… to the things I loved so well in my youth. Or, as the guy in the picture WEEEAAAAARRRing a Katherine Hepburn HAAAAAT, with an AmEEEEERRican EEEAAAgle cAAAAAARved on his STRAAAAAAAT, once wrote, ‘I was so much older then, I’m younger than that now.’
Maybe I’m entering a second childhood (though in order to do that I’d've had to have left my first one) as some kind of unconscious reaction to the imminent arrival of A Very Big Birthday Indeed, but I seem to be spending a fair amount of time revisiting some of the cultural stuff that loomed largest in my teenage landscape. Effectively, this means reading an awful lot of comics – sorry, I mean GRAPHIC NOVELS – thereby reacquainting myself with my old schoolfriend Peter Parker and journalistic role model Clark Kent (I said CLARK!!!!) as well as listening to an equally awful lot of ’60s music ranging from Aretha Franklin and Sam & Dave through to The Yardbirds, The Who and … cough … Bob Dylan.
Which latter course of study came in dead handy when I got an overnight commission from The Observer to write a piece about The Zim’s adventures in China.
More on that subject anon … but, in the meantime, let me declare a small contest. I’d borrow Stan Lee’s famous line about ‘there will be no prizes’, but that wouldn’t be quite correct: the first person to approach me on licensed premises and correctly identify the paragraph therein which was NOT written by yr humble servant gets to buy me a drink. The second person to do so gets to buy me two.
So catch me if you can … I’m going back.
The third person buys three, etcetera… a very nice plan.
I don’t know what para it is, but I’ll buy you a drink anyway. Happy imminent birthday CSM!