Floating down to Camelot

Sorting through some boxes of sheet music today, I came face to face with something that took me instantly back to c. 1977. This was a book called Jibbidy-F and A-C-E, the book that I worked through when I first started piano lessons. Even before I opened it, I could sing the first tune. Granted, the feat of memory required to remember and perform this tune note-perfectly after all these years is not particularly impressive one, since it consists of just one note - your Very First Note. As you play it repeatedly, you sing the immortal lines, "I am C! Middle C! Left hand, right hand, middle C!"

While the proud declamatory cry of Middle C has stayed with me forever, I had forgotten many of the others. Mentally singing the tunes today, I found them instantly familiar, as if part of me has never forgotten them. There's Doggy D, who, although confined to the treble clef, is occasionally allowed to play with Top Line A and Bumble B, his downstairs neighbours, as well as Middle C. However, on the opposite page, we learn that Doggy D thinks Bumble B looks very very fuun-nee, sitting in a bed of flow'rs and turning them to hunn-ee. Funny behaviour indeed. But Doggy D and Bumble B disappear from the scene after this development. Over the page, we learn a new mark. '"A new mark!" says C sharp. "Look at me, I'm very dark." I'm as happy as can be. I have found my first black key.' What is C sharp dark? Is this an evil note? If so, why am I supposed to be happy at finding it?

And why now, 8 hours later, am I unable to get these incredibly uninteresting tunes out of my head. You've never been truly bothered by an earworm until you've been bothered by an earworm with only one note.

And then there's the little tune based on a theme from Haydn's Surprise Symphony which has ensured that for almost 40 years, I have been unable to hear that symphony without singing along. Or, in other words, it has ruined it forever. (NEVER set words to wordless tunes, that's my advice, because once heard, you will never ever forget them, and never ever hear that tune without mentally filling in the words.) Haydn, it tells us, was a happy man, and all the children loved him. "You will learn to love him soon," it finishes, rather threateningly.

From the blurb of a new children's book:

"Until about 30 years ago, there were no mobile phones. How on earth did people manage?"

Miles away from anywhere, we sit on top of a hill with our backs against an 18th century monument in a vain attempt to get shelter from the howling gale. Thick fog billows in from the sea, hiding any semblance of a view. Hands are freezing. Boots are caked with mud, and mud is thickly splashed all the way up to our knees, and higher. Valiantly we eat ham sandwiches from a plastic bag, and drink tea from a flask. "What a nice walk!" Pellinor says, with no irony whatsover. I agree.

Yes, it has finally happened. We have turned into our parents.

Curse you, internet, for making information so easy to find! It's quite killing conversation! I often find myself wondering about the answer to something, and mentally composing an LJ post about it, thinking that it might prompt a bit of conversation. Then I Google it, and find loads of other conversations about it, and all my questions and debates are answered, and never get around to making the post.

A few minutes ago, I was chasing a childhood memory. "Does anyone else remember...?" I was going to post, before describing the half-remembered item. "Oh! I remember those, too!" people might have said. "Now what were they called...?" And there would have been nostalgia and memories and brain-racking, and then someone would have supplied the name, and there would have been gratitude and praise.

But Google has told me. They were Wade Whimsies. And I never really liked them much, anyway.

I was talking to a colleague the other day about our childhood memories of fairy tales, legends and history, and how we first became aware of such things. To her, the Andrew Lang collections were the definitive collection - the books she read as a child, and still returns to every few years. For me, it was the various collections by Ruth Manning-Saunders. I remember seeing the Andrew Lang books in the library, but I never read them - a fact that horrifies her, since to her they are so seminal. I also have strong memories of Tales told again by Walter de la Mare. I think this was the book that contained Molly Whuppie, which I particularly liked. I think this might also have contained the story of the hobyahs ("Hobyah! Hobyah! Hobyah!")

Myths and legends I definitely got from Roger Lancelyn Green: Robin Hood, King Arthur (she got her King Arthur from Rosemary Sutcliff), Greek legends, Troy and Norse legends. I don't think I had anything by Hans Christian Andersen, since none of those stories ring any particular childhood bells. I might have had a Grimm collection, but I'm not sure, and I'm fairly sure I had a battered book of well-known fairy tales, told in boring language, with brightly coloured pictures.

