I’m reading a good book at the moment: ‘Paperbacks From Hell’ by Grady Hendrix, a lavishly illustrated history / guide to the horror fiction of the 1970s and 1980s. My must-read list is mutating and growing like radiation-afflicted crabs, while the shots of lurid, dog-eared covers are acting like a Proustian time machine to my childhood. It is, as they say, all good. Apart from in one crucial respect.
I used to own lot of the books pictured and, reading about them now, I’d love to revisit them. But I can’t, because there was a particular house move in 1996 where I boxed up tons of novels and took them to the paperback-book recycling bin at Sainsbury’s car park in Market Harborough. It must have been a significant visit because I can still remember the time of day, dusk, and how I felt at the time, which was not all regretful or reluctant, just excited, because I had a great new girlfriend, a new job in thatthere London, and I was in virtually every respect of my life starting again.
That was 21 years ago. We married, had children and moved back into the area. And as a more settled, sensible and grounded adult I’ve found myself reconnecting with bits of my past. Not in a planned and considered way, you understand. It’s just happened by accident. Reading ‘Paperbacks From Hell’ being an just one example.
I’m digressing. The point is that every second page of the book I’m groaning at the sight of a once-treasured paperback book that ended up in Sainsbury’s car park at dusk 21 years ago: the bizarroworld mutation of Frank Spiering’s ‘Berserker’; the terrifying severed head of ‘that particular edition’ of James Herbert’s ‘The Fog’; John Halkin’s nightmare-inducing ‘Slither’; even the familiar sight of Peter Benchley’s ‘Jaws’. (Digression number two: the original hardback illustration for ‘Jaws’ looked as though a floating woman was being menaced by a giant index finger and was not at all terrifying; for the iconic image we now know, painter Roger Kastel added water, jagged teeth, the hint of more nudity and a terrible sense of dread. The image the proved so effective that Universal simply reproduced it for the movie poster.)
Worst of all, though, is seeing the cover for the novel ‘Let’s Go Play At The Adams” by Mendel W Johnson. This was a book that I’d virtually forgotten about, even though I now realise it had a profound effect on me as a reader and fledgling writer. It’s a genuinely shocking story about a group of kids who tie up and torture their babysitter, and it says something terrible and true about human behaviour. It no doubt also influenced Jack Ketchum’s ‘The Girl Next Door’ which is by some distance the most horrifying work of fiction I’ve ever read.
All this came to me in a zap when I clapped eyes on the cover for the first time in two decades this weekend, and I immediately decided to revisit ‘Let’s Go Play At The Adams”, (being weird like that), cursing myself afresh for that Sainsbury’s visit. Oh well, I thought. I can get it second-hand from Amazon, eBay etc.
Only, I can’t. Correction, I could if I were willing to spend upwards of £200 for a paperback copy. Which I’m not.
That’s my long-winded tale of woe. Getting rid off all those grungy old books, but especially ‘Let’s Go Play At The Adams”, which is now worth a small fortune. Please make mer feel better by sharing your ‘what was I thinking’ moments here.
One word… Slugs.
You threw all your slugs away?
Put salt on them its more fun and in keeping with your horror stories.
Shaun Hutson.
I’ve just been to his website… he’s a bit of a wanker, so don’t bother.
Not what I threw away – more what my mum threw away (Well I have to blame someone!).
From the age of about 12 to 14 I was an avid collector of Marvel comics and built up quite a sizeable collection. I know one particular comic in that collection fetches about £200 these days.
Something that is my own fault though – I threw out or lost a Victoria Williams cd called Swing the Statue that I thought was okay nothing more nothing less yet now that I don’t have it anymore it has suddenly taken on a mythical stature that it never had when I owned it.
Oh and all the Penguin paperbacks with the orange spines – particularly the V.S.Naipaul ones that I enjoyed reading so much.
Similarly, my Mum threw away my collection of NMEs from 1980-1987 (the year I left home).
