1946 and all that
Dec. 7th, 2006 02:11 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
millionreasonsLast weekend was my dad’s 60th birthday party which took place here in Bawtry - a mini-town on the border of Lincolnshire, Nottinghamshire and of course, Yorkshire. I was expecting a few glasses of Calais-bought wine and some vol-au-vents, but no, it was a sit down meal with wedding-style seating (we were top-tabled) and the ubiquitous sprinkling of glittery plastic shapes obligatory to weddings (and 60ths). It was the only party I’ve ever attended that had a naked picture of me on the wall (aged 6 months). Many of the other photos featured my dad wearing the blue and red C&A sports-casual jacket he wore throughout the 1980s, and on his wedding photo, he looked like an American Belle and Sebastian fan with his crazy specs and bowl-cut. Some of the other guests remind me of Catherine Tate’s “shiitake” couple (Janice and Ray) with their love of Travelodges (“Wherever you go they’re all the same, you know what you’re going to get,”) and their hatred of women driving alone at night – Ian Huntley has made it all too difficult, apparently.
The smell of the theatre, where I was a member between the ages of 11-15, reminded me of Friday night adolescence and as we drove home, I remembered things that once happened, not just the incidents, but the emotions involved as if I were reliving it, rather than just recollection via olfactory stimuli.
Back home I watched the cricket, then flicked through my parents’ Sky package, noting that Nickelodeon and MTV are absent. The freebie channels were clumped together like ethnic restaurants on specific streets of a town. All the porn channels, the gambling, the home shopping and the Asian channels were all bunched in the same areas of the satellite. I watched a Pakistani station for a while, and it’s odd when the programme, adverts and continuity are in a foreign language: like being on holiday. I channel-hopped to Islam TV whose programming ran:
11 p.m. – Qu’ran Recitation
12 a.m. – Qu’ran Recitation
1 a.m. – Qu’ran Recitation
It made the cheap telly of Celebrity Wife Swap et al look munificent.
The smell of the theatre, where I was a member between the ages of 11-15, reminded me of Friday night adolescence and as we drove home, I remembered things that once happened, not just the incidents, but the emotions involved as if I were reliving it, rather than just recollection via olfactory stimuli.
Back home I watched the cricket, then flicked through my parents’ Sky package, noting that Nickelodeon and MTV are absent. The freebie channels were clumped together like ethnic restaurants on specific streets of a town. All the porn channels, the gambling, the home shopping and the Asian channels were all bunched in the same areas of the satellite. I watched a Pakistani station for a while, and it’s odd when the programme, adverts and continuity are in a foreign language: like being on holiday. I channel-hopped to Islam TV whose programming ran:
11 p.m. – Qu’ran Recitation
12 a.m. – Qu’ran Recitation
1 a.m. – Qu’ran Recitation
It made the cheap telly of Celebrity Wife Swap et al look munificent.
