Remaking boyhood tapes

This week it has to be said has been one I haven't been well and so I'm playing catch up while also trying to rest a little.

One form of rest for me includes listening to music but when I'm not well I'm not very well co-ordinated finding opening and handling discs difficult so short of putting the radio on I play tapes as they are easily for me to handle.

Some of the tapes I have are quite old going back to late 1977 and 1978, recorded on equipment I had access to in my early teens (and I might add knowing how to make decent recordings with it).

I just adored those shells and printed on labels.

While tape is by definition re-recordable, something the broadcast industry found handy when they were short of tape attempts to re-record some of these old recordings were not satisfactory because the chemistry that makes tape recording possible has led to the coatings altering in time so while old recordings will reproduce, their properties have changed meaning making a good re-recording forty years or so on is very difficult.

This applied to tapes from that era such as the then very good TDK AD "normal" position tape I and so I had remade them on new often more recent new old stock tape.

This applied to my copies of Wings Greatest and their London Town album I made back in 1978

l didn't use Dolby noise reduction because I find unless everything is 'just so' you can hear it in action often on percussion instruments even on the same machine and often their tends to be mismatches between different machines when it comes to replay levels and frequency responses that aggravate it leading into muffled sound.

Provided you are able to put a good level onto the tape, there is very little hiss you would notice over speakers at normal volumes and recordings tend to sound  a bit more open.

They turned out extremely well.

The evolving TSB Tumblr

While I'm a bit busy dealing with my stereo system latest addition, this week's topic is a place I spend a bit of time on.

On the re-established TSB we are going through some changes that will see it change by the years end and it begins with changing the URL to move away from some of the more negative sides of being a blog about being forever a schoolboy.

There's no nice way to put it but on Tumblr there appears to be a sizeable amount of gay men who see pictures of actual children even in the most youngest and most innocent play as sexual adding very racy, sexualizing commentary for their own enjoyment.

My issue isn't just that it's wrong and in many instances illegal, it is that they see my blog as in someway connected to them and regardless of form it's never been about that being more about being still that boy, always sfw and non kink/ non sexual so moving from one that  references schoolboy pasts is less likely to attract attention.

That attention itself causes issues even if you never initiated their interaction because understandably some of the communities I have more in common with also don't want those interactions either so apart from having a DNI (Do NOT interact) from the very first version I ever had, that has been spelt out on the description in brief form too from now on.

The other is I had been dropping off since last December vintage images of  just schoolboys, for two reasons, one is there's a finite amount of them that seem to go around in circles which I've seen before and secondly it seems to attract the people whose Interaction I don't want and need.

More to the point IF I need to post any in context such as talking about my own era of first childhood or similar, then I can do that better on my external blogs that I have more control over.

It's not worth the aggravation when it works against blogging and reblogging from groups I have more in common with whose content and support in the challenges of my life are altogether more important and of benefit.

There are places to talk with ASB's around bit of that and the broader overarching theme of Age Dysphoria as it applies to my life is something I can talk about on the external blogs and how that all ties in.

In the TSB 2 I had before May's events we had moved over more to a past lives and natural history theme and the restructured TSB is following that way not at least for now formally a Age Regression community blog in the way That Smol Boy (aka foreverinthepast10) is even though I'm age dysphoric following their rules but a lot closer to that.

What was possible in the past, not least pre December 2018 and how that moved me on was lost last year with much of that being preserved on the my middles life external blog as a record of that time.

Moving on being the eternal boy me and what he needs is really what the focus of the TSB tumblr will be about.

Basil Brush and being the same boy

Much has happened since I started this blog, first started a tumblr, joined asb and gone through a number of remakes of the tumblr apart from deletions of which the most recent was in May for reasons I feel no need to go through publicly on here.

One thing I am no longer prepared to deny is I am a ten year old boy in an adult biologically aged body, that's to say I don't regress so much as I remain the boy I was very in the mindset and headspace of one which is at least a part of the reason I need in real life supervision and why even in my teenage years I was protected from other teens when it came to more 'grown up stuff '.

That was one reason why only one blog got remade for ten year old me and on terms appropriate to a boy and NOT a grown up when it comes to interactions.

