Five Miles Out

How We Cheered For More

I first remember Formula 1 listening to the radio as James Hunt raced in Japan to try and secure the world championship from Nikki Lauda. Lauda who had suffered horrific injuries at the Hungaroring just a few months earlier refused to race due to the terrible weather conditions. Principled man Lauda.

(James Hunt having fun)

Hunt typified the era of the live fast, die young drivers where death was a constant factor on the track. His biography illustrates his mad lifestyle and his claim that “Sex – the breakfast of champions” and that was also what he liked just before a race. Lauda typified what was to come – technical drivers who worked with the teams to extract every ounce of speed from the car.

If you want to see a film about this (which of course is not a documentary) then watch Rush – it is a good film even if you do not like motor racing.

One of the misconceptions that non-fans have is that it is just about the drivers. Formula 1 has teams racing and some cars are better than others. The problem comes when periods occur when manufacturer is supremely dominant. It is true that the best teams sign the best drivers so it remains unlikely that a poor driver can win in a great car. Formula 1 really is a sport than becomes more and more enthralling the more you understand it.

Michael Schumacher shows what a great driver can do. Ferrari were in a slump when he went there off the back of his two world titles for Red Bull. It took several years to sort out the problems at his new team, but Schumacher led the Scuderia to five world titles before retiring the first time. A great driver in Formula 1 is not one that just drives fast it is one who can help the designers and engineers make the car faster. There were complaints that his dominance damaged the sport – but all sports get dominated by great performers and the thing to do is admire their greatness, you may never see brilliance like that again.

He never got the sport out of his system and had an unspectacular comeback. After all those years of danger in motor racing he had an accident on the ski slopes and has never been seen in public again. I hope that he is living the best life that he can and is happy.

(Michael Schumacher and a Ferrari)

Since he left the Scuderia there has only be one world title for the Marinello team, in 2007, won by Kimi Raikkonnen. Seb Vettel had won four titles at Red Bull but has not got any since he moved to Ferrari. His career with Ferrari has been in free fall and he leaves at the end of the season with Charles LeClerc their new hope as a lead driver.

The same criticisms are now applied to Lewis Hamilton who has won five titles for Mercedes (and the only break in that run was Nico Rosberg, also of Mercedes, winning after controversially Mercedes swapped the engineering teams between him and Hamilton). It looks like Hamilton will equal all of Schumacher’s records in 2020. He still does not get the kudos he deserves and you have to ask if colour comes into that. Hamilton is passionate about BLM and uses his fame to support the cause. People who carp about his continuing activism more than then do about the actual racism have their priorities wrong (like cricket and its links with South Africa in the 1970s and 80s – Denis Compton and a lot of the MCC disgraced themselves by proposing a return to tests against an apartheid country).

Whether or not Hamilton is the greatest ever will be one those questions that is endlessly debated. He will win the most races, but there are a lot more races today. It is safer and he drives for a dominant team. Appreciate his talent – he consistently beats his teammate in a sport where greatness is measure in tenths of seconds, or even in thousandths now. I have never seen him drive but the record of Fangio is hard to argue with as the greatest ever.

(Hamilton and the shirt that had him investigated for political statements)

Despite all I have said my favourite driver at the moment is Max Verstappen. The best wet weather driver since Jenson Button he is consistently the best driver behind the two Mercedes in a car that is not as fast as the German team’s. He has been driving since he was 16 and did have a reputation for crazy accidents. He is a joy to watch and I think he will succeed Hamilton as the leading driver.

(Where is Ayrton Senna here? I never liked Senna and always cheered on Prost or Mansell, so no Senna).

(A win for Max)

Creedence Clearwater Revival are one of the groups from the late 60s that do not seem to be remembered well. The main creative force was John Fogerty, a man who was ripped off and lost the rights to his own songs. This is my favourite of their catalogue.

Who’ll Stop the Rain?

To Reach Too High

Whether or not accountancy firms do this now I don’t know, but when I was a trainee accountant between 1987 and 1990 salary was very much linked to exam results. The final exam was Professional Exam 2 (PE2). Just four papers in three days – passing gave a 50% pay rise from £12,000 to £18,000. Every year since 1980 I had taken exams and when I took them in 1990, I wanted them to be over so badly.

There were the usual revision classes in Cambridge, so I stayed with Mum and Richard during the week days (at least I had a decent car now so there was no repeat of the problems of GCC (see post https://fivemilesout.home.blog/2020/09/23/suddenly-the-rain-came-down/ ). The revision clashed with the Italia 90 football tournament and, at first, I was gutted that I would miss most of it. The last world cup had been in Mexico, the middle of the night in the UK and the next was to be in the USA with bad kick off times.