Now I accept that I probably wouldn’t look at them again, and my idea of cutting out and keeping the best covers, interviews and book reviews etc. would probably never happen, but I might have done.
All those great covers – Clare Grogan, The Jam, Weller, The Smiths; great record reviews by Danny Baker etc…I’m sure they’re all online somewhere*. I have never looked though so perhaps I don’t regret the flinging out as much as I like to think.
I sold lots of vinyl during hard times as a student. Again I wonder if I really regret it or it’s just because I want to show off (and also enjoy the aesthetical pleasure of vinyl).
*They are.
I had a similar collection of Sounds from around 1973 to 1978. They went in a skip when my parents moved house. I planned to go through them for clippings too. Ah well.
Also flogged my entire and fairly large LP collection whilst broke in the mid-80s.
I would love to have that whole lot to flip through every once in a while.
My mum’s the villain of my piece too. When I was about 10 my dad produced a box of books that had been his when he was a kid, and which he’d retrieved from his cousin.
Being a book sort I dived right on – there were lots of William books, a couple of those P G Wodehouse school stories, and lots of tales of derring-do and biffing the Hun. The jewel though was a Chums annual, from, I’d guess some time in the late 20s. The Chums paper was a sub-Boys Own Paper, with lots of stories, useful things to make and do, pictures of the likes of Wallace Beery and Tom Mix, etc. The absolute best thing was a serial that started on p.1 (the annual was a year’s worth bound up together) featuring a huge Zeppelin with a ghost crew of skeletons dressed in German uniforms and coal scuttle helmets. This Zeppelin floated around that mysterious bit of ocean off the top of Russia doing bad things, presumably – I can no longer remember what the story was, or who the no doubt plucky and daring hero was. I just remember the incredibly detailed drawings and the air of unease and menace they generated. I loved that story, and read it over and over again.
Guess what? My mum gave it to the jumble when my back was turned. She was quite taken aback by my rage, and promised to pay for another one if I could find it. But I never have, though I can never let a copy go by without looking in hope. She’ll die soon (she’s 97, so it’s a fair bet) so I won’t hold her to our agreement.
My mother has kept all sorts of stuff – including my brother’s duffel coat from when he was about 10 – but managed to throw out a couple of cardboard tubes, hidden behind a wardrobe, containing my 1970/80s gig poster collection. Several Lynyrd Skynyrd/Blue Oyster Cult official tour posters along with 30/40 from my days on “ents” at Sheffield Poly – some punk stuff and a couple of large Japan posters from when they played to an audience of about 30 disinterested folks when promoting their second album. Admittedly, a while ago now, suppose I ought to forgive her.
Steve, the upside for you is that you now have a quest.
I’ve had a number of these over the years and it is either to recover something I once had but has gone. For years I searched for a copy of James Ellroy’s White Jazz – not that there was any difficulty buying one in a bookshop, but I wanted the original edition with the Dymo label title; I had lent it out and the person I lent it to lost it. I needed it go go with the other three parts of the quartet. Once I got a copy, I felt quite let down.
Other quests have included The second Manassas album Down The Road and Van’s St. Dominic’s Preview.
Unfortunately I don’t have a current quest.
I will say, given that it is a Victoria Williams’ album, it will be exceptionally difficult to find, but it should take you years.
I chucked out a complete set of Graham Greene novels in Penguin – the ones with the orange spines and covers by Paul Hogarth. Big mistake, as I ended up buying most of them again in order to re-read them.
I’ve never regretted dumping/donating/recycling stuff, but I’ve definitely regretted lending things out, because most people are crap at giving them back.
Amazing how many people mistake ‘lend’ for ‘give’.
I had copies of Larkin reading his poems on cassette tape that I lent to a boy I wanted to impress. Never saw them again, and never saw a lot of him afterwards, either. Tsk.
