WHAT DO YOU KNOW?

 Some images from one of my favourite childhood encyclopedias, What do you Know. I managed to find it again at a boot sale.

Heaven in pages!

Did you have this one?

Further Glimpses of Childhood

We are still at Juniors place.

Here's the bundle on his window sill. The sarellite dish badge is from Jodrell Bank, a UK space listening post. The tin contains his milk teeth. The Tooth Fairy was broke after that lot!

Wallpaper and mobile

The local playground, a reminder of my own childhood. Cold, wintry slides and empty spaces.

Lonely distant footy fields we used to call recs, short for recreation spaces I think.

Junior's rocket launcher in the playground. His double jump technique sent the foam rockets sky high!

Did you go to playgrounds and recs as a kid readers?

A BILLY CHRISTMAS

Responding to my call for pics of your younger selves with your childhood toys, here's Martin D's from Canada proud as punch with his huge 7 in 1 Billy Blastoff boxed set one Christmas!

That Hot Wheels set looks pretty darn nifty too!

Those were the days. Black and white but we had a ball!

Thanks Martin.

Anymore childhood toys snaps?

Email at the bottom of the page.

THE JOY OF CHILDHOOD

Moonbase Junior is having his final sleep of his monthly 3 sleeps at his Grandparents. He's just gone to sleep and we're already missing him. Taking him home to his parents tomorrow will, as it always is, be hard for all three of us.

Watching Junior is an education. A lesson in how to enjoy things for what they are and just enjoy them. Pure unadulterated fun. I suppose that's the key, unadulterated; no adult problems, woes and worries, which totally get in our way when we try to have fun.

I can't really remember that feeling. Just whispers and winks popping up from my past like flimsy bubbles. Having said that, Junior is only just 4 and for me that's 56 years ago, so quite a lot has happened since to blur the rear-view mirror.

I can at least recall my teenage obsessions though but that's as far back as I can go to dig up the joy I see in Junior when he's playing with his cars or his play doh or messing with apples in the garden.

Being with him is like a second childhood!

I'm already looking forward to his 3 sleeps in November!

Do you remember the joy of childhood readers?

ROSEHIPS AND LULLABIES

Its funny what comes into your head. Personally its a bonus if anything does as my memory is terrible.

A recollection of a sweet drink came back today, a fruity syrup, maybe rosehip, from when I was a kid. 

I can see the glass bottle I think, with a little baby's face on the label. Rosehip syrup maybe? Now how I received this red treat is a mystery. I assume it was in a baby bottle with a teat.

Is this a familiar memory for you?

Along with the syrup I remember a lullaby my Mum used to sing to me as a kid falling asleep. My Dad too. It's a haunting melody, which has stayed with me but the words fade and re-appear in my mind like whispers. It was something like:

Go to sleep my Baby, close your little eyes ........

And after that I'm lost. I wish I knew more about this song. Does it ring any bells with you readers?

These are probably the earliest things I recall but they remain only half-memories, light footprints in the sand. I wish I could bring up more from my earliest years.

The Slime Under the Stairs

Spending time with our Grandson Moonbase Junior reminds me of how I imagine my own childhood must have been when I was 3. I have no memory of it whatsoever, save for a sheaf of old photos, so imagining it through Junior is the best I can do.

Junior loves everything. The world is a glorious garden of excitement and fun. No problems. No worries. No politics. Its a privilege to be in the company of a true human before all the BS messes things up later on.

To illustrate Junior's unabashed adventure into the world he absolutely adores all things slime.

Slime is a thing of beauty to Junior, a marvellous blob of clammy joy. His passion for slime is a broad church: ready made pots of goo, powdered slime sachets that need water and that old fave, bouncing putty. All are welcome.

Today it was the turn of glow in the dark slime. We bought it in a museum shop off one of those counters of classic toys like miniature slinkies and kaleidoscopes. He went for the slime like a bee to honey!

We made the stuff as soon as we got home. Packaged in a test tube, it contained a small packet of green powder and  a lolly stick for stirring. The instructions read like something from a lab and scared me to death! There was mention of phosphorous, its discovery and the creation of the philosopher's stone by boiling urine! I didn't read out that bit to Junior!

Junior wasn't phased. He can't read yet. He just wanted to stir the mixture. Along with Missus Moonbase we took turns to shake the tube of diluted powder off and on for 10 minutes.

When the moment arrived to release the kraken so to speak Junior was beside himself. He poured the thick green gloop straight out onto a plastic plate. "It doesn't glow!" he protested.

"We have to light it up with your torch first!" I explained. We proceeded to drape the goo over a small hand-torch like something out of Quatermass.

After a few minutes we took the blob and put in the dark cupboard under the stairs and yep, it glowed like a silicate from a Hammer horror. Junior was suitably impressed and the allure of slime goes on.

The glowing stuff, however, will decay in four days and turn to liquid!

