As my last post was nine (9) posts away fro receiving a hamper this is my blatant attempt to curry favour and sympathy to receive that must have The Afterword Hamper.(c)
So I ask what are the magical experiences that you can remember?
Mine I hear you ask is standing in a wooded clearing near a lake late evening with my then young son as hundreds of pipistrelle bats flew round us. Truly a memorable and magical moment.
Over to you (remember that hamper won’t win itself)
“You’ll like it, but not a lot.”
That’s magic.
I have this (and, I suspect, so does Beany):
https://www.discogs.com/Paul-Daniels-The-Paul-Daniels-Magic-Show/release/4361231
Yesterday was pretty magical. I bought an entire, hardly used, Disco Antistat kit at a car boot for a fiver. ’70s model (brown basin, orange hub), bottle of liquid even almost full – not that I’ll use that.
Then last night I sold a record that had cost me a pound, for over £40.
Now that’s magic!
It’s not magical, but it is the most odd coincidence I can recall.
One lunch break some years back I decided to walk up to the branch of Fopp on Earlham Street from where I worked on the South Bank. Mainly for a browse but with half a plan to pick up a couple of Rush cd’s. Particularly a copy of Exit, Stage Left.
On my way up Covent Garden I crossed over Floral Street – just in time to see Geddy Lee (in the company of I assume his wife and family) walk across in front of me.
Well I never, I thought. Fopp didn’t have a copy of Exit, Stage Left, by the way.
Saw some ball-lightning appear over Lipson vale in Plymouth, a big shiny globe of indeterminate size (couldn’t judge how far away it actually was), watched gobsmacked as it hovered around for a few seconds, drifted across the scenery travelling what seemed to be a half mile or so at a guess, then fzzzt! vanish with no discernible sound at all. Witnessed simultaneously by my best mate Allen. We were about 12 at the time, both nerdy types, knew – or thought we did – what we’d just seen, noted the interest of the event, and got back to doing what we were doing beforehand, which was going up the park to play football with jumpers for goal-posts. Still think of it now. Never seen anything like it since, sadly.
Could have sworn, as I read this first, you best friend was, as it should have been, Alien.
(Does that help, Hubes?)
arf!
The time that the floor fell out of my car when I put the clutch down
Was it like this?
Similarly, the back wheel once fell off my Lambretta.
We went to a party in a remote farmhouse in West Wales in the late ’70s. Lots of drugs and alcohol. The house was quite a distance from the road up a very rough potholed track. As the party ended, a young guy who’d been having a bit of a bad time on whatever drugs he’d taken, blagged a lift with us in a friend’s old Triumph Vitesse which he’d put in a ditch a couple of days before.
About halfway down the track to the road the guy remarked “Oh, I’m so glad to get away from there, I feel really safe now.” Just then we hit a pothole, one of the wheels came off the car and we ground to a halt. The guy jumped out of the car and legged it down the track, crying his eyes out.
Similarly the gear lever in my Mini (one of the original yard-long gear levers) broke in half while I was going round Hyde Park Corner.
I once had the gear lever in a car, my old Saab 900, completely come adrift in my hand in Bedford one evening, when just about to drive home to Watford after work. Amusing at the time, for about 30 seconds, followed by a really long wait for the AA followed by an even longer wait for a tow home.
Quite a few years previous to that I had the clutch cable snap in my old Ford Escort on Buckingham Gate SW1, right outside the gates of Wellington Barracks, where the Foot Guards for Buck House are based. This was at the height of the IRA’s mainland bombing campaign and within seconds of coming to rest, two armed soldiers came to check me out. They called for a tow truck which arrived within minutes to move me a couple of streets away. Then I had to wait well over an hour for the AA.
Trudging around the South Bank in London one cold evening at the age of 14/15 with three school friends. These were days when you had no money and nowhere to go. The Festival Hall was one of many interesting/warm places to hang around in. On the side of the building where there is a bust of Nelson Mandela – there is a small ledge and from this you can see the road beneath. The four of us decided to peer over and could see a big crowd – a commotion, if you will.
