R.I.P Charlie Watts

 As I've always said from day one on this blog we don't do much talking about music or the arts generally as the focus is very much on me and this life, which given the traumatic history of my tumblr accounts you'll realize I need a safe place to talk around that without posts and accounts just going.

Still, sometimes we break that rule such as when we looked at artists that played a part in some aspect of my life and this week it is the same.

The Rolling Stones were many things, outlaws of society, cultural icons, a part of the development of youth culture that still impacts on today's youth as it did in ours but above all else a part of the soundtrack of our lives for decades.

I grew up listening to the Rolling Stones with my first recollections including hearing Brown Sugar on the radio when I was very young and almost certainly heard Honky Tonk Woman as we watched Top of the Pops and it would of featured on the end of year program and the best sellers pop chart rundown being a bit over four fingers and a thumb years of age.

I had the music bug then, which may of been connected to my at the time undiagnosed autism so within the limits of my development over those years followed artists such as the Rolling Stones who as we moved further into the seventies were seen as more the established acts compared to our likes of The Rollers, Gary Glitter, Sweet and Slade.

What as the years went by I appreciated was Charlie's drumming, the rhythm section is at the core of jazz and rock music, driving it forward which was not particularly showy but was as Joan Jett put it neither too little or too much - just right.

Unlike Rush's Neil Peart, Charlie had no formal credited input into the Stones' songs so their were few moments to highlight his contribution but then Charlie always saw himself as the drummer of the band and that was the extent of his involvement, preferring to step outside the rock star lifestyle spending time with his family and pursuing hobbies such as breeding Arabian Horses, collecting classic cars and so on.

This said listen to the playing on say Far Away Eyes, Hot Stuff and Flight 505 and you can hear his jazz influences showing in how he played percussion.

He was by training a graphic designer having gone to Art School to study it and when he joined the band was employed working for one, one of the few Stones who had a 'proper' job and his abilities showed with this 1966 singles sleeve design and his involvement in designing stage sets and tour launching events

It probably means at the end of the postponed tour that just prior to his hospitalization he said he'd need to be at hospital but felt the fans needed the tour with how the pandemic had affected people agreed to a substitute drummer, the Rolling Stones will cease to be a touring and recording entity.

Thus his death as said as it is is also an end of an era one we can be thankful for what he and the remaining Rolling Stones contributed to our lives.

This weeks round up

 

This week to be honest hasn't been a great week to be out with heavy showers across much of it which has meant a few changes of plans here and a few other things.

I found a box full of slides, I think part duplicates of some black and white print film pictures I too from September of 2006 of trains, the Snowdonia National Park and small villages about I took on my Minolta film camera.

If I remember right, I had two film bodies with me and in effect I swapped over the lenses between the one with Ilford 400 black and white print and the X500 with Fuji Velvia 100 colour slide film which was faster than the in vogue Velvia 50 so more suited for handheld photograph as much as I preferred to use a tripod with quick release plates beneath both.

One day I'll get around to scanning them in as later in before I got my first Digital Camera, I did get scans done while they were being processed and mounted which I then used for blogs.

I did replace a few compact discs with bad marks on from when I had for a short period a cd player that tended to cause discs to overshoot and get stuck causing abrasive marks this week apart from continuing on that Tumblr I mentioned last Friday which is now up to post 700.

The Evolving Tumblr II

 I last write about this topic in June of this year after the kerfuffle around one individuals antics and how one group of people tried to shut down an account making patently false allegations alleging a connection.

The problem on the account to which the successor to TSB went to was that quite simply through a series of actions over the years by Tumblr, it had no Primary account only secondaries and permissions were limited up to and including the inability to delete the entire account.

What I have decided to do is to totally remake that blog  titled Smol Forever 10 to the following url pasttimesforever10 which is going to take some time I suspect up to October because Tumblr being Tumblr does not have the tools that other blogging type sites have where you just export and import all your posts in a jiffy.

Instead you laboriously have to copy over all your old posts reblogging from sources any reblogs you had which takes time.

The Tumblr will be unrepentantly very much boys centred as was the original cos frankly I'm not into girlish stuff and child friendly in accordance with that of era I was younger in with nothing that would not of been acceptable in comics, magazines and tv for a younger audience back then because I remain very much one.

It's also the case some sources I may reblog from may well have modern day bio-kids following to and it just would not be right for them to follow a link back to somewhere that wasn't okay for them either although it doesn't belong to any age regression community unlike my others.

While it will reference things such as school uniform, it's not going to be uniform based blog partially cos there's a finite number of images around and also cos while I dress all the time as a boy, being one is about more the life and interests you have as that boy than just attire.

To me this thing was always about that life never anything else and that's why as the weeks go by the remade tumblr will be the way that it is.

Deja Vu and reset IV

 

The last time we visited this mini series of entries was in November of 2020 just as we were coming out of the second lockdown because lockdown had brought to a head a number of things around being age dysphoric when you are involuntarily a child regardless of your bone age and the struggles of trying to cope with everything.

I found I needed to have things to look forward to as bad as the pandemic turned out to of  had affected my outlook and general mental well-being and that meant I needed things that took me out of it, that engaged with my interests but at a more mental age level and so it was I had comics and magazines that arrived regardless just like I did as a child.

Unlike then even getting to and finding a newsagent that stocked them was difficult with restrictions on the buses and some shop only having limited stock.

When I was away, one of my comics, The Beano arrived and upon my return I noticed the envelope  was a good deal thicker than usual.