This may not make up for it, but there’s lots of Larkin reading his poems on YouTube. Search on ‘read by Philip Larkin’. You could probably find someone to put them back on a cassette for you…
Larkin had such a brilliantly Eeyorish voice. Not an obvious choice, so if he wasn’t impressed you probably had a lucky escape.
I think he was impressed by the tapes, just not by me*. 🙂
Thanks Mike. Would then need a cassette player (given away).
*He’s now an English teacher in a top private school in London so maybe I was some small influence. Although I hope the toad work is squatting on his life.
You can strip the audio from a YouTube file into an MP3 for burning/ downloading onto an IPod using this useful little app : http://www.listentoyoutube.com/
Thanks for heads up about the larkin on YouTube.
Personally, i don’t like getting rid of anything.
I use Wondershare AllMyMusic, which does the same job.
Indeed they do. See my reply to SteveT, above.
£200 for Let’s Go Play at the Adams’? It was a constant presence in the bargain book bins of Woolies in the early 80s, at least that’s where I got my copy. Perhaps I read it at an impressionable age, but I remember it as being seriously nasty. The rape of the babysitter disturbed me much more than anything involving giant mutant animals chewing through entire populations.
When we first got a record player Dad also bought a set of Beatles EPs. When I got a bit older I nailed my colours to the Stones mast and this was formalised by using the EPs as frisbees.
I shouldn’t have done that.
As a three-year old I apparently used a copy of Sargeant Pepper to slide across the polished wood floor in the living room. Again, shouldn’t have done that. Though in a slight karma moment I crawled under my dads stereo system (in an enormous wooden cabinet/table) and got an electrical shock.
I used to buy Marvel Comics between 1966 and 1970. I had a huge box full that I sold to the market for a fiver to help buy a new bike. Included Fantastic Four, Doctor Strange, Agent Of Shield, Silver Surfer and Spider Man in complete sequences over those years.
I must have been mad.
In the early sixties I started collecting pre-Munich Man Utd programmes. When I went off to London towards the end of that decade I had over a hundred. The most I paid was a tenner for the programme for the match that was cancelled after the disaster.
When I next returned home I discovered Mum had “lent” all my collection to wee Tommy Mearns down the road. Wee Tommy still had a few programmes left covered in jam or felt-tip crayon but most had gone in the 5th November bonfire. I believe I was dragged screaming from Number 132 and heavy swearing was no doubt involved.
Gradually the pain receded until twenty years later it all got worse, much worse. I read that somebody had found two copies of that cancelled game’s programme and was hoping to get up to £10,000 for the pair. I have steadfastly refused to investigate any further, no idea if that guy got his ten grand or not. The subsequent disappearance of Tommy Mearns remains a mystery to this day.
Some 25 years ago, plagued by depression, drug problems – self medication is not to be recommended as a long term strategy – and abject poverty, I said that the stereo system I couldn’t afford to have fixed and my couple of hundred vinlys – all of which had been stored for years in my Dad’sa attic – should go to a charity shop.
I’ve replaced some of the better-loved vinlys with CDs, but still…
I lent my mate my 12″ of Charlie Sez by Original Concept in about 1993…. I’ll never see it again. My floorboards are grateful but I am not.
I’m glad I threw away all my cassettes, but I wish I had kept a list, as I still miss some of the music.
I have a memory of a taped festive fifty with a version of Dr Mabuse by Propaganda that none of the many, many mixes available quite matches up to my memory of.
By 1982 I’d amassed a fine collection of singles from ’77 onwards – which as everyone knows is the greatest era of British guitar-based pop music in the history of everything ever. Lots of picture sleeves and coloured vinyl, limited edition and 12″ versions. Jam, Clash, Two Tone, Gary Numan, X-Ray Specs on dayglo… Then I split up with my girlfriend and some of the best ones got lost in the fallout. Brokenhearted (over the girl, not the lost records, not entirely anyway) I decided I’d go and travel across Africa for the rest of my life and grandly told my brother and sister they could have what was left of my collection.
