Way back in the mists of 2017, I started a series of posts designed to celebrate the first 50 years of my life and the things from each year that had been important to me. The problem is, I never finished it. I never even came close.
It petered out in 2019 at post 32 (1998) - way past my fiftieth birthday - and I'll be honest it's always annoyed me that something so personal and that I spent so much time on was left incomplete.
So with my *60th* birthday just two years away, I've decided to resurrect "Golden Sunsets" and expand it to 60 posts. Between now and - lets say the end of 2027 - I'm going to re-post the previous entries - with a few tweaks and updates - and finish things off . I reckon that's one new bit of writing every few weeks, which should be do-able.
Let's see how I get on! Without further ado, we are going back to the 'Summer of Love'...
- According to Article VIII of the Outer Space Treaty of 1967, you can be arrested for a crime committed anywhere in the known universe. The United States and Russia also signed a declaration agreeing not to nuke the Moon.
- On 3rd September, Sweden switched to driving on the right side of the road - an event known as "H-Day". Only essential traffic was allowed and everything stopped at 4:50 AM for 10 minutes, then resumed on the right side at 5:00 AM. In cities the traffic ban lasted for hours so that intersections could be reconfigured, new bus stops unveiled, etc. Railways and the metro system in Stockholm did not switch to the new rule and continued to drive on the left.
- In January, the Beatles recorded a 14-minute avant-garde piece, "Carnival of Light", containing distorted, echo-laden sounds of percussion, keyboards, guitar and vocals. It received its only public airing at the 'Million Volt Light and Sound Rave' held at the Roundhouse venue in London. The track remains unreleased to this day.
- Fuelled by the rise in Spiritualism, the Parker Brother board game "Ouija" sold two million copies in one year - more than "Monopoly". It was marketed as a pleasant game for 8 years and upwards...
- In September, the burning body of tramp Robert Francis Bailey was found in a derelict house in Kennington, London. A blue flame was clearly seen emanating from a slit in his stomach by emergency services that attended the scene - even though his clothes were intact and unaffected by the fire. In later years I will become fascinated with these cases of 'Spontaneous Human Combustion'...
KerPlunk
It's a bit of an odd one to start off with, but I wanted to reflect something appropriate from my first few years on the planet. Of course my recall of those early days is hazy - to be honest it's probably non-existent - and there is no way that I could have played this most famous of games when I was less than twelve months old. But it first came out in 1967 and it's my list, so...
It doesn't matter how much technology we have at our finger tips, what realistic virtual worlds we can plug ourselves into - there is nothing quite so satisfying as watching your younger brother simply pulling on a plastic stick and seeing all the marbles clatter noisily to the ground (well into a plastic tray). It's a perfect example of onomatopoeia - the sound of the marbles is the name of the game!
In summary "KerPlunk" was meant to be a game of skill and hand-eye coordination. Inside the bright blue box you got a yellow plastic tube, thirty thin sticks and thirty-two coloured marbles. Plus a base with numbers on it. You had to insert the sticks through the tiny holes in the yellow tube to form a web of plastic. Then you poured the marbles in at the top. Players then took it in turns to remove one stick without letting any of the marbles fall through. If they did, that player collects them. Once the last marble had fallen, everybody counted up their marbles and the person with the fewest was the winner. You needed a steady hand as you slowly (or quickly) pulled out your stick !
In reality it's not so much skill that was needed as the ability to learn a bit of spatial reasoning - as you tried to figure out which sticks were holding up which marbles - plus quite a lot of luck. It was a game simple enough for small children to understand yet still fun for those a bit older - until I guess they progressed onto more challenging versions of the concept, such as "Jenga".
The version pictured above is the same as the one we had at home and I remember playing endlessly with my family and friends. I think we first got the game as a present on November 5th - otherwise known in the UK as 'Guy Fawkes Night' or 'Bonfire Night'. Yes, I am aware that November 5th is traditionally the night for fireworks, but in our house, we were usually given the choice of having a few meagre whizz bangs and some sparklers (that would last 15 minutes tops) or a board game of some kind (which we got to enjoy all year). Probably two out of three times we'd pick the game - so we got to play "Haunted House" or "Escape From Colditz" or "Sorry". All classics of the age.
"KerPlunk" is one of those games which never seems to go away. My own children had a set and my younger sisters children have played the same wonderful game (although she was never as mad about it as I was). There have been endless variations in style and colour over the decades - one with a "golden ball" which affects your total score, a 'Toy Story' inspired version using that film's Little Green Men instead of marbles and even "KerPlunk 2" which apparently has coloured marbles, lights and sounds and a spiral ramp. That feels like sacrilege to me !
Again, all of these things debuted in 1967, even if I did not come across them until much later.
- In Like Flint
He's the super-spy who gets all the girls. The man with all the gadgets and the lethal moves to match. He's name is Jam.....Derek Flint ? Yes, while Mr. Bond may have all the box-office, my heart belongs to James Coburn's super-smooth agent of Z.O.W.I.E (Zonal Organization World Intelligence Espionage). This film (and it's predecessor "Our Man Flint") may be a more comedic take on the 007 franchise, but it's fully aware of it's own ridiculousness and all the better for it. Coburn has always been one of the coolest actors on screen and with Flint he's in his element. I loved the films from the moment I first saw them and that has only grown over the years. Flints influence continued long after his two outings left the cinema - from the distinctive presidential hotline ringtone being used in both "Hudson Hawk" and "Austin Powers", to the name of the most famous bad guy in "Die Hard" - Hans Gruber.
- The Prisoner
Another spy, but one very, very different from Mr Derek Flint. What can I really add to the thousands of words written about Patrick McGoohan's secret agent and the physical and psychological experiences he is put through as a resident of "The Village"? Just to say that I was addicted from the first moment of that iconic theme music and opening sequence. I've been to the real village of Portmerion. I've walked on those sands and imagined the Rover balloon coming after me. Daring, surreal, confusing - championing the rights of individuals ("I will not be pushed, filed, stamped, indexed, briefed, debriefed, or numbered! My life is my own.") - it is a truly unique piece of television. Often copied but never bettered. An absolute stone cold classic.
- Space Hostages by Nicolas Fisk
The pen name of British author David Higginbottom, Fisk wrote a number of science fiction novels for children, including the well-regarded "Grinny". I've never read that book but for some reason my local village library had a copy of "Space Hostages". The basic plot concerns a group of kids who are kidnapped by a critically ill Flight Lieutenant aboard a top secret spacecraft and have to try and pilot the craft home by themselves. It's not really an SF story, more a character study of the resulting conflict between the nerdish Brylo and the super-confident Tony - a scenario than many school kids could empathise with. Maybe the SF title font and that evocative painting of people running away from a flying saucer triggered my UFO interests of the time. Maybe I was just a sucker for anything with "space" in the title. What I do know is that the story has stayed with my ever since - and when I tracked down a copy many, many years later it still holds up remarkable well.
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