Opening it I found this.

It was described as being a "free complementary copy" of a new magazine by the same publisher in association with the Animal Planet tv channel which seems to be aimed more for 8 1/2 to 13 year olds filling the gap between the younger animal interest magazines and grown up titles.

Reading it, it soon showed interest for having good easy for me to read articles about animals and the natural environment full of facts and figures, not just pictures a few words and kewl emocions but having some rigour about it.

Actually a number of schools are using it as a resource and it is liked by educators.

I was very impressed by it and what is more you did have the option of having a gift free offer for a bit less bypassing the craze at the moment for cover mounts although Animal Planet say theirs are recyclable.

I just don't feel they should be there on unless it's something of use use like a bird spotting guide 

As the covermount free edition could be had on a direct debit thing (you pay a fixed amount per month from your bank) for £34.99 delivered for one issue every four weeks it's not just cheaper than the shop edition, but very good value for money, I've placed an order.

What you can never forget as a boy...

 This could well of been a scene from my boyhood past, going around a vintage usually steam railway getting all upfront and personal with the working parts of the locomotive, smelling the grease  lubricating it all so it all works smoothly.

You'd find yourself transfixed so much by it you'd be almost in a daydream, with no idea of the time or if your mates were still around or drifted off somewhere else like the little souvenir shop pouring over things to buy, a kit, a picture or postcard perhaps.

That won't be happening this week as it's felt with it being very busy there may be more risks involved than desirable given we even got as far as going away and sharing a property but all being well we'll be be able to do so in the future.

End of Term 2021

This summer so far reminds me a bit of 2018 no least in the last few days where it was almost as hot and apart from dealing with sunburn there were lot of bity insects about and actually one gave me blood poisoning apart from leaving me with a few long term issues from Lyme disease.

Monday when I went out to avoid the noise and general sensory overload that comes with work on the central heating in the house that involved knocking holes in walls and drilling while being out watching the butterflies and that was fun I was permanently trying to keep the gnats, mosquitoes and that off my arms swiping them when not checking them for any living thing no matter how small on them.

The other think is the heat, it's currently 29 degrees and forecast for some parts of the Midlands when I typed this show temperatures peaking up to 33 degrees so that comes with an official warning for heat stroke.

Given I run on the warm side compare to some it doesn't take long for me to get in dripping mode so keeping well hydrated is a must, something when I was officially young sadly wasn't taken as seriously as it should be school authorities.

Schools now are closing down for Summer Hols, the local high schools have while my old infant and junior schools are open until today.

Next week I will be away for a period so something most likely will be set to publish but I won't be around to publish links and that.

When I'm away, I am away not remotely working with a smartphone or Chromebook.

Goodbye Lindsey

Today is the day after one of those sad moments that come and go on a very long running children's tv show I've watched since I was an infant with my older brother more or less continuously over five decades in 405 line black and white to high definition colour.

Every presenter inevitably leaves, some longer than others, some you feel more of a connection with to than others but it's just the same.

Leaving never feels nice however you wrap it up.

I don't know why but actually I feel I really get BP Presenter No. Thirty-six, Lindsey Russell in the way I felt about Lesley Judd, Simon Groom, Yvette Fielding, Konnie Haq, and Anthea Turner who of course was a local as much that for other reasons I still miss the late John Noakes.

Unlike any other BP Presenter she was actually chosen directly by audition by BP viewers at the age of twenty two on Blue Peter - You Decide! and started way back on September 5th 2013, nine months after the permanent switch of the show to the dedicated post analogue to digital tv switch over to CBBC channel with Barney Harwood.

In that time I saw her grow aided by the many challenges she took as that presenter on the show apart from what you learn by just doing it becoming confident, assured and having a natural bond with children to whom this show is aimed for.

In May 2018 she undertook a challenge flying with the RAF on a training exercise with the Red Arrows, taking control for herself and this is the one thing she says was her favourite, learning a lot about herself from it.

She manages to show maturity while keeping a sense of the innocent, fun and caring side of a younger person, sometimes coming over rather like Val Singleton did in my youngest days to the then new presenters.

She was a leading figure in October 2018's special 60th Birthday special that saw as many of previous presenters as possible get together to mark the shows birthday .

Yesterday was a bit sad, I feel tearful writing this as with the ideas of the viewers she left with a Big Bang on July 15ths show, but it and the shows presenters endure in a different age for meeting the needs of viewers six plus to fifteen who have a big say in what is featured who for all the technology of this changed world are still the same as I was back then.

There wasn't just a wall of post that included letters drawings, paintings and crafts connected to here but a great big wall too.

She had some challenges to do such as fastest getting changed into Cricket Whites which she set a new record of just over 38 seconds adjudicated by Guinness the records people and identifying by touch three objects in boxes.

She was presented with a Blue Peter Gold Badge by Richie Driss who was the presenter who joined just after her and to which I think there's an entry on here.

Tributes were paid by Radzi, Katy Hill and Konnie Huq amongst others including some children views from the Blue Peter Fan Club which is online and after a competition she went up as the credits rolled in a hot air balloon over the studio at Salford's Media City to a crowd of school children cheering and waving.

In some ways it feels a bit like it did in 1972 when Valerie Singleton left leaving us with the threesome of Judd, Noakes and Purves except now it's Driss, Beales and Mudenda.

That it continues to meet their needs is the important thing and I still love watching it deriving inspiration and ideas from it.