In fact it turned out to be perfectly timed. I would get back from revision class in time to watch the afternoon game. Eat and do a couple of hours work and then watch the evening match. After spending 6 hours studying in Cambridge this actually made me relax rather than just burn out – something must have been going right as I topped the list of candidates at our revision centre in the mocks.

I thought Dragan Stojkovic was the best player there, but Lothar Matthaus was the most influential in the end. England were agonisingly close, losing on penalties to West Germany, with only a weak Argentina team to face in the final.

Dawn and I were doing the exams at The Assembly Rooms in Norwich and booked ourselves into a small hotel not far from the exam venue. Dawn drove up Monday evening, but I went in the afternoon – I wanted no chances of something going wrong with the journey. The hotel was not what we had expected – no private bathrooms (that we had paid for) and the restaurant was closed. That first night I got a Chinese takeaway, but a bland one (no stomach problems could be allowed to happen) and it was horrible. There was nothing on TV to calm my nerves – Monday nights in those days were full of crap – Come Dancing was the best of a bad lot.

The weather was boiling but the exam venue, The Assembly Rooms, did not allow drinks to be taken in. It also did not provide air conditioning. We started with the Auditing paper, which was my least favourite (no numerical content) but it was okay. Along with Gavin, from the Bury office, we had a sandwich lunch and went in for the afternoon. (Gavin hated England and moaned about everything – he was from Scotland and had only come down to study and work as the Scottish exams were even harder).

(The Assembly Rooms)

Financial Accounting in the afternoon was tough – and that was meant to be my best paper. After eating dinner at Burger King we went back to the hotel to revise.

Day two dawned even hotter. The morning was Financial Management/ Management Accounting. The general feeling was that it was a fair paper as well.

In the afternoon, all dehydrated, it was disaster time. Technically at PE2 there was no syllabus – you could be examined on anything and the examiner for the Taxation paper took that literally. There were 40 multiple choice questions and four long form questions that were the hardest I had ever seen and I had done every past paper question for years before.

One question asked you to work out a Capital Gains Tax/ Industrial Buildings Allowance loss and then asked how to use it. I got a profit; a sole trader question about changing accounting dates that would have required three hours on its own to do and two other nightmares on obscure taxes.

I realised after reading it at the start that this was a disaster, but there was one hope. The exams were standardised so that the same proportion passed each paper every year. Even though the pass mark was meant to be 55% all I had to do was try and get a mark where I was in the top 40% of candidates. I took extra time on the multiple choice and tried to harvest marks on the long form questions.

Coming out there were loads of people crying. To have that paper at the end of two days with so much riding on it was seen as evil. Unlike the joy that people had at just being done with exams for a year that had happened the last two times everyone was contemplating retakes.

I drove home with a terrible dehydration headache thoroughly fed up with it all and cursing that tax examiner.

It turned out that the examiner was sacked and that was the only paper he ever set. He had been a member of the Chartered Institute of Taxation and had set a paper more suitable for them. We were told that to get 40% of candidates to pass the Tax paper the pass mark had been lowered to 28% – not officially but that was the news that passed around. Bloody stupid way to assess people.

The Waterboys were never a band that I was big on, but this song was the background to my revision and was later used as the come down song at raves.

The Whole of the Moon

Don’t Say It’s a Crime

After our A levels ended and I was feeling a bit better (https://fivemilesout.home.blog/2020/06/18/cause-man-must-be-his-own-saviour/ ) we had a staff and student bridge tournament at school. The Bridge Club had been set up by Mr Locke and Mr Bonnar and it was not a surprise that they won, though Mr Currell and Mr Carter were only 8 International match Points behind their 102. Dave and I came fourth and were the highest student pair with 69 IMPs, though 4^th to 8^th were only separated by 8 IMPs. Neil and John were last with 48 IMPs.

A couple of days later we went to Dedham to go on the river, but it was not open for rowing. We went to St Osyth and played snooker. St Osyth was more fun to live in than Brightlingsea – if Brightlingsea had a snooker/ pool hall holidays would have been much better in the holidays. Snooker is so much harder than it looks, unless you have played it you cannot imagine. John could really play – I could rarely sink more one ball in a break.

John got a J registration Renault that week too and we went to Neil’s (he lived in Thorrington three miles up the road). Dave was out on his speedboat that day, but we really only showing off the car. We went back to St Osyth and John beat us at snooker again. The next day we met Dave and he suggested that we have a barbecue on Second Beach, getting there by speedboat. Sadly the weather was too bad so we ended up going to Walton and playing video games.