I haven't been well this week which is something I've lived very much with  missing chunks of high school education to it so I've been in the sick bed thinking back to the things I loved back then of which one as the Cultural Icon of Boys of my era which is Basil Brush.

Few people appreciate Basil was actually designed by Peter Fermin, the man behind Small Films who gave us Pogles Wood, the Clangers, Bagpuss and whole Trumpton trilogy for an ITV series in 1963 before getting his very own show on BBC Tv in 1968.

That's a picture of him with the late Derek Fowlds which how I first encountered him in Junior School.

This is the tape version of the LP I had as a young boy of his first album of skits and monologues.

Tape was great medium for children being less fiddly to put on and play compared to records apart from lending itself to portable 'shoe box' tape players which we had so we could take it with us or ask a grown up to play on a in car tape player when we were travelling.

That was why EMI Records had a children's tape series of stories and songs we'd love at pocket money prices. 

Because this is Great Britain, anything big and especially for boys and girls had a yearly annual issued in time for Christmas and this applied to Basil with stories, pictures and things from the years tv show.

That was his that was in many boys Christmas stockings in 1973 ready for the new year

That is one of two of my remaining Basil Brush pin on badges, the bigger on from the 1970's with just a hint of metal staining on the rear.

This one is from around the same era but smaller that was pinned onto many a woolly sweater or coat at the time.

Many of us boys loved Basil for his wit, his cheeky interrupting ways getting away with things that often we didn't as much as we shared these impulses the MC of a entertainments show with singers and performers just for children although the grown ups liked watching it with us.

The years may of advanced but nothing has changed in my world that included him.

The Bash Street Kids today!

It's been a hot sunny week so while I'm on the white choco Magnum's we return as things are on the change  at The Beano.

The Bash Street Kids goes back a long time being originally drawn by Leo Baxendale as “When the Bell Rings”, first appearing in The Beano in No. 604, cover dated 13th February 1954, and retitled in 1956 when Great Britain was in certain respects a very different country.

It was just six years after the S.S. Empire Windrush arrived at Tilbury Docks with the very first wave of Caribbean immigrants which was followed as many from there and the Indian Subcontinent were invited by government to fill posts not least in the NHS.

It isn't surprising then the world Leo Baxendale  drew for Class 2B was all white as except a few inner city areas that was how it was and I must admit when I went to my Infant and Junior schools as the sixties turned into the seventies it was like that too only encountering non white children at high school.

Last week we touched on the Fatty/Freddy issue and this comes in with issue 4088 on street sale June 2nd which I do have mixed feelings over.

What that banner at the top of the comic is referring to is made quite clear  when you bear in mind the last full time character that was added was Cuthbert Cringworthy in 1972 outside of the accident prone Wayne who was introduced and soon left.

Reading a comic strip like The Bash Street Kids is being in suspended animation for everyone from the Head Teacher, teacher, deputy, the cat caretaker have not changed in just about sixty-seven years nor have nearly all the class!

To be recognizable as 'a class' to children who are what this is aimed for as it was us back then what happens around the story premise needs to change with care so today you would expect computers, smart phones and the like to be around.

What they have decided to do is add two new pupils to the class Mandira Sharma who has the "Mandi and her Mobile" cartoon strip within it and Harsha Chandra who stars as the kid prankster from the joke shop who was a recent addition to the comics line up of strips.

Mandi came in upon the comics eightieth birthday and any class would have more females than just one while as a character Harsha divides me as while I agree the comic ought to reflect the modern world and even here we have now some non white pupils at our school, the asian shopkeeper is seen as something of a stereotype.

Where I think it fails is the back story, the School Board telling the school the classes need to be the same size as the others being the catalyst for the new names.

No child of eight through twelve would be thinking about School Boards, class sizes and Numbers On Roll for why things in school are different. An older child may query things with teachers and parents perhaps being more curious.

A better story would have their parents move into Bash Street, the children playing with the others and the parents applying to send the children there which more what as children we saw rather than adult school viability politics.

This said while it may not please those who want to keep it in what was even then becoming out of date it is a welcome change even if as I say the back story isn't one that kids really relate to.