tracks on the US "Bay City Rollers" album.

The set does put in American singles that were not issued in the UK  such as the re-recorded Saturday Night, a US #1 from 1976 and Yesterday's Heroes featuring the screams of Toronto's youthful BCR fans gathered at a CHUM 1050 promoted concert placed in order of release too.
The set includes a booklet with a write up about each single related to events in the life of the band and photos of the records and many world-wide picture sleeves.

The sound quality is very good not sounding compressed or muddy.

Thus it is a complete set that appeals to all of us fans whither like me you still have your childhood singles and albums or just looking for a set of the records you loved to remember Alan and the band by. It's available either direct from Cherry Red's website or Amazon.

This is for all of us who remember the era.