I have no memory of having any book of nursery rhymes, and probably learnt them orally, although I do remember a record of nursery songs, which had a big orange teddy on the front.

History I got from Ladybird books, which in those days had bright blue borders, and the Hamlyn Children's History of the World, by Plantaget Somerset Fry.

Hmm... All nostalgic now...

In the library on Saturday, a mother was telling her child (aged about 8 or 9) about what computers were like when she was his age. They were big and blocky and grey, she said. Listening, I pictured something like the VIC-20 that my Dad bought when I was 10. And when you wanted to connect to the internet, she said, you used this thing called "dial up," and something called a "modem," which made a strange noise, which she proceeded to imitate. Wow, said the child, amazed at the sheer primitiveness of the ancient internet. Wow, thought I, struck by the fact that something that I still think of as quite recent has already become the thing of parental tales.

I find that popular culture and technology provide the most Wow moments when it comes to being struck by the passage of time. I was a huge fan of the original series of Star Trek in the early 80s. At that time, it was less old than the X-Files (my big obsession of the mid to to late 90s) is now. When Star Wars episode 1 came out, it was 16 years after the last of the original trilogy, which felt like an age away. Episode 1 is now 14 years old. Spice Girls mania is as long ago as Beatles mania was when I was a teenager.

Wow.

Several recent discussions have touched on the role of the novel Daughter of Time in creating lifelong Richard III enthusiasts. It's set me musing on fiction's ability to spark off enthusiasms that in some cases must surely result in career choices and academic specialisms. I don't think my life has been changed by fiction, although I've definitely chosen holiday destinations and short-term hobbies as a result of fiction enthusiasms. However, I've been indulging in nostalgia about the choices I made when studying history at Oxford, and my often rather shallow reasons for those choices.

( Musings about choices made in history study )

LOADS of bitey things around at the moment! I presume it's because the country has spent the last three months gradually turning itself into a swamp. ( Bitey things, midge mythology, bad things and naughty books )

I am currently confused by the 1970s. I've been watching the current BBC series about the 1970s, in which the overwhelming message seems to be that was hideously grim in the 1970s. It started doomy, then got doomier and doomier and doomier, and prices went MAD and the lights went out, and the economy collapsed, and outraged women in headscarves wailed about the death of all things decent, and there was not a single shred of light and happiness in all the entire dismal decade.

However, a few weeks ago, I saw some report that concluded that the best ever year to be a child in the UK had been 1976. Something doesn't add up here.

Unless it's just that children carry on blissfully unaware of economic doominess, and find power cuts rather exciting. I was 5 for most of 1976, and although my memories include some Doom, it was only drought-related doom. ("It's NEVER going to rain!" sobbed my Mum, and the wooden railway embankment at the bottom of our garden caught fire, and railway repairy people worked through the night with horrible scary sirens that wailed like banshees and made me cry in terror.) But Bagpuss was on TV, and You and Me ("Hello, Crow! Hello, Alice!") and Blue Peter and Mary, Mungo and Midge (though that was a bit scary when Midge did something silly like get stuck in a letterbox), so all was well with the world, and if the pound was busy collapsing elsewhere, nobody told me.

It's rather an annoying TV programme, though. I feel that the role of a TV historian should be to report upon the tastes and opinions of the past, not to sneer at them, but this chap clearly disagrees.

I'm on the lookout for children's party games played at traditional children's parties. We've got a list already, but would like an even longer list, so they can be whittled down to the best ones. So far we've got:

Musical chairs
Musical bumps (I was unvanquished champion of musical bumps as a child, but the ground was a lot closer then. I suspect that playing it now would result in bruises and broken things.)
Musical statues, ideally in its Musical Monsters form
Pass the parcel
Sleeping/Dead lions (naming dispute ongoing)
Pin the something on the whatever
Grandmother's footsteps
Oranges and Lemons (although even as a child, I never quite worked out what the point of the game was, and it always took so long, and once the chopper who came to chop off my head thumped my nose, and I cried.)
What's the time, Mr Wolf?
Poor Pussy

Quite a few more games come to mind, but I think they're more playground games than party games - e.g. The Farmer's in his Den, Red Letter, I sent a letter to my love, etc. We always clamoured to play Murder in the Dark when I was little, but never knew what we were supposed to do, so just milled around in the dark for a bit until someone screamed, whereupon we all went "er...", dithered a bit on confusion, and moved on to the next game.

