Gonna Have a Party

In this photo, taken in our Walthamstow back garden in 1961, I'm the rather confused looking one year-old being held in the arms of my aunt, who, with her husband, lived upstairs from Mum, Dad & I until 1972. My cousin, who now lives in New York with her own husband and three grown-up kids, joined the household in 1963. In those crucial early years, my cousin and I grew up like sister and brother, with each of us having the benefit of an extra set of parents on call whenever we needed them.

My uncle died suddenly in 1978, when my cousin was only 15, so, tragically, he was unable to enjoy any of her great academic achievements or meet her wonderful family. My aunt still lives alone in the East Ham house they all briefly shared together. Tomorrow it's her 90th birthday and my cousin has arranged for surviving friends and family to celebrate the milestone on Sunday afternoon with a party in the function room of a nearby pub.

My cousin arranged similar celebrations for her mum's 70th, 80th and 85th birthdays, so the tradition is well established, albeit with a smaller attendance and noticeably frailer attendees each time. After work tomorrow, I'll travel down to London to join my aunt and her friends for her latest knees-up. In the couple of days that follow, my cousin and I will hang out, catch up and no doubt start making tentative plans for her mum's 95th in 2024.

Stray - Gonna Have a Party

Home Again

On the hottest Bank Holiday Monday in living memory, my cousin and I spent a couple of hours walking along the towpath of the River Lea from Stratford to Walthamstow, a stretch that we both regularly walked with our Dads when we were young children in the early 1960s. It was the first time my cousin's husband and kids had visited our old stomping grounds, while for us it was a period of reflection and not a little nostalgia - over 40 years had elapsed since we last walked alongside that river together.

Here's Doug Tuttle from his recent LP, 'Peace Potato'.

Doug Tuttle - Home Again

(This is just a flying visit i'm afraid. I'm off back down to London for a few days, to look after my aunt as she undergoes a cataract operation.)

An Ear Inflamed On My Dog Chain

                                  The 2016 Small Wonder mock-up                                   The original shop

(Continued from the previous post)

After leaving the British Library, I jumped onto a Victoria Line train at Kings Cross and took myself over to Walthamstow, where, in an empty unit at the top of the High Street (just a couple of hundred yards from its original location), a mock up of the old Small Wonder record shop frontage has been created as part of the Punk Waltham Forest series of events. Stepping inside revealed a virtual continuation of the Punk 1976-78 exhibit I'd visited an hour earlier, with displays of flyers, posters, photos, sleeves and other memorabilia relating to Pete Stennett's hugely important shop and record label. While browsing the collection I fell into easy conversation with two other visitors of a similar vintage to myself, who had dropped in on their way to the British Library's exhibit. We sat for a while and exchanged our individual memories of the punk and post-punk years in general and Small Wonder in particular. It turned out that in spite of having been loyal mail-order customers in the late 70s and early 80s, neither had ever been to Walthamstow before in their lives. After half an hour or so, we all shook hands and went our separate ways, they on to the British Library and me off down memory lane, because unlike them I know Walthamstow very well, or at least I used to - I spent the first 15 years of my life in the place.

My family moved out of London in 1975, one year before Small Wonder opened, though initially I returned regularly, to visit friends and also to buy records from Pete. The last time I crossed Small Wonder's threshold was probably late 1981, a couple of years before it closed down. Gradually my trips to Walthamstow became less frequent, until they stopped altogether - in fact before last Monday, I hadn't walked around the old home town in over 30 years.

One bitterly cold winter day in early 1978, I dropped into Small Wonder and, after a bit of a rummage through the racks, approached the counter with a couple of singles. Pete smiled at one of my purchases and paused as he was about to drop it into a bag. 'Do want him to sign it?' he asked, gesturing to a shivering figure sitting on the floor next to an old two bar electric fire. The record in question was 'Safety Pin Stuck in My Heart' and the man trying to warm himself was Patrik Fitzgerald.

Patrik Fitzgerald - Safety Pin Stuck in My Heart 

(Buy 'Safety Pins, Secret Lives and the Paranoid Ward: The Best Of Patrik Fitzgerald 1977-1986' here.)

51 Years Ago Today

                                                                     Nine acts in two hours! 

Back in the summer of 1963, given the choice between nipping just around the corner to catch The Big 'O', The Fabs and Gerry & his mates at the local fleapit, or heading off to Southend-on-Sea to work on my inflatable ball balancing routine....well, it would've been no contest really.

Mind you, if someone had told me about Erkey Grant (& the Earwigs), I'd like to think that my answer might've been quite different.

50 Years Ago Today

I was 4 years old and less than a mile away. I could've gone to the early show and still been home for bedtime.