As I noted a little while back, I’ve been keeping busy on a new writing adventure, which along with my daily music blog and my baseball one, has kept a good chunk of my free time occupied… so I’ve not been showing up here that regularly. But I thought it high time to check in and hope all you are doing fine and give a shout-out to a friend of mine and reader here who’s been busy writing too – Colin, aka Cee Tee Jackson. You might recall I looked at his book No Laughing Matter, that came from his scary heart attack incident a year or two back. Well now Cee Tee is back with a bigger, and largely happier book – A Space Hopper Killed My Hamster! (Spoiler alert – as you find out, a space hopper didn’t actually kill his hamster! Whew!)
It’s a series of posts about his life growing up in Scotland of the ’70s, fitting given that he is a co-organizer of the website Once Upon a Time in the ’70s. The 45 essays cover various memories of his ranging from his earliest memories as a child to being a happening young man enjoying the clubs and music scene of Glasgow with all things embarrassing and pimply thing in between.
The school days, the bullies, the not quite stellar attempts at sports, the family vacations, the Saturday morning TV shows, the Halloweens, the books and comics he enjoyed, through the morphing of his musical tastes and the great acts he saw play live at the Apollo (the Scottish Apollo, that is, not the New York shrine)… it’s all here. Colin’s writing is certainly endearing and relatable, him being in the first person and not embarrassed to admit every foible and folly from the adolescent “losing” his girl to a goof in a long RAF coat with a Yes album under his arm, to his foray into purple platform shoes.
I found it equally relatable, a real head-nodder and at the same time a fascinating look at a different culture. Many things reminded me of my own childhood – the love of rock and pop music (“consider the Seventies scene for a moment,” he writes, “has there ever been a decade that spawned such a variation of widely-appreciated sounds?” Exactly so, Cee Tee no matter which side of the ocean you were on) , some of the bands being the same, collecting sports cards, being less than a born-athlete when trying to play those favored sports, being dressed in nerdy clothes by Moms who had either no fashion sense or saw us as middle-aged Broadway actors, loving reading and so on. Then on the other hand there were lots of references to all things British that I wasn’t familiar with – some of the TV shows, their football and its stars… even the Space Hopper in the title. I’d heard of a Julian Cope song called “Space Hopper” but had no idea it was something of a popular toy over there… I gather a big ball you bounced up and down on. Sadly, I think we made it through his first 20 or so years with no mention of haggis… but the Scottish experience was still a bit different than the Canadian, which I am learning was a bit different again from most Americans.
A fun easy read, I thoroughly recommend it if you grew up or look back fondly on the ’70s or just if you’re curious as to what being young in Scotland was like back then. It’s available at a reasonable price in paperback or for an even more reasonable FREE as a Kindle download book on Amazon. Now that’s a value that makes those penny candies of 50 years ago seem over-priced, isn’t it!
Everydave Life 