In Essex that summer we had the benefit of Radio Caroline and Radio Laser broadcasting. Pirate channels that were an alternative to Radio 1. I preferred Caroline (revived after its 1960s heyday) but Laser lasted longer. It was a summer bookended by A levels and Neil and I going to university. It was a time when there was little musical choice on the radio and it was good to have stations that played album tracks and classic rock. I never thought that they were viable as the only adverts they had was for a Canadian lottery called Lotto 649. I can’t imagine many people entered in that pre-internet age.

The music was mostly white, soft rock. Spandau Ballet were enormous that summer. The 1984 Olympics used their single Gold from their third album, which also featured the huge single True. True was a staple of teenage (and maybe adult) discos, the last song as every boy and girl tried to gran someone to dance with them. It was smooth music, produced by Swain and Jolley and I would imagine that Gary Kemp makes plenty of money each year off the royalties from True and Gold alone.

Spandau had been the first New Romantic group to have a hit with To Cut A Long Story Short, they had never played live and performed in kilts – for a couple of months at least.

They reinvented themselves as a funk band in less than a year and had success with Chant No 1 (Don’t Need This Pressure On), but the follow up was a relative flop. Then they tried to reinvent themselves as new psychedelic band with She Loved Like Diamond, but that fad never took off. They used Trevor Horn to remix Instinction from their second album, Diamond, into a far more poppy form to make a comeback.

Their reinvention as white soul boys was their biggest commercial success and their fourth album, Parade, is the best example of this. After that they had a couple more hits (including the epic Through the Barricades).

All their songs were written by bassist Gary Kemp, which made him a hell of a lot richer than the others when the band broke up. Steve Norman, Tony Hadley and John Keeble sued for co-writing credits (and royalties) and ended up having to give Gary Kemp their rights to the Spandau Ballet name in lieu of money for legal fees. The band eventually managed a comeback together.

A Spandau Ballet compilation is a great listen – not just the singles but there are lots of great album tracks like Pleasure, Nature of the Beast and Toys.

From Laser and the summer of 1984 this is a less well known track from Parade.

Revenge for Love

For groups I know well I am going to include playlist – not necessarily my favourites, enough to get an overview plus a few rare treasures.

To Cut A Long Story Short
The Freeze
Reformation
Muscle Bound
Glow
Chant No 1
She Loved Like Diamond
Instinction (Trevor Horn single mix)
Lifeline
Pleasure
True
Gold
Heaven is a Secret
Revenge For Love
Nature of the Beast
Always In the Back of My Mind
Round and Round
Through the Barricades

Who’s the cat that won’t cop out when there’s danger all about?

A lot of crap is talked about how The Sopranos revolutionised television – mainly from TV channels that show it. It is great television, but it did not change things. The major changes for American television came from a far less likely place.

Steven Bochco is different to the other TV auteurs that I like in that he comes from an earlier era, where he had to work within the confines of American network television and did not have the freedom that cable TV would come to offer. It is hard to appreciate his significance without understanding the TV environment he came from.

American television programs were meant to be able to be shown in any order so that they when they had finished and went to syndication it could just be shown randomly (I always wondered did the syndication channels not employ people who could read a running order and just went to a cupboard and picked out a random videocassette?). At the end of every episode the status quo had to be back – no matter who the star fell in love with or the trauma they went through it was back to normal. Look at Starsky & Hutch, Ironsides, Colombo, Kojak and The Six Million Dollar Man (admittedly there was a multi-part story when Jaime Sommers became The Bionic Woman, but she apparently dies at the end of it and when she was shown not be dead and had her own show she had to keep it secret from Steve Austin – it was nice to know that there was eventually A Bionic Wedding).

The other major thing was that it had to be inoffensive across the USA. There was violence, the US has a much bigger tolerance for that than the UK, but less sex, which the UK has a higher tolerance for. (In the 2000 election the least important point was that Al Gore wanted less violence and was comfortable with sex and nudity on TV and George W Bush wanted less sex and was comfortable with violence – or Gore wanted bush and Bush wanted gore).

Then along came Hill Street Blues. The first season broke all the rules – it had to be watched in that exact order. In the first season plot lines would start and run for several episodes. It had an ensemble cast that reflected a level of racial diversity unusual at the time – Hill and Renko and LaRue and Washington were black and white cop partners, shown to be great friends. Furillo was obviously Italian by heritage, Henry was Jewish and Ray Calletano was Latino.