By the way, the age of the special little birthday boy is 40, so don't worry about games being too complicated or likely to end in tears. But we don't want any of that teenage hanky-panky stuff, or games that involve singling people out to do embarassing things.

When you were a child, what was the main method you used to decide who was "it" in a game? Just curious...

(Will add mine when not typing laboriously on a phone.)

I am Confused By Spangles. Pellinor had some beer on Friday night which both of us simultaneously described as "Spangles!" This led to Spangle-related discussion. Wikipedia says they were manufactuered between the 50s and the early 80s. However, I clearly remember them arriving in Mrs Mason's sweetshop (which I frequently only between 1978 and 1982) and my parents both going, "Oh! They've brought back Spangles at last! We remember them from when we were young!" So does anyone else remember Spangles coming back, or does everyone of an appropriate age have a continuous unbroken line of Spangle memories?

I do remember finding the fruit ones nothing special, but really liking the Old English ones. I can't remember much about them, except that there was an opaque butterscotch coloured one, and a clearer very dark one, which I liked a lot. I don't know which particular Old English one is the Platonic form of "Spangle" that both Pellinor and I were thinking of when we labelled this beer as spangle-flavoured.

I was thinking today about how much I like chicken kiev, and how it seems to have gone completely out of fashion. Back in the early 90s, virtually every pub that served food offered chicken kiev, which suited me perfectly, but I don't think I've seen chicken kiev on any pub menu in years. I wonder why not. I wonder why food has fashions. I suppose it's a reaction to ubiquity. When something is ubiquitous - whether an item of food, a popular book, a pop band, an item of clothing etc. - it encourages others to sneer at it and feel superior by avoiding it. Then it becomes a bit sad or naff or common, and within a few years, people can look at it and sneer, "Oh, that's so three years ago," and move on. But then, of course, thirty years later, it will have retro appeal, and will be brought back again.

Anyone got any favourite foods that were once ubiquitous, but are now impossible to find?

Alternatively, feel free to tell me all your chicken kiev sightings, and show me all my pontifications are based on a false premise.

I've just started playing the original Thief game, which I first played over ten years ago. Pellinor dug out an old computer for me to play it on, since it won't run on my normal computer. I don't know what the discs have been up to in the last ten years, but they needed two sessions with a scratch-removing machine before they'd install the game properly. Now the game itself runs fine when I'm in-mission, but on all the mission briefings, inventory screens, load screens etc. the display has shifted half way off the screen, so I can only see the right-hand half of what's supposed to be on screen - which usually seems to be the less important part of the information I'm supposed to be reading. There's a lot of guesswork involved in this game.

I've probably played Thief at least three times before. The first time, I remember, the computer wasn't really up to it, and loading a saved game took a good five minutes. This was a huge incentive not to mess things up, so the game became an exercise of suspense and terror. Then I entered the lair of the fire mages, and the fire animation was more than my computer could cope with. I think we ended up getting a new computer just so I could finish the game. Then I played it again with the expert mission objectives, and then I added an even experter objective of my own: to do the whole game without taking any damage. I managed it, too, though my nasty habit of falling of ladders led to many reloads.

Although the graphics look pretty ancient, I still think it's a really good game. The missions are varied, and the plot is actually memorable. (I'm normally hopeless at remembering the plot of games, since I spent most the cut scenes barely listening, as I'm sitting there poised to fight a horrible battle as soon as they end.) The emphasis on sound can be quite chilling, as you hear footsteps nearing you as you're wrestling with your lockpick. It's a slow game of patience and sneaking, not a wild frantic one of running and shooting and fighting, and it can still scare me. I don't think I've ever experienced moments of such fear in a game as I have with this one, especially when haunts came up behind me with rattling chains. Even the zombies I met today made me shudder - and I speak as someone who's spent far too much time over the last year fighting zombie hordes.

I did play Thief 2, but it didn't grab me in the same way; I think I just found the setting and the plot less appealing. I never even finished Thief: Deadly Shadows, mostly because it made me feel ill. Quite a lot of first person games do make me feel ill, but others don't, and I can't work out why this is. Half Life 2 made me horribly ill. Deus Ex made me ill when I tried to replay it many years on, but I was fine with it first time round. I wonder if it's something about monitor size amplifying the jerky movements, since the first time I played these games was on a much smaller monitor. I feared that Thief would make me ill, but since 90% of the game involves standing still or sneakily creeping, the bobbing of the camera isn't much of an issue.