I hadn’t expected them to be quite so enthusiastic about it. By the time I got back a year later all I had left was Goodnight Tonight by Wings and Love is In the Air by John Paul Young – the only things my siblings couldn’t bring themselves to pinch. Over the years I’ve clawed a few back each time I visit either of them, although my nephew has got wise to this now and won’t let me get my hands on my prized 12″ Sunday Girl (French Version) by Blondie or the legendary Police first six singles collection (blue vinyl and presentation case). Ah the folly of youth.
My sister had that Blondie 12″. On reflection that might have been the first 12″ single anyone in our family bought.
Having owned – and largely sold – many singles from that period I can certainly say that they sounded particularly fantastic. Things like I Don’t Want To Go To Chelsea and Rat Race seemed to have a tremendous punch that I haven’t heard in other formats.
If it’s really paining you Chiz, I’ve a copy you’re welcome to. (Blondie not the Police.)
Froide comme glace mais aussi savoureuse
You’re very kind but too many… fond memories…
I have that Police set – is it worth a lot then?
I am actually so sad that I could instantly write a list of all the books, records, CDs and DVDs that I have “lent” to people but have never had returned. This goes back to the early 70s.
I never actually ask for them back when I see that person though. It just seems too petty.
I got rid of a lot of vinyl in the early 90s. I must have mentioned this to my friend Malcolm once. Anyway, he turned up on the doorstep one day last year and insisted on giving me back my first pressing of Marquee Moon. I had no memory of giving it to him – no doubt I was completely rat arsed at the time. Turns out to be wonderful sounding and much superior to the CD that I assumed was better. Thanks Malc.
I have been pondering this and now have the answer.
A pair of Clash ‘Rising Sun’ trousers bought from the back of NME in the early 80s. Wore them to death aged 16/18
Either thrown out by my parents or lost in a uni/post uni move. I can’t even find a photo online to prove to myself they existed. They are my Proustian madelaine. If they even existed. Did I dream them? Damn you @leicester-bangs
I would not of course be able to wear them now, but would frame them.
I had the garish US ‘soccer’ team’s replica home jersey from the 1994 World Cup. In fact, I had many vintage football kits, but when I went off to Uni, my mum bagged them all up and stuck them in the garage. I was told they were ‘in storage’ (you can feel my rage brewing), but, alas, they were never seen again.
I’ve seen the US jersey online for £300, and it was far from the rarest shirt I had.
Mixed feelings reading this thread. You see all my family have been hoarders and now I’m the only one left I just cannot decide what to throw away, give away or keep. I’ve got football programmes from every match I’ve ever been to, plus the first 200 or so “Q” magazines, every issue of “The Word” and “Mojo”, books from every stage of my life (though I don’t think “Let’s go play at the Adams'” features more’s the pity), more CDs and vinyl than I can ever listen to plus stuff from various deceased members of my family. I’m scared to get rid of stuff in case it should be valuable but i just haven’t got the room. I know I should get rid of it as I shall probably never look at this stuff again but . . .
I gave away a copy of Sound Affects LP signed by Paul Weller to a local charity shop,
It had been gifted to me by a friend but I misunderstood the autograph on the front – I thought it was a mock up that he had done, I misheard him when he gave it to me. I was clearing out some duplicates of my collection and that was one of them – big mistake, I was putting up photos of my records on facebook and he asked me to put up the signed Sound Affects. My heart dropped when he told me it was genuine, it still hurts me to think about it.
Also regret getting rid/dissecting my NMEs from 80s, especially 1984,
I picked up a collection a few years back v cheap, mostly complete of 1977-83, great for browsing/photos/ads but hard to read without cringing
don’t know what I’m going to do with them though, will have to move them on at some point, can’t justify all this STUFF
A pretty near complete collection of Love and Rockets by Los Bros Hernandez that I left at my ex-s when we split up (or to be more honest when I told her I’d met someone else. It was all very amicable actually as we had agreed 6 months before that we were going to split up sometime – but I still didn’t think it was appropriate to ask if I could have my comics back…). Her now husband is actually a comics fan, so I hope he appreciates them even if she doesn’t.