Are you of the slime?

OUR DAUGHTER'S TREASURE BOX

Our Daughter recently opened her old treasure box from childhood.

Thirty years old now, its a sort of time capsule.

Inside were a shark's tooth, a puffin beak, an ammonite and some toys from the late 80's:

an egg dracula, a Barbie scales, a dolphin and more!

There was also a Forever Friends watch, a swatch, some hard plastic babies and dummies and a character from German TV.

There was also this felt covered Pete'd dragon figure and a Pingu!

A real trip down memory lane for our daughter!

Did your kids have a treasure box?

Did you?

SIR ROGER MOORE READS ALADDIN: LANTERN RECORDS 1966

Relatively little from my early childhood has survived.

My first five or six years.

There's a First Communion Badge [no idea when that was but I assume I was very young] and an Aladdin record released by Lantern and read by a young and as yet unknighted Roger Moore no less. I was 5 years old when I got it. Fifty four years ago!

I have my original record somewhere in the attic together with an empty sleeve I found at a car boot sale. I know its my original record because I signed it as a kid. Alas, part of the record has snapped off, as if bitten!

I have a vague memory of listening to talking books like this. You know, where you follow the story with your finger in a separate printed booklet that came with it.

This was the same with Lantern's Aladdin.

You can experience this once more - or perhaps for the first time - courtesy of You Tube, as amazingly, the record, story and booklet are all there!

So, sit back and enjoy. It's 1966 again.

I'm not sure if these old talking records are collectable nowadays but obviously this particular copy is of great personal importance to me.

Did you listen to records like this readers?

DID YOU DO CHORES AS A KID?

Did you have to do any jobs when you were a kid?

Maybe housework like taking out the rubbish or maybe even a paid job like a paper round?

I did a bit of work at the Cash 'n' Carry warehouse my Dad ran in the late Sixties and early Seventies. He paid me £100 - in theory - and taxed me £99! ha ha. I have the wageslip somewhere. I got £1.

So, did you do chores readers?

INCENSE, SWEETS AND INNOCENCE

Back in the 60's when we were kids in Preston I did everything with mates.

Mates were as important as family back then and formed an essential part of daily life. Everything was done with mates, every major event, every small step, every scrape. Like family, mates were there when it counted.

I snogged my first girlfriend with a mate doing the same near me behind the Catholic Church. I played with my Action Man with mates. I went to the Top Rank disco with mates. My mates were there when I discovered the Lake District. My mates were there when my life fell apart as a teenager.

My mates changed over time. As a younger kid my friends were basically kids who lived on the same road as my family and we did everything together, constantly in and out of each others' houses and gardens all year round. We rode our bikes to the local park and tore around the small wooded hillocks there like the Bash Street Kids! These pals were Robin, Nick and Cass, with the occasional visit from guest mates Mike and Gary. I don't know what happened to any of these special guys and like old air, miss those long lost days of my early childhood years in Ashton-on-Ribble immeasurably.

When I discovered Kung Fu in the early 70's, for some reason, I lost these full-time friends and in a strange osmotic process evolved new ones: John, Masey, Nipper and Crooky with part-time re-appearances of Nick and Cass. We were all members of our very own Kung Fu club, the Powis Road Dojo of Bugei. It was a magnificent time. All around 12 - 13 years old, we all went to see the X-rated Enter The Dragon at the ABC in Preston and life would never be the same. Bruce Lee became the centre of our kicking, blocking, ki-aiing universe and everyone was Kung Fu fighting. The peak of this marvellous gang was the Indian summer of 1976, when we all went to the Lake District for a camping trip, jumping and cartwheeling like shaolin monks. We had one more year to go at School, Ecky Thump was everywhere and everything was perfect.

Alas, within a year it would all fall apart. The worst of all personal tragedies happened to me and I retreated into a world of bottomless grief. My mates tried to help but the long hot summer of 1976 became a distant memory and the strong forces that held us together faded and the group dispersed. 

Some friendships did remain strong, particularly Masey and two brand new friends emerged, brothers Pete and Dave.

It was around this time that I discovered heavy rock and the pounding music of Budgie, Rush and Uriah Heep became the focus of this new band of pals. In the vacuum of a motherless home I would cook hot meals for them on Saturday afternoons, whilst we listened to Budgie's Squawk at full blast and stuffed our faces on chicken pie, home-made chips, processed peas and gravy. It was a rite of passage round that front-room stereogram as we stared at each other licking our chops, trying to measure the yards ahead. School was over and the future beckoned. I didn't know it but those musical Saturdays would become the swansong of a life I'd loved in the home I'd grown up in for 17 years. The house I adored was sold by my Dad as he struggled to make sense of the death of his wife.

