Whatever You Want

It's been long standing thing on this blog not to be a review of things I have bought simply because you end with just a reviews blog which was never what this blog was about even in the early days at Friends Reunited or the photography blog as that was about the subject and not the equipment.

Nonetheless some actual physical possessions do tie in because they were directly connected to your past and so come back with being in that child-like mindset thanks to age regression.

For me the music of Status Quo, the British Blues Boogie was a constant even if albums may of been borrowed and so over the years I had a collection of those I remember taping even if a couple disappeared when "Angela" in the lower sixth took a couple of tapes out of my schoolbag in some spat connected with the bike shed and why we were both there. Nudge Nudge...

Actually I can still see them in their orange text on white TDK D boxes and the white label on grey tape shells in my sleep complete with Thin Lizzy, Rolling Stones and Monty Python.

The first time the whole Status Quo catalogue came out on cd was in 1991 where while  some albums were just single cds, others were issued as two albums in really little more than a tracklist and front art on a single cd.

This was one of the single cds, 1977's Rockin' All Over The World the title song was a British hit written by John Fogerty, which sounded very thin on cd.

It was reissued a few years ago in Deluxe Format which basically means it comes as four folded card sleeve with two wells for the cds of which one is the original album redone for cd and the second has bonuses which in this instance comprises of non album single 'B' sides and a remix of the main album.

It sounds a lot better in this edition.

I very well remember borrowing 1979's Whatever You Want from my younger brother to which I have a troubled relationship with then and sadly now too that Christmas as it had been a present and recording it being one of their best albums.

It apart from having the top ten title track hit had the slower more reflective Living On A Island and was one the tapes the mentioned girl took.

When in 1991 this was issued on cd which sounds pretty good they decided to make it a two on one which meant they missed one song off, High Flyer, and faded a few others earlier to get it all to fit in.

Thus I was interested in getting the recent Deluxe edition that sounds very good with the entire album on it as I remember it, the b side of Whatever You Want , Hard Ride, and the U..S compiled and remixed edition

This came out in l980 and shares the same history include the snatching of the tape I made of it and was the second album on the Whatever You Want  2 on 1 cd losing Wild Ones and gaining some fades
This was the home to three singles What Your Supposin', Don't Drive My Car/Lies which was a 'double 'A' side and Rock N Roll which was issued in late 1981 rather than second single from that years Never Too Late Album

Having these albums back sounding better approximating the sound of the original lps and being more complete has been not just good from the point of enjoying the sound of these albums but also took me back to those heady days of my mid teens.

Building on the lego set

Following on last weeks well received post, it happened I was able to get a few bits and bobs for the lego set to fill the gaps. 

One thing I did miss were the red roof tiles with their sharp angles mimicking the sloping roofs you find on many properties here in the UK as one a handful were included in the main set.

Here are 61 vintage red ones and there's a few others (see later) that will help adding the finishing touches to making buildings that I bought used, put in a bag stuck a card sheet.

 I did mention last week the lack of traditional white bricks in current sets being replaced by pink which is less use for building houses with as apart from a church near here, no building is in pink.

This was a bundle that was going cheap used comprising of a older green baseboard that felt a bit more stable than mine and a number of classic 70's and 80's lego characters that can be slotted on a bigger boards for more realism such as a site worker with a red safety hat. 

It also had a number of white bricks I wanted together with some older red, blue and yellow ones of various formations plus red and black (no longer offered) clip on small plates which you can't have enough of.

Here is all white bundle of bricks  with windows and doors too I was able to get cheaply that would work well with the other

This should help transform the two current sets I have into something more like the one I had with a bias on building structures while by adding the characters also link back toward the past as I did get separately some of those which may go with any other bits I get as the months go bye.

More lego fun

It's been a wash out week here thanks to Storm Brendan although I did manage to get out earlier in the mornings for a stroll as I am growing skin on this ankle with two scabs to show for it.

One thing I did do was play with my lego  as one limitation of the original "classic set" I had last year was unlike the one I had when I was nine, it was deficient in windows and doors apart from coming in a plastic tool type box  where the original was in card with plastic wells.

Although mine was bigger, it was a bit like this which I think is better as bags are unwieldy and prone to tearing.

The set I had for Christmas that I put labelling up each bag with some paper stickers was transferred into that new box with the instructions.

Part of it is what we don't tend to think about what it would of cost today for our folks to had bought it and I know the RRP of the set I bought was around £40 even if I got it discounted heavily for outer cosmetic damage.

It is quite probable such a set today would of been close to £80 or more which would of been seen as a lot so it's little wonder it was a bit lacking.

That bungalow is something I knocked together  in the space of an hour and half assembled as I thought it through very much on the fly using a few of the extra bits namely the windows and one door which shows how adding those extra bits transforms the set into something that is of more use although I'd willing trade the pink bricks for white which the older sets had together with blue,yellow and red.

