tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-37291817.post1777547437082549459..comments2024-03-27T09:13:32.912+00:00Comments on News From Nowhere: A Short Treatise on Lamp Posts 3Alan Burnetthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01015127443616786425noreply@blogger.comBlogger1125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-37291817.post-1214965647224378112007-02-27T21:06:00.000+00:002007-02-27T21:06:00.000+00:00But that's amazing. I didn't realise you were in A...But that's amazing. I didn't realise you were in Abbotsford Road in Goodmayes (East London) back in something like 1959 - it must have been YOU I saw making the lampost wiggle until the lamp at the top broke!!!!<BR/><BR/>Yup, same lampost I'd earlier (different day/month) first seen doing that switching-off trick. In fact THAT effect was why I was looking at it, wondering if it would go off and on again. Instead it suddenly started wobbling, more and more violently... since I could only see the top because of our garden hedge the effect was VERY spooky. Especially because, like you at that age, I hadn't realised lamposts COULD be made to wobble like that....<BR/><BR/>(I fib slightly - intrigued, I remember I ran upstairs to see why on earth it was wobbling. And... I guess I have to admit it probably wasn't you. No pipe or moustache. And there were four of them.)<BR/><BR/>I wasn't allowed to buy and read Superman comics, by the way. That's not to say I didn't read them - friends took pity on me and lent me them. Mother was horrified to find me reading one late at night (in bed) whilst listening to my home-made crystal set with single valve amplification (made from first principles) tuned to <I>light</I> (definitely not approved) music - said it was no wonder I got nightmares (whether because of the comic, the light music or not going to sleep on time I nearly asked) - but why else did she think I'd asked for a torch for Christmas?<BR/><BR/>It says something odd about my family's dynamic - my father could play basically <I>anything</I> on the piano (yes, the one I demanded to inherit as the only thing I wanted to inherit) despite minimal music lessons - whether from music, or simply improvising nearly the right thing from memory... including jazz... I only discovered relatively late in life. So why did he hardly ever improvise it?....<BR/><BR/>I can only think because my mother didn't approve, "really"... dear me, this makes my mother sound awful, and she wasn't, just had these extraordinary prejudices and beliefs... nearly always that if her mother hadn't done it, there must be something wrong...<BR/><BR/>Funny to think she was in horror the TV I arranged for her had gone wrong just when the Queen Mum's funeral was due... you'd have thought it was MY fault, almost. In fact I sweet-talked an engineer into getting the thing fixed by unashamed sob story... this poor old lady, not able to have many interests anymore...<BR/><BR/>I left out what I was thinking, only Jane knows that, she found it quite funny when I told her... thoughts that colourfully disparaged both my mother and the TV rental people before they capitulated. Not the engineer who fixed it, though, he was obviously a total sweetie who charmed my mother totally... and, even more importantly, spotted the fault in moments and got the thing working. Thereby lowering my blood pressure to hear he had.....<BR/><BR/>Fascinating, I had phone calls every other moment until I managed to persuade the TV company to act (it was a rental TV in my name... mother never agreed to actually OWN a TV, just accepted that she might as well have a look at the one I'd rented and thought might interest her if she forgot her prejudices)....<BR/><BR/>Nobody called to say it had been OK, I had to call them to ask if it had. Did they really think I was so cold-blooded I wasn't keen to know if my sob story had worked?<BR/><BR/>If only to KNOW...Edwin Osbornhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/15892411809138609516noreply@blogger.com