swordznsorcery: (whitecollar)
( Dec. 27th, 2015 19:32)
Oh, 2010. That was a year and a half. I always knew, when my grandfather and I started living together, that it was only going to end one way. Obviously. I always assumed I'd take him his cup of tea one afternoon, and find that he'd slipped away in his armchair though. That or that he'd just not come down to breakfast one morning. I didn't expect him to have to take to his bed and slip away by degrees. I imagine that neither did he! The cruel irony of old age is that, if you're strong enough to still enjoy life, you're too strong for your body to give in easily - and just a few weeks before he fell ill, he was still getting up the stairs faster than all three of his sons. I suppose it was stupid of me to expect him to go quickly. The NHS were amazing, though. District nurses are a wonderful thing. (Even if it is always a slight disappointment that they don't ride bicycles nowadays).

As to the rest of it, I think it was a quiet sort of a year. I wasn't paying attention for the first few months, admittedly, but I'm sure I'd have noticed if pirates had raided the Houses of Parliament, or Prince Charles and Prince Andrew had duelled over the succession. Or even something major that didn't involve swords. It was the year when Nip/Tuck ended, my beloved show that was now a shadow of its former self thanks to bad management. It was the year when Lost ended, and 99% of the fandom boggled at the screen in bewilderment, and wondered why we'd bothered. It was also the year when several million childhoods heaved a collective sigh, when both Corey Haim and Gary Coleman died - and Stephen J Cannell, come to that.

On the international stage, there was some brief hilarity when the Eyjafjallajökull volcano became the bane of every newsreader's existence, by spitting out lots of smoke and debris, and buggering up the airlines for a good few weeks. It was also the year when America raided the BBC's store cupboard, and nicked the superb TV miniseries Edge Of Darkness for a Hollywood remake. It seems to have vanished without trace, so clearly sometimes the the gods of the screen are just and true. Not often, I'll grant you, but sometimes. The BBC also raided their own store cupboard, and came up with a sequel to Upstairs Downstairs, annoying pretty much all the fans of the original. I enjoyed it, but admittedly I never got around to bothering with the second series, whenever that was.

And of course this was the year when a-ha called it a day, the year after their final album, Foot Of The Mountain. They released a final single, and then went their separate ways. Until this year, of course! Sometimes you do get a happy ending - albeit a temporary one. Naturally.

... )
swordznsorcery: (face)
( Nov. 29th, 2015 15:13)
I got a new sister in 1982. That was nice. I hated being the youngest. We didn't get along until she was practically out of her teens, but it was mostly nice having her there anyway! I guess that was also the year that the garage fell down, and squished my bike. Probably one of the few times I'd put it away, rather than leaving it out on the lawn! It must have been in the winter, either at the start or the end of the year (bit vague, I know). I do know that we were watching Tarzan, in one of its various forms; and he jumped out of a tree, and landed with the most almighty crash you ever heard, which shows that sometimes the wind has jolly good timing.

TV wise, I think I was turning steadily American from this point onwards. I don't know when The Dukes Of Hazzard starting airing in the UK, but it was certainly underway by now. The Fall Guy was just getting going, and so was Tales Of The Gold Monkey, although I guess everybody would rather forget about that one nowadays. Obviously there was Starsky & Hutch in near permanent repeat, and Bonanza settling into what seemed like a decade-long position in the BBC schedules at noon on a Sunday. Guns! Explosions! Car (horse) chases! Hurrah! (Although America also gave us Fame in 1982, so by no means was it all good). I must be fair to British TV, which did give me a good series of Doctor Who this year of course. And then killed Adric at the end of it. I was devastated! Boy have times changed...

Musically a few surprises. Bucks Fizz managed to become temporarily cool with The Land Of Make Believe, the Jam fell apart, Chas & Dave would keep bothering us with nonsense (that my sister would insist on singing, loudly), and half of the Specials unfathomably formed a duet with Bananarama. Me and some friends from school formed a band this year, although I don't think it lasted the year out. I don't remember much, but there must have been some pretty severe musical differences, given that (of a trio, if memory serves), one was a Bucks Fizz devotee, and wasn't really allowed to listen to anything else (paranoid parents), and the other third only seemed to know Christmas carols. My abiding memory of our attempt at musical stardom is that we were initially called Hot Chocolate, as it was the one thing we all seemed to like! Then we found out that there was already a band with that name, which was bound to cause confusion on Top Of The Pops, so after much deliberation we changed to Blancmange. Somebody nicked that one off us too. :) Why we were so obsessed with foodstuffs, goodness only knows. And I don't think any of us could sing. Two of us played the melodica, and I don't remember what the third one did. She had one of these, so probably that.

And now I'm going to shut up, before this gets any more embarrassing!

1982 stuffs )

Channel 4 started this year too of course, but my family didn't get it until 1983. Something to do with the aerial, I think. And we went to war with Argentina, mostly because the leaders of both countries were low in the opinion polls, and needed a handy distraction, sharpish. (When I say "we", I do of course mean Britain. Not my family. We always were a rowdy bunch, but we were never that bad. And in 1982, the furthest we went was Cornwall. Honest).
Day twenty-eight, your first TV show obsession. My immediate thought when I read that was Bonanza or The Hardy Boys, which were both very early. If I'm being strictly honest though, I'd have to go back further than that, to when I was horribly small, and used to watch a show called Tarzan, Lord Of The Jungle. That's not the proper Tarzan (ie: black and white and can't talk properly). This was a cartoon series, far more faithful to the books, and based on Edgar Rice Burroughs' preferred illustrations. I have only the vaguest memories of it now, but I do know that I was besotted, mostly because of Tarzan's monkey friend N'Kima. I must have driven everybody nuts going on about monkeys, as my mother eventually bought me one, who I called N'Kima. I still have him (he says hello), and he's in remarkably good nick, despite never once managing to hold on to me during tree-swinging.

So there you go. I don't really remember the show at all, and poor old animated Tarzan got superceded pretty swiftly by Johnny Weissmuller and Lex Barker anyway, but N'Kima could never get superceded by anything. Although he does look a bit dusty right now, I must admit. I know, I'm cruel. In all fairness though, he doesn't seem to mind.
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