well, for those of you unsettled by seeing worrying images, you may wish to check out the fine album by Talking Heads that the title of this post is taken from instead of looking at these pictures!
for those of you brave enough to have a look, let me take you on a trip down memory lane! sorry, i suppose i should have put these in chronological order, but i am rather tired after a rather involved weekend and thus they appear here exactly how blogger decided to upload them!
first up, Christmas in Australia, i think 1982 but it could also have been 1981. not sure, i am sure someone in the family will correct me! i do remember it being rather strange having Christmas in summer!
aah, that was the life! Richard and i happily playing the greatest ever video game machine, the Atari 2600, whilst Dad gets busy making my ace Millennium Falcon for me! how James would have loved that one! note too the state of the art VHS machine on top of the big sized TV; having 3 (three!) videos back then was to be considered to be having a rather extensive library!
from the same Christmas is a picture Richard rather likes of him with an ace new bmx bike!
i rather like how all he felt he needed to go off riding was a pair of very 80's shorts and some gloves!
next up is Uncle Colin from his school days, heading home to the old School House!
he looks like a bit of a lad, as it were, in this picture, doesn't he? erm, Andrew and Christopher, if you are reading, Colin was always, always, always a very well behaved, modest and polite young man right throughout school, and of course you should follow suit! no doubt Colin has "Cliff Richard" written in big letters on that school bag!
back to Richard, and here we are at Scotta House farm celebrating his 3rd birthday!
on the left is the unmistakable baby Elizabeth sat on the knee of her Mummy, our dearly loved Aunt Susan. i suspect Susan was just coming to terms with her "liking" of Slade being a full blown addiction; a rather healthy one which prevails to today. to the right is my dear Mum making sure that baby Gillian doesn't fall over, and it looks like i am going to have a go at blowing the candles out for Richard whilst he is busy staring and smiling somewhere other than at the camera!
taking a leap forward, and here is a picture of me that i can say with certainty was taken on May 16 1990. it was our Dad's 40th birthday party. i was given the task of barman, which i did wearing my Alex out of A Clockwork Orange bowler hat from an earlier fancy dress party. whilst it was my job to serve drinks, as you can see Richard appeared to have taken on the task of drinking that which i served!
there's not a great deal of pics featuring me in the 90's for some reason. i do not recall, for a start, taking any for the three years i lived down in Cape Town. and we were far too busy studying / drinking to take any at college or University. ho hum!
back to the great 1980's, and here's me and Dad bombing down a waterslide somewhere in Portugal!
i think we were in Portugal in 1987, i must confess i do not recall the exact year. i do remember going to the cinema to see The Karate Kid Part II about four times whilst there, if that narrows the date down? i rather like the approach the water slide place took to safety - there's no way that parks these days would let two people go down at the same time, and i do fondly recall overtaking a lady on one of the slides!
now then, here's possibly the greatest picture ever take of me. it is, at the least, in the top ten!
no idea where or when this was. it looks like an airport going on the tell tale orange-yellow sign in the background, but whether it's too or from Malta or Portugal i couldn't say! i would hazard a guess at 85, and i was clearly dressed, set and ready to go if Michael Mann decided that Don Johnson wasn't doing the business in Miami Vice and felt that i could make the show better!
this one is easy enough to place - Oxford, 1986. we watched a certain event being held in Mexico on a black and white tv on the canal barrage (boat?), and i picked up Madonna's True Blue album - on fancy, la-dee-daah cassette - at one of the stops as we navigated the canals.
here you can see me and Richard opening up one of the many locks, lochs, waterways, keys, keyes or whatever the correct term may be for getting the boat from one part of the canal to another! i do recall this holiday being tremendous fun. i remember Mum kept a "captain's log" type journal on the holiday, i wonder whereabouts it is?
backwards in time, but forwards to Rhyl, Wales! erm, "between 78 - 80" would be the best answer i can give you as to when this pic is from. that estimate is based partly on Gillian being in the picture, but mostly on the ace Star Wars shirts we were wearing!
the majority of memories prior to us moving to Australia in 1981 are sketchy at best. i don't think it's Australia's fault, and i certainly don't have any bad memories of Rhyl! as it was by the coast, i shall wager there was an arcade there somewhere that Richard and your humble narrator wished to go and play at all the time!
now, here's an absolute gem of a picture of Richard, Gillian and me!
looking at Gillian, i would have to guess that this is mid-to-late 1977, possibly around the time that The King went into his rather extensive time of hiding. is it me, or does Richard have something of a cheeky Rod Stewart look in this picture?
now then, for years i have believed that the below picture was of me in Spain in 1974. i do remember my Dad telling me that it was not in Spain, but i do not recall exactly where he said it was taken! i do hope that i have remembered that it is indeed me, it doesn't really look like Richard!
no matter when or where the picture was taken, you have to admit i looked rather dapper in that gown and improvised hat!
now then, Dad does get rather quizzical when i do a picture update and he doesn't feature as much as he could in it. well, then, as the final picture, let me hand you over to a very class picture of my Dad at his stylish best!
it is little wonder that my Dad often gains more respect and admiration amongst my friends than i do if he can look as cool as this! my good friend John "Payney" Payne recently commented that he looks like he should have been managing the king of bands Cream in this picture. i disagree - he looks like he should have been in Cream!!
the pic is taken in the courtyard of Scotta House Farm, and that car probably took my Dad, my Mum and various chums to go and see the likes of the Stones, Hendrix, The Who, Cream and just about any other band from the 60's you can name. the only band my Dad said he never saw that he wished he had was The Beatles; that pretty much tells you he saw many of the great groups around in the days when music still mattered!
right then, i think that will do for now! i have a few more pics here that i might add at a later stage, and Mum & Dad have thousands more that i hope to get the chance to scan and preserve eventually!!!
hope you have had as much fun with these pics as i have!!!!
be excellent to each other!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
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