Meet my latest baby!

I'm not even sure this book would be termed Young Adult or Teenage because it's mainly set in 1979 which is where today's Middle Agers started out.
Anyway, if the book wasn't an E-book and had been printed on proper paper and bound and stuff, the blurb on the back would read something like this:

"Although she hasn't thought it through comprehensively, Casey Summerfield has had enough of her fiercely independent mother and her cheating boyfriend so she  decides to run away.  The one thing she hasn't factored into her plan is being knocked unconscious by a bus and waking up in her teenaged mother's bedroom in 1979.

And she's seen enough episodes of 'Life on Mars' to know that there must be a perfectly rational explanation for her being 'here' , so all she has to do is ride it out until David Bowie dressed as a clown comes to take her back to 2012.  Isn't it?"

And for 24 hours - from midnight tonight - it's FREE!So if you feel like being transported back to the days of vinyl 45's, Pink and Jackie Annuals, first-time flares and John Travolta overload, then THIS is the book for you!

(I'm such a marketing slut, me!)

Who remembers Prize bars?

Whilst researching 1979 for my latest teenage book, I found a whole host of TV ads for that era on YouTube... particularly heart-tugging in this selection is the one for WH.Smith showing all the Hi-Tech games we used to play with and the C&A tune - ah, we were so easily pleased back then, weren't we?

THE SHAME OF IT ALL…

If you’d come to our house at 8.05am on a weekday morning in the Seventies, you’d have caught me red-faced with embarrassment as you walked into our kitchen for these reasons:

1. My father would have probably been naked from his waist - up, I hasten to add - having a ‘strip-wash’ at the kitchen sink (a habit he vehemently refused to desist even though we had a perfectly adequate upstairs bathroom. He even cleaned his teeth and gargled in the same place mother washed our beans) and no amount of cajoling or blackmail ever encouraged him to leave the sink in the kitchen because these daily ablutions had been ingrained on his psyche during the war. Apparently. I personally found the whole sordid performance humiliating and disgusting and the sole reason I only had two friends in the entire world. (One of which was our dog).

2. The current month’s Page Three “lovely” would be staring out for all to see from the wall at the dining room end of the kitchen and whether it was Samantha Fox or Linda Lusardi, the utter degradation of having to sit staring at a pair of (ok, very natural and all their own work in the 70’s, I’m sure but still…) glistening bouncing beauties whilst I was shovelling down my Golden Nuggets or Ready Brek was almost too much to bear. I always tried to stand directly in line with this calendar when my friend collected me for our walk to the bus stop and I’m sure I made an entrenched path in the lino from where calendar hung to the back door as if I was fixed on a runner in my desire to leave the house before anyone noticed we had soft porn on the back wall.

3. The radio was tuned to Terry Wogan. This, in itself was a crime. In my bedroom I’d had the fun and funk and good bloody sense to be listening to either Mike Read ("Mike Read - 275 and 285")or Dave Lee Travis and to leave the fashionably funky rhythms of Debbie Harry or Elvis Costello behind and walk into the drone of Matt Monroe or Shirley Bassey was taking my humiliation too far. To then alight on the school bus humming the Floral Dance because it was the last tune played before I left the house was generally an act worthy of the worst kind of torture by the hard nuts on the back seats all the 8 miles to school.

I next listened to Radio Two when I was a new mother. When it felt like I could easily win a rosette for best in herd and couldn’t move from the sofa much less have the energy to twiddle some knobs on the radio to re-tune from Wogan and his TOGs onto something trendier, and y’know what? Not only could I not be arsed, I actually found his Irish lilt an incredibly soothing way to pass the early morning breast-feeds. In fact Sir Terry helped me relocate my sense of humour. It was still there. And I wasn’t even embarrassed to admit to it being he who’d tickled the funny bone I thought had been disembowled along with my pelvic floor muscles.

For the past two years, since my beautiful teenage daughter has been going to Upper School, I have seen the same face pulled, the same noises made and the same scowl firmly set as I turn the engine on in the car and we are met with the dulcet tones of Mr Wogan. It’s not cool, it’s deathly dull garbage and it’s definitely not staying on for longer than one syllable until she leaves the car ten minutes later.
I can only smile.
So today imagine my surprise as I drove with tears streaming down my face as Terry tells me (me, and only me – his “listener”) that he’s very sorry but we’ve run our course – he’s leaving while we still love each other and it’s not goodbye because I’ll still see him on the odd occasion and he’s very happy that we’ve been together all these years and we’ve had some laughs and he’ll always remember the time we spent together fondly, but it’s time for him to go now.
He’s been as much a part of my growing up as my left leg and I shall miss him immeasurably.

