The happiest of happy times - David Bowie and the remembering of childhood

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And we were a happy crew, me and you
We were a happy crew, me and you

Now this isn't a piece about how important David Bowie is to me and how my life will never be the same now he's gone - the great man's relevance to my life is about happenstance, about the fact that he was there at a happy time.

I've written before how the presence of David Bowie in my life was only realised some while after that presence had ended - for the simplest of simple reasons. The great man was still to be great and his nascent stardom wasn't of interest to a nine year old. But now, when I think about Bowie it's not a memory of a concert or how his music and lyrics meant something but of a time and place when I was part of a happy crew.

And this is how remembering works. It's one thing to speak of the influence and importance of a man just gone - if nothing else, within his genre Bowie was both influential and important. It's quite another for that passing to bring about a recollection of our own life and experience. I guess this is why those closest too us are mourned (and missed) most.

This remembering - informal, emotional, connected remembering - is even stronger when, as is my case with Bowie, when the recollection is of fun, happiness, joy and pleasure. I described the time I met Bowie like this:

For us boys this was brilliant - we weren't interested in the presence of the rock god but in the prospect of jungle adventure, tree climbing and the discussion of those things that matter to nine-year old boys. And we were looked after in that slightly offhand but rather sweet way of hippies. Someone fed us - usually something slightly spicy and pasta-y, probably vegetarian. It might have been Richard's mum, or the couple with a little toddler called Siddhartha, maybe even the rock god himself, this didn't impinge on us - we just welcomed the food.

Richard Finnegan and I were - in Spirogyra's words - a 'happy crew, me and you". And my remembering those happy times - and for me being ten was great - was triggered by the sad death of David Bowie. So in writing that they were the happiest of happy times, I have the child of a little tear in my eyes. Both at the death of a man who, in the tiniest of ways, was part of my life and also at remembering something fine that cannot be recreated - there's no going back to being ten except in that remembering:

When the subbuteo men broke (and finally refused to be re-glued) we played the game with my sisters farm set – minutes to go and it’s Sheep 2, Cows 1…

And climbing the cherry trees and digging for Roman remains in the garden (which of course we found in abundance)

Playing cricket with a big plastic ball and the roses as fielders – and ducking my Mum’s sandals when we knocked a flower off

Back then bikes were old, slightly rusty and lacked brakes – but we still raced down The Glade (with my little brother in the old pushchair – and that didn’t even have steering)

I hope - and know it's probably, mostly true - that today's nine and ten year olds have the same happiest of happy times. And I know that there will be something, not always a sad thing like a death, that will trigger the memory of those times, will bring the recollection and reflection - even the ghost of a smile to their lips. For me the opening chords of 'Space Oddity' will always take me back to that garden on Foxgrove Road, to the hippy bloke with the beard doing yoga, to Siddhartha (who'll be in his late forties now) and to our happy crew crashing through the undergrowth hunting aliens or seeking lost treasures.

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The Clear Out

The task is now - but for the odd straggler lurking in further flung corners of the house - complete. All our considerable collection of music is loaded on to the computer. The question is whether to keep the huge piles of CDs or to send them down the road for some other folks' pleasure?

And, as you know with these things, there are two sorts of people - chuckers and hoarders. Some folk take a great delight in clearing things out - clothes, books, records, CDs, kitchen utensils, wives, children. Gleefully disposing of all the flotsam and jetsam of our lives so as to remain in minimalist perfection.

Others, however, hoard. Collecting everything - gas bills, train tickets, football programmes, spoons. A vast array of life's detritus clogs up the house, the shed, the car's govebox making it actually impossible ever to find anything at all. So a task force is created to clear out and you disappear into the mounds of collected stuff.

What follows are little whimpers of delight. Brief explosions of pleasure at the discovery of something you'd forgotten you had - maybe its a programme for the 1970 Cup Final Replay or The Times Guide to the House of Commons for 1950. But more likely just a programme from the village gala or a tatty guide to some stately home or other. We shuffle through piles of magazines - The Economist, White Dwarf (the really old AD&D ones before it all got Warhammered) and the Journal of Direct, Data and Digital Marketing Practice - before latching on to a box of old records, cassette tapes or matchbox cars.


We lose track of time, we forget the aim of reducing some of this collection, this hoard. But what joy as we remind ourselves why we kept all that stuff. And will still keep it!

Clear out? We tried.

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Wednesday Whimsy: a glimpse back as the sun sets on the first decade of the third millennium

The picture above was taken on the island of Bryher – close to the most westerly point of England – and coming across it again set me to thinking about the end of a decade. What follows are a few whimsical thoughts on the past ten years – not a list of good or bad. Not a set of achievements nor a load of political gripes and grumbles – others will do that so much better than I ever will. In a way they are first few things that come to mind about the ten years since the millennium. So – as they say – in no particular order!

1. That Kick! England winning the Rugby World Cup – against Australia with the last kick of the game. Absolutely priceless!

2. Watching from the Bradford Alhambra’s “Gods Bar” as Provincial House was blown up – paving the way for what will be one of the best public spaces anywhere in England

3. Moving into The Nook and having the central heating break down – six days later - on Christmas Eve (Ralph, now retired plumbing genius, came out and fixed it)

4. Rocky, next door’s bantam cock who would fight anyone or anything – but sadly lost his last bout to the fox

5. My wife’s cousin Maurice winning the Mott Medal for Physics – read the citation and understood one word in ten! (And he’s now an FRS too!)

6. Getting my Masters degree – never thought I’d have a degree with the word “science” anywhere near it!

7. Jethro being the first Bradford Grammar School pupil to get a Gold Medal in the Royal Society of Chemistry “Olympiad”

8. Going to my first ever game at Old Trafford – Tevez scores! Manchester United 0 West Ham United 1. Magnificant!

9. Presenting Bradford’s case to UECA – and getting the International Markets Festival for the City (worth the hardship of a trip to Rome)

10. Seeing Nabucco at the Arena di Verona – with Va, pensiero, sull'ali dorate coming just after the sun had set. I cried my eyes out.

There were bad things during the decade – I didn’t get to be an MP (although I halved Anne Cryer’s majority), my wife lost her job of thirty years and we have had Gordon Brown as prime minister. But I prefer to focus on the positive and on the fact that as was once said: things can only get better!

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