It was set in an unnamed city in the rustbelt – Chicago seemed the most likely, though some people suggested Pittsburgh. It showed inner city gang violence and the tensions that existed between communities.

The episodes were filmed pseudo-documentary style and often just lasted a day – ending up with Furillo and Davenport – opponents all day as Police Captain and Public Defender at home together.

(Early cast)

It was not popular and modifications were made to have at least one plotline resolve in each episode, whilst maintaining several ongoing storylines. A prototype for Babylon 5 and Buffy the Vampire Slayer long before The Sopranos.

In the UK it was treated dreadfully. Channel 4 showed it at random times on random days very late at midnight. Finally they repeated it in order (after the theme tune had been a pop hit) and I got to see it. It is at least 20 years ahead of its time and stands up well now.

Bochco created other shows after this. LA Law is Hill Street with lawyers rather than cops, much less rough and urban. More palatable to the audience used to 80s Reaganism.

(LA Law)

After that came Murder One – huge at the time but overlong as network shows needed at least 22 episodes, but Bochco did a show with one story lasting 22 weeks. Another achievement. There was Doogie Howser MD and NYPD Blue, plus a host of failures. Most never seen in the UK.

I know little about Isaac Hayes – just his album Hot Buttered Soul, that he was Chef in South Park and this awesome theme tune, which is better than the film it starts.

Treat yourself – watch Hill Street Blues, it is not only an important show it is enthralling.

Theme From Shaft

Completely in Command

In September 1982 Tears for Fears released Mad World, it wasn’t the first single from their debut album but was the first successful one in the UK. Graham and I loved Tears for Fears. Mad World has been used in films and covered several times. Their first album, The Hurting, is an album around the theme of childhood trauma and abuse.

TFF had two more very successful albums in the 80s – with Everybody Wants To Rule the World and Sowing the Seeds of Love as the biggest hits from them. Their third album is the second best and The Year of the Knife is a big favourite of mine.

In the Autumn of 1982 I went to Royston for a 24 hour sponsored Dungeons and Dragons game. I think the money was being raised for a school trip for students at Meridian. I usually got lifts to Royston from family members but this time I got a bus to Colchester, then a National Express to Cambridge and then another bus to Royston.

Graham had arranged this event and the next day we started just after 9am. We played three dungeons in that time – Graham led off, then John and finally me. There were so many people with the first two we actually had two dungeon masters so we could have two strands running. By the time we got to mine several people had wimped out and we were down to John, Graham, Paul Ashby, Alan Curtis and Martin Walker.

We had a ball with John and Graham’s dungeons – good music and food as we went along. Using pre-set up characters meant there was huge scope for characters to interact, people had secrets and different missions. John had set it up so Graham hated Elves and I hated Dwarves. Despite Joanna trying to broker peace a fight broke out where I was blinded and Skids was deafened. I accidentally saw Paul’s character sheet showing that he was really an assassin I had to promise to keep quiet, which was what had set it all off. We were interrupted late at night by the police who were worried that the school had lights on and had driven across the school field. Graham tried to explain Dungeons and Dragons to them, they gave up and went off again. I guess that we sounded too geeky to be villains, shame the female players had already gone home. That was my first negative encounter with the police.

I do not know how Graham, John and Alan kept order with so many people, but it was a bloody amazing time.

I messed up my dungeon as I was in pain after jumping off a frame in the drama studio without shoes on, it was not that high but without shoes to cushion it the pain went all the way up my legs. I almost destroyed the party with a fireball, but as I was dicing the damage I realised I was being a dick and lied about the damage.

We made it through the 24 hours and went to bed after breakfast. We were playing again by 3pm, though it was the first time that Martin Walker was ever late for a D&D game. We went back into John’s unfinished dungeon with our own characters. It was less of a challenge.

This track is from The Hurting – a classic album that should be listened to as a whole.

Pale Shelter

Playlist

The Hurting
Mad World
Pale Shelter
Suffer the Children
Watch Me Bleed
Everybody Wants to Rule the World
Head Over Heels
Sowing the Seeds of Love
Advice for the Young at Heart
Year of the Knife

Hearts Torn In Every Way

There is something special about football tragedy. The deaths at Ibrox in 1971, the deaths of the Busby Babes in the 50s, but I have no direct memory of them. It is appalling that other teams use these tragedies to taunt those teams (even if one of them is Manchester United, the team I hate the most in the world).