After a rather acrimonious divorce I went to live with my father.
As he was a rather busy chef, to keep me occupied during long school holidays he took out weekly subscriptions to a couple of comics.
I was a avid reader of 2000AD and BATTLE picture weekly for a couple of years.
This lead to the Pan Horror paperbacks which I scoured secondhand bookshops to collect.
Stored safely in boxes in his loft, I never recovered them after his death.
His home was quickly sold by his Bitch second wife…the reason i left and never returned.
A few years back I picked up a reasonable collection of early Battles, reading them took me straight back to dad’s house….cold winter night and REAL coal fire in my bedroom…..for a wide eyed 12 year old the comics sure are violent…..my fave strip, Panzer G Man….not a stereotypical Nazi.
I have also managed to recollect most of the Pan Horror paperbacks, these used to be all over the place but are pretty rare these days.
I’ve noticed the scarcity of the Pan horror books. When I was a kid I always bought one for long summer holiday car journeys, and bought them for pennies from second hand shops. Whenever I’ve bothered for them looking recently I’ve come away empty handed.
Grotty horror novels are in fairly short supply secondhand, weirdly enough.
You were divorced at 12, Fish, jings, that’s something.
(Sorry….)
I think I need to get Paperbacks From Hell. I remember Let’s Play At The Adams’ from my own tender years, and and I bet there’s a load of other stuff in there that will trigger some memories. Grady Hendrix is also a decent horror novelist in his own right – My Best Friend’s Exorcism is a good read.
I must investigate his fiction. I thought that Horrorstor seemed like a good and funny idea for a horror spoof, and a step on from the classics mash-up craze of a few years ago. Certainly PFH is a great read, although it’s the cover images that really lift it.
One of the authors he particularly recommends is Ken Greenhall, whose novels are being reissued by Valancourt.
I can blame my Mum too, RIP and bless her heart. My beloved Corgi toys (light blue Citroen, dark blue and white Holden station wagon etc) and Matchbox toys, and worst of all Hornby train set all got taken to the school jumble sale. Mum was quite an obsessive tidy organiser – she was a librarian after all, everything had to be ordered and in its place. But no idea obviously about sentimental value, or worse, asking ME!
I also had a bunch of NMEs from 71-72, but I gave them to a music writer who’s a good mate so if I ever wanted to revisit them I could. Of course I probably won’t, but if I’d thrown them out or given them to someone I didn’t know then I’d probably be regretting it now.
I’m an avid collector of all kinds of stuff. Football programmes, music, Batman comics and toys, James Bond trading cards, all sorts. So why did I get shut of my vinyl record collection in the early 90s??? Well, I know the answer really. It’s threefold, a mixture of having no space (I effectively lived in a room in nurses accomodation for 6 years), selling them to buy CDs and stupidity. A great deal of my record collection was the bog standard stuff that a child of the 70s/80s would have, but I also had a pretty impressive Beatles collection amongst other things. To this day I daren’t look at how much some of them fetch on eBay, but I know that I would need a lot of money to get it all back.
The other thing, which really annoys me now I have a football mad 7 year old lad is my subbuteo set. I first got it in the 70s and picked up teams and accessories over the next few years. It got good use throughout my teens and then a few years later I took it round to my girlfriend’s house around the time of the 1990 World Cup, as she had a kid brother who was into football. So I ended up buying loads of teams that were in the World Cup and we had our own little competition. In the end I had close on 40 teams and they were all round at my girlfriend’s family house in Liverpool. When me and said girlfriend moved down to Brighton I left the set up there. And then we split up! I was far, far more upset at never seeing my subbuteo set again than I was my girlfriend of 6 years.