When I turned 17 I had a flat on my own. It was situated in a different part of town to where I'd grown up. It was here that I met a new group of pals, whilst staying close friends with Pete and Dave: the chief ones being Blue the dancer and George. Between us and a fluid cast of hundreds of other teenagers in Ashton and Fulwood, the crucial experiments of our late teen years were all made together in a fug of hormonal creativity, beer, parties and and hot adolescent desire. 

Dave and Pete were pivotal to this new 'group' and their enormous shed became the de facto centre of teenage operations. We did it all: home brew, girls, parties, massive heavy rock marathons, Joni Mitchell adoration, Neil Young worship and the emergence of our own latent musical talents. The guitars came out and we began to learn how to play. It was 1978.

From this side-burned riff of patchouli and rock George and I began to busk in Blackpool. We wrote a few tunes and settled on the name Alien Cage. We only made a few quid and ate fish 'n' chips on the prom but it was great fun and we felt like we were kings again that summer. We even gigged in a pub.

George introduced me to his pals Boyley and Raff, who were part of Preston's Sixth Form college scene of talented young rock musicians looking for a home. The most talented guitarist of this teenage milieu was a young wispy haired kid called Nick Dias, who played in a band called Israel Hands if I remember rightly. Boyley and Raff's own zest for playing rock was immense and it was a happy coincidence when we all got together to form a band.

I remember playing a bunch of original tunes to them in one of their parent's homes and them saying pleasant things afterwards like 'great lyrics' and 'like poetry man!'. And so, thanks to George's introduction, Sirius was born.

We practised in the space above my Dad's sofa workshop were he was book-keeper. Being 18 I was one or two years older than the rest of the band - and the only one working - so I bought the amps for the band. We had everything else and with Dave having passed his test and having access to his Mum's mini he became roadie, sound technician and sound recordist.

Being part of Sirius was the most creative period of my life. I wrote songs like they were going out of fashion and along with tunes from the rest of the band we had a great repertoire. A mixture of Free, Sad Cafe and Genesis, sort of, we had a distinct sound of our own with songs immersed in teenage angst, Arthurian legend, space, CND and young love.

Sirius's finest hour came when we gigged at one of local pubs, the Unicorn, in the summer of 1980. We'd invited all our friends and their friends too so the place was rammed. It was a superb night of rock and beer and Dave recorded it all. We felt like the Pink Faeries and I thought we would go all the way. My friends went to Uni instead.

Within six months the glory of the Unicorn was but a run-out groove. My band mates had left for University and Dave and I sat there twiddling our thumbs. It was the end of an era and we knew. I had already met the young lady who would become my future wife and Dave had discovered motor bikes. The writing was on the wall for the final friendship and when I eventually left Preston as well that Winter we said our goodbyes. 

Along with Pete, Dave and I would resume our friendship briefly in 1983 when I returned from the Continent, but the road beckoned and I left for Wales with my girlfriend shortly after and the two brothers emigrated to Australia. We were all around 20 years old. I saw them once again. That was 35 years ago.

From all those deep and important ashes of teenage incense long ago I have at least managed to keep in touch with George, easily my oldest friend now as I begin to stare down the cold loaded barrels of Sixty years of age. Its a strange feeling looking back isn't it.

And so I'll draw this nostalgic postcard to a close. Rather than Wish You Were Here, for some reason a line from a Neil Young song is running round my head as a sign-off. 

'I have a friend I've never seen. He hides his head inside a dream'.

Have your friendships changed over the years readers?

Why Did We Keep Boxes Full of Childhood Treasures as Kids?

Talking about hanky boxes this week reminded me just how important boxes were and are to kids.

When I say boxes I mean boxes for keeping little important things inside. Treasure, trinkets, gumball toys and papers for instance.

My hanky box, which I still have, was for all my small papers connected to my passion for Kung Fu and the martial arts in the early to mid-Seventies. Things like postal order stubs, snippets from comics, gum cards and little drawings and notes. Its pictured below, the 'budo' box.

I must have had other boxes but just can'r recall them.

My daughter's old treasure box is still in our loft. Its stuffed with all those bits of magic she found throughout her childhood. A lump of Fool's Gold, her first teeth, some home-made cards, some small pebbles, a Garbage Pale Kids card, a scratch 'n' sniff card and perhaps my favourite's, a dried sea-horse and a puffin's beak.

This box reminds me of a Victorian's cabinet of curiosities and the very essence of collecting, to bring things you love together in one place. It must be in us all from birth!

Nowadays there are loads of boxes and pots around our house and all of them have random artefacts inside - batteries, dried roses, scissors, Lupe, pens and a small bible. These lack the passion of my youth and are more practical than anything. However, its a similar impulse having them around.

More akin to those old treasure collections, I do still have modern boxes full of loose small vintage toys like SpaceX and loose parts like spacemen and bits that have fallen off. These are a reminder of the treasures boxes of childhood for me.

Did you and do you have trinket boxes full of your special things?