I was at university in 1985 and we had a TV room (TV ownership became much more common at College over the three years I was there – you were meant to have your own TV licence but no one did). Apart from big groups watching Dallas, making humourous comments (and that was a place where you soon learnt you were funny or not) the main group views were films or sport events.

We had watched Everton win the Cup Winners Cup just after the terrible Bradford fire that had showed up the decaying state of many English stadia. Before Sky arrived and before its rehabilitation in at Italia 90 English football was the province of male fans and thugs. There was not big money – an exotic foreign signing came from Glasgow not Rio De Janeiro.

The Bradford stadium fire was not live on TV and no one that I knew at College was from there and it was not even a topic four days later when Everton won. This was an Everton team that were beautiful to watch and were the best or second-best team in Europe for a few years. Southall, Ratcliffe, Steven, Stevens, Sheedy, Reid, Bracewell, Sharpe and for a season Lineker.

So, when we settled to watch the European Cup final it was hoping that English football would show how great it was by bagging the top prize. Liverpool were the holders and they were facing Juventus at the Heysel in Belgium. Club loyalties were put aside for national ones (even at College Manchester United were loathed and their victory in the FA Cup that year was treated with anger by the massed group – a post for another day).

At the time we did not know that both clubs had wanted the final moved to another venue due to the Heysel’s terrible condition. Nor that the separation of fans had failed as tickets in the neutral section next to Liverpool’s fans had been sold to tour companies, thus putting Juve fans next to them. The clubs had raised this as a concern too but UEFA ignored it.

None of which excuses the behaviour of the thugs who pushed over a wall and were responsible for the deaths of 39 people (mostly Italian Juve fans) and the injuries to 600 people. Many were found and were rightly imprisoned.

Unbelievably the match went ahead, thought the atmosphere was off, even at College. Liverpool lost to a Platini penalty that looked very unfair (the theory at College was that Liverpool were not to be allowed to win after what happened). The match should have been cancelled or postponed.

The people responsible for the safety approval of the Heysel and the ticketing arrangements were never punished. The deputy head of the London Fire Brigade reported that if the stadium had met the required safety standards the incident would never have happened.

Then there is Hillsborough. Just like at Heysel issues were raised before the match about safety standards and the advisability of access arrangements. The Yorkshire police put a man in charge – George Duckenfield – with no experience of policing football matches.

I saw it live on the BBC – they went there even as the match was being played and it was bloody obvious it was a disaster not a pitch invasion. If I could see that from a portable TV how could Duckenfield not?

96 people’s deaths happened that day. It suited the police and the Tory government to blame the fans and protect the police (the Thatcher government was paying back the force for their illegal actions in the miners’ strike). They were drunk. People without tickets forced their way in. Lies put out by the police to protect themselves. The Sun added to the fury by printing outright lies about the behaviour of fans that were leaked by the police.

The inquest was limited to covering a very short period of time to stop a wider enquiry, only what happened in the 16 minutes after the match started were considered. This despite evidence of police notebooks being amended and the testimony of fans.

It took a decades long campaign to finally get to the truth. Yorkshire Police admitted to all their lies and smears– the fans were not at fault – the stories about the gates being rushed by fans without tickets were made up to protect the police and the lies to the Sun were a deliberate attempt to exonerate the force. 116 out of 164 statements were edited by the police to protect themselves. Later on another 55 statements not in the 164 were found to have been changed.

The point was also made that the lies about the fans being at fault remain remarkably persistent despite the police admitting their untruth and that being confirmed by the legal system.

In the eyes of the law Duckenfield remains innocent. I hope those 96 deaths haunt him for the rest of his life. Credit (rarely given by me) to David Cameron and Theresa May for finally dealing with this outrageous miscarriage of justice.

Blame? Anyone who failed in their jobs concerning safety – UEFA and all those who ignored the clubs Anyone involved in the cover up that made the loss worse for the families. Words cannot describe my contempt for those police officers. We are always told it is a few bad apples who step over the line – this was institutional corruption throughout the ranks of a police force involving hundreds of officers. Policing is by consent in this country – a concept seemingly lost on some police officers, until the pandemic struck.

Ferry Cross the Mersey

Matter of fact it’s all dark

Pink Floyd are three, if not four different groups. Like many young people of my age I first heard them with their number one single Another Brick in the Wall. It topped the charts at Christmas – a welcome change from the novelty, schmaltzy Christmas records that surround it – There’s No One Quite Like Grandma being the most terrible one of the lot.

That is a representative song of the third phase of Floyd – the one where Roger Waters is leading the band that he joined after the second album and is far more focused on real world affairs.