Seconds later, in full view and less than 20 feet away from us (vertically) a shiny car silently arrives and very quickly Charles and Diana step from the car, pause for a million flashbulbs and disappear from view. The angle of our perspective was such that it was like the thing was planned just for us. We only saw them – no one else – and when things returned to the drizzly grey cold evening less than a minute later, it all felt quite weird and yes, magical.
Oftimes I bethink me to write an ode inspired by “On Looking Into Chapman’s Homer”. In my case it would be called “On Looking Into Pages 37-43 of the 1988 Fiesta Summer Special featuring Sizzling Sally of Sydenham”
I would think that by now pages 37-43 would one very thick page?
I am of course referring to the poor quality of paper used by glossy magazines in the old days.
In the 80’s I travelled to New Guinea and then out to the remote Trobriand Islands in Milne Bay.
I heard there were some carvings to be bought in a village. I walked alone for a couple of hours and found the village. I bought a few of the wonderful bowls shaped as sea turtles. Near to the village was a lagoon. It was the most beautiful setting. Palm trees, white sand protected water with waves breaking on the reef protecting the lagoon. Fortunately i had brought some simple swimming goggles with me and heavens to betsy it was the most incredible sight. The most glorious coloured coral and jam packed with tropical fish seeking refuge from the surf nearby. It was literally like swimming in a crowded fish tank. And it was just me there.
This is a fantastic thread, even if it fails to reach hamper status.
I have seen a brown owl attempt to catch a bat in mid flight. It missed.
I once sat so still that shrews ran over my feet.
I once spent an afternoon in the Tate with Joseph Beuys for company.
I have been indecently and decently loved.
I have met a man who looked more like Eric Cantona than Eric Cantona does.
I have tickled a trout and fisted Sooty.
All these moments will be lost in time …
An akela would never have missed that bat.
But have you ever been to me?
I think you’re “in” here, Pencil!
It’s the pheromones doncha know.
I was in Africa ( I’m really Ernest Hemingway reincarnated) in Kenya to be precise, Masi Mara game park to be more precise.
This whopping herd of buffaloes trundled past when, unnoticed by us, or the buffaloes, it would seem, a pride of lions appeared. They attacked and dragged down a young un from the rear of the herd. Larger buffaloes challenged the lions and encircled the injured one. The lions circled the circle of buffaloes while we sat on the top of a landrover about 60 metres away. The lions would stalk forward, the buffaloes would dip their heads and charge, the lions would recede….After a while the buffaloes helped to lift the injured one back onto its legs using their horns. Unsteadily, the young buffalo was steered into the heart of the herd, clamped in tight for security and support. Slowly they moved off while the pride of lions stared dolefully rueing their thwarted opportunity.
Magical
One of my indelible childhood memories is watching the Apollo 11 mission. The current plethora of celebratory programmes brings back the same sense of wonder and awe at this epochal event, and a huge emotional punch from imagining how those men felt before, during and after.
I am doing my bit to help you get to your hamper, Hubert.
I have just remembered another one. When my oldest children were very young (a toddler and a baby) we took a trip up 90 Mile Beach at the very northern tip of the NZ North Island. It’s a very, very long beach that also doubles up as a road at low tide. Inevitably, it isn’t 90 miles long (48 I think). Parallel to this is the Ahipara forest. This is very orderly (evenly-spaced tall trees and lots of tracks for walking etc).
We had a packed lunch in the shade of the forest – rays of sunlight piercing the canopy and shafts of sunlight lighting the forest floor like Mulder and Scully’s torches do when they enter a creepy warehouse basement.
I remember being irritated – which is a very common state of mind when you have very young nippers – due to sleep deprivation and your partner not being psychic enough to anticipate every possible situation. Just as I was about to blubber out an inarticulate rant about sandwiches or something – when three horses silently appeared about 50 feet away. The middle one was pure white, a long flowing mane and much larger than the other two. We stood in an awestruck way for a few seconds as they looked at us and we looked at them. It was such a magical scene, wth the shafts of sunlight and the forest – I was almost expecting the white horse to speak.
Soon enough, they correctly deduced that we were pretty boring and trotted off. We saw them and several more that day because the horses are protected and are allowed to roam free in the forest. But that first sighting was quite a moment.
So the mushies were good then BC?