I've mentioned several times here how happy it makes me when I'm doing work in a school library, and come across a computer book from the early 80s, or something similar. The best book I ever found was a book written in the 60s about what life would be like in the year 2000. I would dearly have loved to have been able to keep it, but of course it belonged to the school, where the head was as delighted with it as I was. However, here's something similar, thanks to a link from the BBC news magazine. This is a 1972 children's book on what life will be like in 2010.

Much to the disgust of my cats, I was suddenly bitten by the tidying bug as soon as I got up today, and spent half an hour tidying my desk, going through the piles of paper that have accumulated in its nooks and crannies. Most of them were notes for fanfics long-since finished, so could be thrown away, but I found a few things that interested me, at least.

( Quirky facts )

I said the other day (in muuranker's LJ) that I couldn't remember much about what history I studied at junior school. Today, though, I was doing some work in a school library, and came across RJ Unstead's From Cavemen to Vikings, and I remembered it intensely. While I may not be good at remembering faces, I have very strong visual memories of the books I read when I was young, and just a quick glimpse of once-familiar pictures can evoke a whole raft of other memories and impressions from the time.

Most of those memories come from books I read by choice - those blue-spined Ladybird books about famous people, for example, or those chunky purple-spined books on kings and queens that I borrowed from the adult library, and books on the history of costume illustrated by... agh. famous illustrator. can't remember name. aargh. [EDIT: Ah yes. Victor Ambrus. Maybe it wasn't a series, but I clearly remember certain pictures] - but some clearly come from school books. I can remember Singing Together song books - both the visuals and many of the songs - and I have a very vague impressionistic memory of a series of work books that we had to fill in, but can't remember the title. I can clearly remember the visual layout reading test we did every year, with idiosyncrasy as the final word, and I can still picture Peter and Jane and their dog.

Since we had to cover all our textbooks at secondary school, my memories of textbooks from those times are of the various old wallpapers and re-used wrapping papers that I used to do it with. I have no memories therefore of titles or covers, but I suppose I would recognise the inside if I came across it one day.

What I really can't remember at the moment, though, is what books we used at Primary School to learn about countries of the world. This is now annoying me.

It sometimes seems to me that being an adult is one long story of forgetting things. I'm forever finding myself saying, "I used to know that." Do I really know less than I did, I wonder, or am I more aware of forgotten things than of new things I have learnt?

The latest thing to remind me of this is an orchid. A sea of orchids, to be exact. An enormous ocean of literally thousands of common spotted orchids (I had to look that up) which has taken over the cemetery next to where I work. As I wandered through the flower-strewn graves, I thought about how country walks are now more about saying "I used to know what that flower was called" than about knowing them.

( Wild flowers and forgotten memories )

Off work sick, and feeling floppy and bleurgh, so I've been pottering around on a bit of old-style Baldur's Gate, and now it's meme time. This one's courtesy of philmophlegm.

One thing these book memes always reveal to me is just how little I've read over the last ten years or so, ever since the Internet started eating up so much of my time. For the last few years, I've read almost nothing but non-fiction (popular science, mostly) and my fiction needs have come from fanfic. On the original list of 100 books that was doing the rounds a few days ago, I had read about two thirds, but almost all of those were read (by choice) before I was 18, when I devoured classics and historical novels. Since my core reading years were before I was 18, and since historical novels were my genre of choice then, I managed to miss out a lot of the classics of sf and fantasy.

philmophlegm's rules:

1) Look at the list, copy and paste it into your own journal.
2) Mark those you have read however you want.
3) Feel free to tell your friends what you thought of them.

My addition:
4) Ramble at great length about anything you feel like rambling about.

( Genre book meme )

I see that Blue Peter is about to celebrate its 50th birthday, and is officially the longest-running children's TV programme in the world. I've just spent a journey across the island trying to remember as much as I can about the children's TV of my youth. I have very deliberately not checked any of this on the Internet - partly because I'm sure that the filter wouldn't like it, and partly because it's fun to see how much I can remember off the top of my head. Actually, it used to be my theory that when two or three are gathered together, all of the same age, they will reminisce about children's television, so I'm proving that it works even when only one is gathered together.

( Nostalgic meanderings )