Their next album was The Final Cut, whilst it focused on Waters’ father and his wartime experience it was really about the Falklands conflict – the lyrics of Get Your Filthy Hands Off My Desert sum it up – Brezhnev took Afghanistan/ Begin too Beirut/ Galtieri Took the Union Jack./ And Maggie one day/ Took a cruiser with all hands/ Apparently to get it back.

I had assumed that the title meant that it was the final Floyd album and it seemed that way for a long time. Waters left the group and continued a solo career in the same style as those two Floyd albums.

Mike Read on the Radio 1 breakfast show had a taste for early psychedelia and often played Arnold Layne or See Emily Play with the band’s original line up on a semi-regular basis.

That incarnation of Floyd ended with Syd Barrett’s drug fuelled burn out (he spent his life as recluse in Cambridge). Mental health issues were not considered in the same way as they are now (just one of the reasons harking back to some sort of better time in the past misses out on sexism, racism and homophobia as well) so Syd was a figure of pity and a warning to others but he did not appear to be given any help.

Roger Waters replaced him in the band and was their main song writer. Echoes and Atom Heart Mother followed – both fine albums. It was the next two albums that cemented their reputation. The Dark Side of the Moon is a timeless classic that sold heavily for many years. Sometimes these famous albums are overrated – this is not and is one of the great British albums. Steve Doubtfire lent me this in the sixth form and it truly knocked me away.

It was followed up by Wish You Were Here, not as famous but just as good. Both are about Syd and mental health issues.

Roger Waters and the rest of Floyd hated each other and it only got worse when Dave Gilmour brought Floyd back for their final incarnation, though it was hard for them to find enough material to perform (not of the remaining band members were prolific song writers). Neither album is really worth searching out, not bad, just unremarkable.

I tried Roger Waters’ first solo album, The Pros and Cons of Hitch-hiking, it was just more of the same with a sexist cover.

They reunited to perform at Live 8, but it was frosty. Still Pink Floyd are one of the titans of British Music.

This is from The Dark Side of the Moon. Rest in Paradise Syd Barrett – you crazy diamond.

Eclipse

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DVQ3-Xe_suY

Playlist

Lucifer Sam
See Emily Play
Arnold Layne
Interstellar Overdrive
Atom Heart Mother
Echoes
Any Colour you Like
Brain Damage
Eclipse
Shine On You Crazy Diamond
Welcome to the Machine
Wish You Were Here
Another Brick in the Wall (part 2)
Get You Filthy Hands Off My Desert
The Fletcher Memorial Home
Not Now John
Two Suns in the Sunset

No Verdict Was Returned

I had three childhood heroes – The Doctor, Spock and Perry Rhodan. This is The Star Trek one.

My first memory of Star Trek is Operation: Annihilate! when I was about 6. A jellyfish falls on Spock’s back and blinds him. I was horrified; at that age I did not realise that we still had many years of reset television where nothing could change the main characters (people in red shirts were in severe danger unless they were Scotty). It was cemented as my favourite TV program along with Doctor Who, well it waswhen Spock got his eyesight back.

Just for the record, before I start sounding like Sheldon Cooper from the Big Bang Theory – I do not have a Spock action figure that talks to me.

Star Trek looked so good. The production standards were way better than Doctor Who. I did not notice that most of the bridge screens just had photos on them or that lots of the exteriors were in studios. It was repeated in a random order, meaning that the lower quality of season three was not really noticeable (though I was horrified by how awful And the Children Shall Lead and Turnabout Intruder were).

Three episodes were not shown on British TV until much later and one was only shown once. Luckily there were Star Trek books that novelised the episodes written by James Blish (that was what we had to do before video recorders were invented). I could not see the problem – the BBC considered the show as something for kids so the violence of Miri and The Empath, the mental health issues of Whom Gods Destroy and the first inter racial kiss on American TV in Plato’s Stepchildren were not appropriate. From a 21^st century perspective it seems laughable, but things were more paternalistic then.

My parents had told me there were no new episodes. There was a cartoon series that I did not much like and looked incredibly cheap. A line of original novels started, some were written by good writers like Joe Haldeman. Some seemed very strange like Price of the Phoenix and The Fate of the Phoenix (knowledge of some of the more bizarre memes circulating in Star Trek fandom would have helped). Later there was the first film, referred to as the Slow-Motion Picture, the bigger problem was that it was just a rehash of the TV episode The Changeling.

More films came and went. Spock died. Spock lived. They visited a very 80s California and saved whales. I was not watching them at the cinema by now. The love had died.