I *thought* the sandwiches tasted funny…
It happened in Edinburgh in the 1990’s. February 22nd 1997 to be exact.
I was attending a rehearsal at a venue in the Royal Mile and had taken a quick coffee break. Waiting for my chai latte with cinnamon sprinkle at a deserted outside table I was vaguely aware of an approaching limo, which happened to stop immediately to my left hand side.
As I looked up I saw that, in the back, alone and looking slightly forlorn was, would you believe, HM The Judge Roy Bean herself.
Separated by triple glazed glass but nevertheless a foot or so apart, our eyes met and she smiled, or grimaced; (with Her Maj it’s hard to tell the difference).
A brief second later the car moved on and she was gone.
In the words of A Lady Sweet and Kind from Thomas Ford’s Music of Sundry Kinds, ‘I did but see her passing by and yet…’
No, not really because that wasn’t the magic moment.
It did however occur the very same day, later that evening, back in Glasgow.
In a pub near the Pavilion Theatre, the home of pantomime, I was quietly imbibing when I saw, on the other side of the room, none other than …. Janette Tough, aka Wee Jimmy Krankie.
Like my experience with HM earlier that day, Janette and I locked eyes, a lot longer in length this time and I can confirm that she gave me a look which can only be described as ‘come hither’, with the emphasis on the first word.
Truly Magical.
Sadly, a look is all it was. Some years later, the fact that both The Krankies were enthusiastic swingers became public knowledge, something I was unaware of the time and, to be honest maybe that’s just as well.
(I might have ended up with Big Ian, wee Jimmy’s ‘daddy’.)
Guess you would have found out how big Ian was.
I was about to turn 17 when we met, she had just turned 18. We were together for 6 weeks and then she left to work at Butlins for the summer. You could probably guess that she met someone else [an older bloke – I know, what are the odds] and via a spell living in London they ended up on the Isle Of Wight as part of a theatre group doing a tour of the island. Eighteen months after she left, and he, having turned out to be a serial cheat, was kicked to the curb we found ourselves on top of the bus heading into Liverpool for a night out. We had rekindled the friendship, but nothing else had developed, when she leant toward me and whispered in my ear ‘do you like pink lipstick?’ I smiled and said, yes and then she kissed me.
“Father Father Father” the voice scratched at my eardrum, I looked down and saw my three children staring up at me like sparrows i’ the nest. My children’s wide-open-eyes stared up at me imploringly like wide-open-eyed children.
The voice was Hubert jr elected spokesman as he was the eldest. “ But father do the Afterword hate us so much that they would not let us get a hamper by not posting enough to your thread?”
“It would appear so” I replied. The triplets Hubert jr, Humbert and Pubert.
“But father what will become of us if we cannot feed ourselves from the hamper? Our bellies are empty, we have not fed since we shared that last raw poptato”
I smiled at his misnaming but what could I do, I had promised them the hamper and since my film location had fallen short by three “That’s one for each of us” sputtered Pubert. I had hoped that the magical thread may have paid dividends but als this too had fallen at the hurdle.
“ My children” quoth I “ there may be an opening at Mr Abeneezer Scrunge’s factory fashioning false teeth for goats, one of you may have to go up chimneys.”
“Still hopefully the hamper may be forthcoming if we can count on the good blessings of the Afterword postees”
They shall not starve, for Nigel will be along in November with turnips galore for all.
Ah, Turnips Galore.
Three more from her in November.
The little known sequel to the 1949 Ealing Comedy
Vegetables in Scotland? The humanity!
Tis indeed disappointing Hubert but moi, I’m all outta magic.
I’ll send the boys some scraps from my first and only. Handily I have left the poptatoes to last, they tending to repeat on me.
many thanks for the help all, we managed to find some scraps down the back of the sofa which has kept the children going.
Humbert was particularly taken with squeezer’s tale of shrews running over his feet as he said ” A rat ran over my foot last night daddy, will I catch something?”
Have some magic Junior, we all need some in these trying times.
Just need to cast the right spell..
Having a whole room of maybe 50 people, many of them strangers, but they know how to sing, harmonising with you on one of your favourite songs. Dearly departed Bill Caddick’s Songs of Praise at Chester Folk Festival 2017.