Are You Coming out Today?: Go On, It’S a Lovely Day!

Copyright © 2011 by Darrell Weston.

Library of Congress Control Number:       2011905504

ISBN:         Hardcover                               978-1-4628-5356-4

                   Softcover                                 978-1-4628-5355-7

                   Ebook                                      978-1-4628-5357-1

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the copyright owner.

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Contents

INTRODUCTION

CHAPTER 1: So what is he on about?

CHAPTER 2: Games

CHAPTER 3: Television

CHAPTER 4: Films & Music

CHAPTER 5: Computers and the Internet

CHAPTER 6: Bases, Dens, Pokeys, Hideys

CHAPTER 7: Toys and Bike rides

CHAPTER 8: Communication

CHAPTER 9: Gadgets

CHAPTER 10: Trends and all the latest fads!

CHAPTER 11: Childhood memories & Useful tips

CHAPTER 12: Conclusion and some final thoughts.

EPILOGUE

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

PHOTO CREDITS

For Max, Baden, Libby, Beckford, Dylan, Brendon, Bethany, Tilly, Ford, Poppy and all the other little people in my life. You have brought tears of joy and provided us ‘old uns’ with lovely memories.

Keep playing and never grow up!

X

INTRODUCTION

My, how times have changed.

That was what I found myself saying to my little brother. This saying came from the fact we were discussing memory card sizes. Allow me to explain.

Max, my little brother recently gained a second hand mobile phone from myself. This particular phone has a slot in the side for a memory card. I do believe the term I am looking for is ‘expandable memory’.

Max and my mum soon paid a visit to our town centre to get a memory card. They entered a camera shop and a sales assistant, offering his services, approached my mother. Mum proceeded to tell the sales rep that she was after a memory card. The sales assistant then asked how big the memory card needed to be. To my little brothers horror, my mum then showed the sales rep the actual size of the card with her fingers, in the manner accustomed to fishermen telling each other how big the last catch was.

Now to us, the older generation the size as in area would make sense. Why should it not?

Hello there, I am after a memory card about an inch square to go in my new digital camera I have recently purchased from your fine boutique

Where as we should be saying;

Hello there, I am after a 2 gigabyte, micro SD expandable memory card for my new Kodak digital camera. I would also like an additional 512 megabyte card as well. I plan to record video on the 2 gigabyte card and store photos on the 512 megabyte card. I have looked on your website and it has told me that they are out of stock, so I thought I would try in store

Make sense? I do hope so.

It would appear that the world around has changed. Not a lot though. Has it changed for the better or for worse?

The purpose of the above scenario and this book is to try and explain to the younger generation that a lot of what they seem to take for granted was a hell of a lot different for the older generation. I say older generation as I am approaching the big 30 soon. But there may even be some gadgets or gizmos that I took for granted when I was a young boy, so this may be a good journey into the past, present & future for both of us.

Read the book and see what you think?

Do the children of today really on modern technology to have fun, or was it the same for the older generations, when we were children? Did we depend on the latest technology of the time?

That reminds me, if you do get puzzled by some of the toys, gadgetry in this book and other stuff that will probably confuse you, you can always look them up on the Internet!

CHAPTER 1

So what is he on about?

Right then, where do I start? We will begin our journey by making a list on all the occurrences, events, new gadgets, etc that have changed since my time as a wee boy. These particular items, which shaped my youth, will be explored more later on.

So here we go, a list for you:

• Music, Films & TV

• Computers & the Internet

• Bases

• Toys & Bikes

• The general way of life.

• Gadgets

• Communication

• Childhood memories

A few to get us started, I know. I may even add to this list as I go along. The above to me reminds me of what so much of us take for granted.

When I was a little boy, life was so simple. I know what you are thinking, everyone says that. Well everyone is correct. It was so easy. No job, no money worries. The sheer thought of being with a girl sent shivers down the spine, these shivers came from the thought of getting the lurgies from them.

Have I spelt that right? Just to give you an idea on what the lurgies are, the Americans call them cooties. Having a girl as a friend was also opening you up to the classic playground chants:

‘Darrell’s got a girlfriend!’

‘Darrell and Kerry up a tree, K.I.S.S.I.N.G.’ (I have no idea who Kerry was!)

‘Now we know Darrell!’

Also the letters was passed around the school & went something along the lines of:

Will you go out with me? Tick box for yes or no.

Kerry says you’re dumped/chucked.

Kerry says she fancies you.

Looking back, I never did understand what dumped/chucked actually meant.

A good analogy of this would be said girl chucking/dumping you from a cliff top?

Come to think of it what the hell did going out with someone mean? Did it mean going out to the park together or just a generic term for the act of walking around the playground at lunchtime holding hands and telling everyone that you were going out together?

This whole going out term was pretty confusing, if you fancied a girl and finally got the bottle to write her a questionnaire on whether or not she would go out with you, she would tick the box marked no and the write in the comments box that she was already going out with the new kid as he has a Sega Megadrive. Then this would now turn into a game of wits as you had to make sure you asked said girl if she would go out with you, when she stops going out with the new kid. You also had to get your timing spot on otherwise some other boy would ask her. Or if you were lucky, she may even go out with you at the same time, so now it would be a boy girl boy combination all holding hands, walking around the playground telling people you are going out together.

Then in about twenty years time you spot her in the town centre, make eye contact as if to say I remember you from somewhere, but cannot quite remember where. Then you remember, didn’t I used to walk around holding your hand at school? You go red and then you cannot think for the life of you what the fuss was about. Complete and utter madness, but I am glad I was part of that madness. The crazy thing is I remember those days like they were yesterday.

The freedom associated with being a little boy was phenomenal. Bike rides were planned the day before, all manner of little details planned and taken into account.

The same could be said for inter-estate football games, which normally took place on the local school field, once we had navigated the fence and scouted the area for caretakers. Some sneaky borrowing of road cones from a building site made excellent goal posts. I would really like to say we was good boys and took them back from where we got them out of respect and general niceness.

The truth is more terrifying, if we took them home, how would we explain to our parents, where we got them from and what we was using them for? No parent would like road cones in the garden, To even mention we got them from a building site resulted in two weeks grounding, so we returned them every time. Or I would like to think that. Normally they would end up on our heads, in the bushes or on the school roof. They also made excellent megaphones. At the time the film Police Academy and its subsequent sequels were in full swing, so everyone thought they could make spot on machine gun noises. The road cones merely amplified our feeble efforts to replicate the machine gun sounds and other noises a certain character in the films made. I wonder whatever happened to him?

Life was great back then. TV only had 4 channels, BBC 1, BBC 2, and ITV & Channel 4. The subject of TV will be broached in a later chapter, but for now, I will simply say it was good. A-Team anyone? If nothing was on the telly, we would read a book or play a game, or even do some homework! Staying up late to watch a particular programme was an honour and a privilege. Me and my brothers and sisters would take it in turns to stay up, but all this depended on whether or not we were well behaved during the day.

Do the kids of today enjoy the last day of the summer holidays?

On this particular day, you always used to find a new friend or discover an ideal location to make a base/den. This always used to annoy me as you would make plans for the next day and then abruptly abandon them as school was looming.