Then the New Generation was made. I was hacked off that the first UK way to see this was to buy VHS tapes with two episodes each (not the current whole series for £10 on Amazon you get these days, this was two episodes for more than that). I was annoyed but not willing to waste beer money sight unseen. Finally Encounter at Farpoint was on BBC2, and it was utter shite. I tried two more episodes and gave it up.

I lived in a shared house in London for three years and one of my housemates watched ST: TNG. Whenever I happened to see it the plot always appeared to be some malfunction of the holodeck causing a problem. Maybe I was unlucky, maybe I just caught the same episode several times, but it seemed like Patrick Stewart could solve most of his problems by shutting the damn thing down.

(Same housemate had a habit of watching the ten minutes free view on adult channels which used to happen at 10pm, in fact he videoed those bits night after night to get a longer tape to watch. One night he was surprised and got very red when another housemate returned unexpectedly at 10.05pm – he claimed he was watching ST: TNG. From then on it was known as watching Star Trek…..).

Years later I was persuaded to try Enterprise by some online friends. I lasted three episodes. I did see the two Mirror Universe episodes and mildly enjoyed them – mainly because there was a beginning, middle and end. Even fans of Star Trek would not advocate watching Voyager.

(Hoshi becomes empress of the Mirror Universe)

Now I can’t even watch the Original Series. For me it retains none of the charm I find endears me to other programmes I saw in my childhood – hell I can even watch The Tomorrow People I’ve seen both reboot films and they bored me rigid.

Spock’s not a fascist like Perry Rhodan, but I think he (and Star Trek) are infinitely less interesting than Perry. That only leaves one childhood hero for me.

Don McLean had a number one in 1981 with Crying but this is really the only track he is remembered for. The elegy for a simpler time, just like Trek is a vision of an optimistic future (though I do like the idea that the Federation are facists that has been suggested by some online fans). Despite Gene Roddenberry’s efforts it was an American vision of the future.

American Pie

Young Blokes Sitting on the Benches

Scout summer camp. Little did I know that the 1978 camp was the best one I would ever go on and it was downhill from there. Being the youngest in my year at school had never really proved to be a problem to me (though statistics do show that, on average, it reduces life chances) but at scouts it did. As boys pass 16 years old they leave – they are inevitably patrol leaders. Assistant Patrol Leaders (APLs) are promoted and then they are replaced from the ranks. Ideally from within a patrol (a group of 5-8) but maybe from outside. One evening in 1978 we all stood there as PL and APL insignia were handed out. All my friends in my school year were promoted. I wasn’t, purely as I was the youngest. As good a method as any, though it seemed pretty bad at the time.

The only time I got to be an APL was on the 1978 summer camp in Gradbach, Derbyshire as the regular APL of our patrol, Snipes, was not there. The photos will show you how beautiful it can be, though from what I can see now they have added a lot of amenities. I just remember fields and it seemed like the Sun never shined for the week.

(Not from 1979)

We went on a Saturday and came back on a Saturday – with a stop at Ashbourne on the return to buy gifts (the previous year we had had a whole day). We had one day as duty patrol where we would stay in camp and do the chores – either kitchen work or dealing with the toilets.

The toilets. They were called thunderboxes, wooden seats with a hole over a hole in the ground. After a couple of days the smell was pretty awful inside the toilet tents (I suppose that I should be grateful the weather was not too warm). At some stage it would get so bad, or so full, we would have to fill them in and dig new holes.

Our other activities were hiking and a day of canoeing on the canal. The day would start with us cooking our own breakfast over a fire at the end of our tent (fun in the drizzle), usually fried bread, eggs and bacon, but there was some slight variation. There would be a packed lunch to take out with us.

The one day of canoeing did break the week up but was hard work. Most of the canoes were old and heavy – everyone wanted Fly – the lightweight canoe. The hardest thing was to be in a double paired with a younger boy who could not paddle. At first it seems easiest to tell him not to paddle as it messes the rhythm, but you soon realised moving a heavy canoe with two people was not easy.

(It was never this sunny while we were there)

The evening food was no picnic – though obviously we were hungry. It cannot have been easy cooking for 50 or so people over open fires in that weather.

That does not forgive the corn beef hash. You should know that corned beef hash is corned beef and potato mashed up together and then fried, ideally served with baked beans. One night we were told this was dinner and what came out was a watery mess. It was unfit for animal consumption. Seconds were offered before one patrol had been offered any. When this was realised they were given huge portions to make up for it.