And what shall I do without the Janet and John tonic that gets me through the traffic?

God, I’ll be an absolute wreck when Brucie pops his clogs. I know I will.

...So what advice would you give to your 21 y/old self?

Having read a book recently all about a 32 y/old who bumps into her 21 year old self and DOESN'T give her any winning lottery tip-offs, I was wondering what advice I'd give my younger self at this tender and impressionable age...

1. Chuck away the Hawaiian Tropic sun oils (you idiotic pig-on-a-spit) and buy the strongest factor suncream you can find. You will worry constantly about moles and strangely enlarged freckles by the time you're thirty five.

2. Enjoy the music of Adam Ant, Boy George and Wham! but DO NOT try to emulate their style of dress and/or attempt to reproduce their make-up however many bottles of Blue Nun you have consumed. THIS is why everyone wants to befriend you, to have someone to laugh AT - not with.

3. Stop with the perms! You may feel the need to follow the sheep of the eighties and walk around looking like Best In (Poodle) Breed but if you give it six months and wait for something called a Diffuser to be invented, you'll realise you already have natural curly hair. Ta-da!
Oh, this will also help you save up enough money to do 6.

4. When you receive a letter from the nice people at Woman magazine telling you that although they enjoyed your short story it doesn't really suit their publication but that they like your style enough to meet with you and talk about future commisions, DO NOT listen to your parents who tell you you are NOT getting on a train alone because they didn't do things like this when they were your age and there's plenty of time to go "gallivanting around London when you're older" because this will never happen again. Ever. And you'll regret this for the rest of your life.

5. Find a way to get to college and start believing you can do things you truly believe and want to do - you DO NOT have to have approval from the world and his wife. There will be a magic way of finding out how well your school friends have done one day and they'll all be Doctors in Australia or Kyakking up the Himalayas and you'll have such a sore arse for kicking it so frequently.

6. Leave home. There's never a good time but do it now before the rot sets in.

7. Ask your best friend if he's Gay. And don't be all affronted that it's your fault he's 'turned out that way' just because you tried a snog and it didn't feel right. You'll still be friends at forty. Seriously!

8. Smile more. Scowl less. Life gets hairy whether you want it to or not. Give in to it. You will survive. In fact you'll do better than survive, you'll want to WRITE ABOUT IT!

9. Embrace your twenties. Love your curves. Love your freckles. Love your skin. Love the way your limbs move freely and without undue pain.

10. Oh, and if I ignore all the above, try these Lottery numbers...

Hark! I hear Yesteryear!

Oooh!!! the most thrilling thing just went past the window of the little room in which I write. 'Twas a Rag and Bone truck. Remember them? I don't think I've seen one since I was a teenager and still living with my parents. Even then I couldn't quite make out what it was they were actually yelling from the seat at the front (it used to be a horse and cart - proper Steptoe stuff back then)any more than I could make out what the guy was yelling from his cab just now. It starts off kinda "Any...any...any...any...any...
mumble...mumble...mumble...rag and bone!"
I do get the last three words - oh, and the first one, obviously...Only what they had on the back looked a lot more like metal than rag or bone. A fridge, a metal gate, an iron bath tub and loads of pipes. Maybe they weren't saying "rag and bone" then - maybe they're metal merchants these days, are they?
Anybody?
I mean, what would anybody do with a load of proper rag and/or bone these days anyway?
Anybody?
Not that I'm all that interested what they're collecting really - I mean we all must make our way in this world by whatever means are available to us - it just threw me back to my childhood and then I remembered a couple other things that made me all wistful and nostalgic:
1. The Salvation Army singing carols at Christmas on the corner of our street that I used to watch from my bedroom window (classic Dickensian picture).
2. The Strawberry truck and the incredible smell that used to accompany it.
3. The Duster/peg man who used to have everything you could possibly need for the house - and some things you knew you'd never use but bought anyway because you felt sorry for him.
4. The Lucky Heather lady - always scarily persuasive even though a part of you wanted to snort 'scary awl hag' at her and run away (difficult action to pull off with any aplomb when it's your doorway she's standing at).
5. The lovely Binmen - when they actually didn't mind unlatching a back gate, walking down your path and lifting the bin from it's home - none of this poncing about demanding bins are left in a designated zone. And Binmen - if you're reading this (you never know...) that's why we don't give you a Chistmas tip anymore - what's to reward?!
Pah!
Ahhh..... now I feel all soporiphic and yearnful for the Good Ol' Days.
It'd be great if we could embrace our yesteryear before it ups and becomes just that - one day these will be the Good ol' days...
Well, okay, maybe just ol'.