Saturday, June 03, 2006

Relics

This afternoon I discovered three things:

1. It's eminently possible to sunbathe from the comfort of my own bedroom floor. Result!

2. While reclining thus, I noticed that someone had hidden something up the chimney. It turned out to be a framed photograph of a half nice-, half evil-looking young man in a cream-coloured cardigan leaning against a drinks cabinet upon which are arranged a number of elaborate liqueur bottles whose appearance suggest a Costa del Sol holiday resort provenance. If I had any imagination, I could invent a story about how someone came to conceal this photograph in the chimney. But sadly I have none, so all I've really got is a manky old photograph and a lot of feathery fairy dust and dried-up bits of old bird's nest all over the carpet.

3. Also while reclining thus, I discovered under my bed a box of letters that Camo Netting Man sent me in the early 90s. Most of our relationship was spent apart, so we both became prolific letter writers. The collection provides what is probably one of the most extensive eye-witness accounts of the early 90s London rave scene that anyone could possibly wish for. On Feb 16, 1992, for example, CNM writes:

This afternoon I walked up to Hammersmith and found a Maplins shop*. I popped in and found a couple of excellent kits which enable you to build complex things. The first was a kit for a ZMW laser and its controller (£125) and the second, slightly more affordable, was for a TVFX module - which (if built correctly) would plug into the TV and generate all sorts of trippy psychedelic patterns, plus there's even an option for a sound to light mode (i.e. the music generates the patterns). It's £70, so if M. and I bought it together, it would be actually affordable. I'd want to see one working before I splashed out a week's worth of money on it, but it definitely sounds like a fun thing to have.

The letters are all brittle and yellowing now, and for all their talk of lasers and technomancy, the very fact that they belong to a pre-internet** era makes them feel like relics from another age. For a moment I thought of donating them to the magnificent Museum of Techno, but there's too much sentimental value attached.

Next week: What I Found Behind The Washing Machine.


* Coincidentally, the same one as I visited here.

** In that we knew it existed, but we'd never seen it.


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12 comments:

Random Pictures & Musings said...

Strangely enough, I have found some pretty um, shall we say tactfully, personal photgraphs hidden in older houses. The owners of most of these photographs were usually predominantly male andhad passed away.

longcat said...

i used to love going to spitalfields market and browsing through the old pictures from other people's lives that were in a box at a stall in one of the corners, sentimental pictures completely removed from any associations withthe people themselves, haven't been there for awhile.. x

Dave said...

If you move the bed, is it possible to sunbathe from it, thus obtaining many of the benefits of a holiday, without ever having to get up?

patroclus said...

Dave, sometimes it's important to see things from a different perspective. Until today, I'd lived here for almost a year without ever once having looked up the chimney, for example.

Quite tempted to look up the other chimney now.

BRB.

Billy said...

I get a nice stream of sunshine in the afternoon so I can lie on the floor and get a bit of sunshine without having to bother with going outside (to stock up on plug adapters from maplins) or anything like that.

GreatSheElephant said...

I think you should scan this gentleman and post him on the blog.

Rpm - there's a book about that - The Cutting Room by Louise Welsh.

patroclus said...

So is it only me that finds that Museum of Techno site rolling-on-floor-ingly funny?

It is, isn't it?

wetnailvarnish said...

I've read The Cutting Room. I cant for the life of me remember what happened though. I think I remember enjoying it, but other than that cannot remember even the basic plot. May have to look it out again, to at least try to remember why this particular book is being referenced..

patroclus said...

Isn't Louise Welsh one of the judges in the X-Factor?

wetnailvarnish said...

I've pondered this, and I can't quite work it out: Patroclus, are you being funny? Or do you really not know?
There seems to be equal argument for both sides, seeing as you dont watch much of the crap on TV...yet at the same time it is almost impossible to not know such things about X Factor through other areas of the media as well..
May still be that my brain isnt working today.

patroclus said...

I was indeed 'being funny'. Not all *that* funny, though, clearly :-)

wetnailvarnish said...

Ah no, trust me - it was funny. I'm just very slow on the uptake tonight. Slower than usual. Which is very slow indeed.
And also I was giving you the benefit of the doubt, allowing for you to possibly have managed to avoid anything X Factor related. In hindsight though, that was foolish. No one escapes.