Obviously they did not want huge portions and it got to the stage where they were told that if they did not eat it they would not have access to the providore (tuck shop). Mike was on his first scout camp, despite being just under eleven and was in this unlucky group. The rest of us were sternly told that if we got tuck shop food for them we would be in trouble. I ignored that (being a goody goody helps sometimes, but then the scouters running the tuck shop were sympathetic about it anyway) and got Mike food.

The last two days for our patrol were a two-day hike where I sadly got temporarily promoted to patrol leader. Our PL – Lawrence (Big L) managed to cut a tendon in his hand with a knife and was rushed to hospital. Big L was two years ahead of me at school and, while not having the same kudos as Felicity Lynch talking to me, would acknowledge and talk to me at senior school.

This is one of those angry late punk/ early new wave songs about the frustrations of living outside where things are actually happening. Royston was even further out than the suburbs.

Sound of the Suburbs

I See Your Sun is Shining

It is a joke you often here about wedding receptions when white people get married – the DJ always plays Come on Eileen. Before that the trach was Hi Ho Silver Lining by Jeff Beck. It is another uplifting track with a chorus that is easy to sing along to. Beck was the third guitarist in the Yardbirds, following Eric Clapton and Jimmy Page – a daunting prospect even then he was rated alongside those as a guitarist of skill and did not suffer by comparison. His career post Yardbirds has not seen the success of the other two.

In one way it is great that the geeks have now inherited the entertainment world. Marvel, DC, The Lord of the Rings, Harry Potter and Doctor Who are all massive mainstream successes. Those of us who loved all these things for years before their fame are proved right, but we have lost that exclusivity, that feeling that we liked something special which was a secret from the masses.

The Avengers are no longer my special favourites. Everyone knows who they are.

They weren’t even Stan Lee’s favourites. Jack Kirby did not stay long on the team and Stan preferred the Fantastic Four, Spider-man and Thor. Spider-man and later the X-Men were the big guns at Marvel, the highest selling books that were leveraged into multiple titles.

I first saw the Avengers in a reprint of the war with the Defenders. My first original Avengers’ comic (in colour!) was issue 161 when the Avengers are attacked by the Ant Man. This issue is the reason I never though Ant Man was a joke was he took the Avengers down, before his wife, the Wasp, saved them. In the same issue they are immediately attacked by Ultron 8 – the team are down and out until the Scarlet Witch shows her true power and is about to defeat him, then is interrupted by Captain America and Ultron wins. The final panel was shocking at 11 as the Avengers’ butler returns, sees the Avengers (and the line-up of Iron Man, Cap, the Black Panther, The Scarlet Witch, The Vision and Wonder Man is one of my favourites) seemingly dead on the floor and says “God save us” (in the British reprint it is changed to “Good grief” – far less powerful).

The Avengers had a great run of writers – Steve Engelhart, Jim Shooter, David Michelinie and then Jim Shooter again. (I am one of the few people who likes Shooter’s second run where he turns Hank Pym into a wife beater). Then there follows 12 years of crap. I am in a minority of not liking Roger Stern’s run, but after that the consensus is it is poor. Marvel rebooted it in a very 90s way and that failed.

Long-time fan Kurt Busiek relaunched the title along with George Perez, not just the definitive Avengers artist, but probably the definitive superhero artist of the last 40 years. Ultron and Kang, the definitive Avengers villains, both feature in the run. There is a wonderful sequence where the Avengers fight Ultron 18 – at the end of the issue they have taken him down, but they are injured and exhausted. Out of the darkness Ultron 19, Ultron 20, Ultron 21 and a whole army of Ultrons appear.

(Note how the more powerful she gets the less the Scarlet Witch wears…)

After Busiek’s run the book spiralled down, culminating in a terrible run from Chuck Austen. Brian Bendis took over the book and there was the Avengers Disassembled storyline which ended the team after nearly 40 years. The result was the Scarlet Witch changing the world completely and kicking off the House of M storyline where Magneto was World President. Happily it also finally had Carol Dancers take on the Captain Marvel mantle.

The New Avengers were launched a few months later with a very different line up including Luke Cage and Wolverine. This marked the explosion in their popularity with the Young Avengers, The Mighty Avengers, Avengers Academy and the Dark Avengers appearing.

By the end of Bendis’ run the Marvel Cinematic Universe had turned the franchise into one of the most successful in the world – except that it is not really the Avengers – it is the Ultimates. An alternative universe Avengers.

I’ve been reading the Avengers for 43 years and I think I have read every issue ever published. I am not going to stop now.

Avengers Assemble.

Hi-Ho Silver Lining