No doubt that was some cack handed attempt to reach out to girls but the kind of girls who wanted things like lego wasn't the pink princess sort so really it wasn't, like most of those things  necessary after all.

Sweet Fun Stuff

In many ways parts of the last few weeks are still here and this week I will touch on two.

I did mention about the Fudge Truck and here is a picture of it in situ where I've been playing with it apart from consuming said Fudge pushing it across the floor.

The Secret Lake was written in 2011 and in certain respects addresses elements of modern childhood such as the smartphone although in a good many other respects it is a fairly traditional story aimed straight at Junior school readers.

In essence this is a time travel adventure story of Stella, eleven, and her younger brother Tom aged eight, who have moved with their Mum to London living in a flat that has a communal gardens where people grow things and children play.

Looking for the dog of a elderly woman that often goes missing and returns with little explanation they investigate "The Island", a uncultivated strip with four trees within the garden and find a secret tunnel and a lake they row across.

Travelling through it they find children living in their home but a hundred years in the past where they discover it was a huge house, making friends and enemies too along the way as they uncover the real reason the dog disappears and what the connection to those children and it's owner really is.

Although this is a fairly short story with a hundred and nine pages it does grip you and while not written expressly for boys has much of that feel, the author has two sons and is used to telling stories that interest them with a lot of adventure not overdoing relationships or pushing agendas while inviting contrasts between today's life and that of the past.

It is a more modern version of a Enid Blyton adventure story for today's generation but equally suited for those of us who are adult littles who love such stories.

Shoot and kickabout

Last year it was the 50th year of Shoot which like a number of publication scaled down production this century from weekly to monthly before going online only in the last decade

It was geared around a teen boy audience, upper years at Prep school or State Secondary, who loved football which was pretty much all of us at that point  playing at school and any spare moment outside of things like scouts.
In its favour it had real football legends writing for it so it gave good advice on areas of the game,  discussion of rules issues and a breakdown of the weeks action and any international/home nations matches

The quality of writing was second to none which is something some magazines could do with revisiting these days.

And - hurrah - you had posters to take out and put on your bedroom wall, men you could look up to.

Arriving slightly late here which was why it missed the Crimbo post was that 50th Anniversary annual that has a lot of features from the 70's and 80's like that picture of Man U's George Best  who as a Wolves fan I'd have to say at his best was Brilliant (and at his personal life worst makes this boy cry).

Arriving and not altogether unconnected is a pair of vintage Puma Shorts from those days when the teen me played when shorts were short  not like your grannies big bloomers, down to just below the knee.
If past lives are being revisited then to me it makes sense to have a pair of shorts for footie that were of that past when Nylon was king.

The 2019 review

Hello there!
We start this year ending piece with a bit of news which is my old mobile phone got lost and so I have had another one.

It's dark grey most suitable, matching my shorts, has a FM radio plus torch being just a phone for calls and SMS as I don't do internet on the move needing something in case I need help while scouting or travelling to book a cab.

That takes me to one thing as while I blog more around scouting pasts and present on the other blog, this blog saw more posts around exploring and scouting this year where I visited places like Shropshire, doing some photography.

That was aided a lot by buying the Nikon D3500 digital single lens reflex camera which as you've really read this blog, the old blog posts around photography are on it from the days of using my Minolta X500 film camera learning framing, focusing and exposure control.

I bought a few lenses to go with with it like a Telephoto zoom, a Macro lens that has full size close up picture taking abilities and a fixed length wide aperture high quality 'standard' lens for nature work as modern zoom lenses have come closer to the quality of the array of fixed length lenses I have with the Minolta.

It was as I said early last year it would be "The year of The Boy" and in many ways it was because while some elements such as presentation featured, getting more 'classic' school boy attire and even for the first time in eons even having an Aunt see me just before Christmas in my green jersey, white shirt and grey shorts looking more the boy, it wasn't just that.

It was that I had moved on from that ambiguity and some of the company that had left me for a period in a pretty bad spot personally to the point that in other places I moved  accounts from being ungendered to male, writing posts clearly as one and finding I was being affirmed and treated as just that.

It just felt right to me as did increasingly talk more online and privately about what it meant, the trends that concerned me as a male as I regained that whole sense of male identity that has done wonders for me.

On the Tumblr front, they changed ownership to Automattic,inc but the madness continued as we lost a few classic accounts such as School Outfitter who is missed and a few others reinvented themselves for a second chance.

l did regain unexpectedly after a long long wait the original ThatSchoolboy2 account in late July just as I was going on a ALB break where a sheepish email acknowledged there had in fact been no reason to deactivate it at all.

So far I've had no posts flagged or deleted although I am being super careful and am backing up the best of TSB and TSB2 posts now all on that original account to Wordpress with added commentary.

My forum is still running for conversation free from the issues at Tumblr.

Going forward it will be another year of The Boy, supremely confident of who he is and his place in it, who will explore building up character and interests as that boy sharing them with other boys (and men) taking his place alongside them, proud to be a real boy.