just a bit more of that there sentimental hygiene stuff in this post, look you see. it is tempting to say that here will be "photos from the past", but there is no such thing as ones (photos) from the future. at least so far as i am aware the mysteries of time travel have not permitted them to exist yet. anyway, moving on, and i shall try not to get too busy with the melodramatic melancholy.
these pictures are from 43 (!) years ago at the time of publication. more or less but yet not quite to the day, say three or four off in that respect. it's all at an airport which i am pretty sure is Newcastle, although it might be Teesside. as for what's going on, well, it's when my family (and i, for clarification that is likely not needed) moved back to England from fair dinkum Australia.
as far as i am aware that, as in the one sort of centrally middle in the above picture, is the plane we were on. or indeed, to be specific, in. i would imagine that this was a "domestic" flight one off of if not Heathrow then another London airport. quite the journey back then, with it being well over a day, or if you will twenty four (24) hours of flying. no, you didn't have your own tele screen thing back then either. from what i recall we didn't change planes but i can remember landing for refuelling.
whilst no personal tele thing with a range of films and what have you there was in-flight entertainment of sorts. there was one large screen (by the standards of the plane) in each section of the cabin, and basically you watched whatever they put on. no, i don't recall what films we had, but none of them felt particularly memorable. somewhat obviously they had to be purely family friendly films. to hear the film you had to use some really uncomfortable, muffled sound headphones. they also had some music selections playing on a loop, but i likely just had my walkman along with Queen and Adam Ant tapes. yes, in this instance, actual tapes.
it is entirely possible that the people walking from the plane towards the building are indeed if not me then part of the family. this would make some kind of sense in regards of why the relatives waiting took a picture here. no, it wasn't all fancy "arm tunnels" and what have you then, you walked down some steps they wheeled to the plane and walked across. i suspect "security" is a lot of why such has now changed. probably for the better, mind.
lots of things like memories have been lost with the passing of time, but all the same i can distinctly remember some of life in England prior to moving to Australia. highly doubtful that it would have occurred to my younger mind that there was a chance of never seeing England again. i really don't have any memories of being homesick as such, rather more of just a wonderful place that Australia appeared to be.
quite a lot of the family (or a lot of relatives) turned up at the airport to greet us, then. welcome us, if you like, and of course assist in getting us all where we were going to live for a start. in a pattern that one could suggest defines my life i did not have an awareness of missing them all as much as they had apparently missed me. that sounds a lot harsher than intended, but then also i have no great defence to those who(m) state i am selfish incarnate. more it being that i have never understood the idea that someone might actually wish to have me in their life, or care for me. indeed, cue the poor, poor, pitiful me music. the sense i have is more that people feel compelled, or obliged to tolerate me, or would just rather avoid the inconvenience caused by me not being there.
on taking custodianship of these pictures, scanning them and sharing with family i did (indeed) ask Dad why, exactly, after what must have been at least 30 (thirty) hours of travel across a disorientating level of time zones it was decided that we should all just hang at the airport and have a cup of tea. the answer i was given was that it "was the done thing". international travel is quite different these days, then. well yes, giving it some thought, after so many hours in planes it would make a degree of sense to just stop for a moment and have a cup of tea. not that us kids got tea.
my best guess, going on the paper cups, is that us kids got given orange squash, which i guess gets called cordial these days, rather than tea. doubtful we would have got anything as exotic as any fizzy drinks back then. things were indeed a good deal more basic, although that sounds bad when it isn't meant to for it certainly was not. yes, that is me to the left, proudly wearing a Jets jumper underneath a rather smart looking bodywarmer.
i have nothing but fond memories of those first months back in England. some of it will, undoubtedly, that i was treated as something bordering on celebrity. you didn't get all that many people moving to England back then, or at least not as far as the north. there was a curiosity factor of interest to me, which as many will state does wear off. also i found fascination, mostly in the fact that there was now a whole four (4) tv channels, and a fancy new coin in the shape of a 20p. confusion at some things, too. particularly music, for i was baffled that no one had heard of Split Enz or Mental As Anything when they were basically all one heard in Australia. still, good to find that Adam Ant was well known. football seemed to be the be all and end all of sporting interest, which took some getting used to since it was just cricket morning, noon and night in the land that was home for a while.
having grown up in all different parts of the world my main regret is not growing up in one place. whatever value there is to me (moi) is very much, i appreciate, a conclusion of how i got this far, and not for me to say if that's good or bad, better or worse. maybe that's why i have a sense of dislocated disconnection all the time, having no anchor in standing still. none of this, i suppose, and having gone to the trouble of writing it, matters. all is transient.
righty-ho, that would be more or less it, i think. yes, indeed i do have hundreds of photographs that i have scanned in, but not too sure all that many would be interesting. which, i appreciate, is me assuming that these ones even were.
be fair dinkum to each other!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
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