All Done in the ……

Best possible taste. The Kenny Everett Television Show, bloody hell, he was funny, I mean proper funny. As a teenager, how could you not find Cupid Stunt, the vociferous B movie actress talking to a cut-out of Michael Parkinson about her eventful career whilst groping her boobs and flashing her frilly red knickers with a manscaped BEARD. Sid Snot trying to throw cigarettes into his gob whilst putting the world to right or my absolute favourite, General Cheeseburger with the oversized shoulders full of medals and hand grenades with the immortal catchphrase which always makes me laugh, Round ‘em up, put ‘em in a field and bomb the BASTARDS!!!

The Eighties in Corby was simple and made sense. People were more friendly, you stayed out till it got dark, playgrounds were a rite of passage and TV shows made you laugh out loud, and the BBC was the place to find it. Shows like Faulty Towers, The Dick Emery, Morecambe & Wise, and Till Death Us Do Part helped me enjoy my childhood. Oh, how times have changed. Fast forward to 2023, and it is all Married at First Sight and 90 Day Fiancé, for fecks sake. So please take a deep breath, get comfortable, my global audience, and buckle up as the rollercoaster has left the station as the chain lift takes you to your very own adrenaline-filled Airtime (for those of you not in the know, Airtime is the technical term for the feeling you get on a roller coaster).

Being a kid in the Eighties was fun. Eddie Murphy’s Delirious was dropping F-bombs all over the place, and the Punk movement with its attack on the establishment. Still, the most confronting memory of my childhood was……

It’s 1982, I’m fifteen, living in Corby, and the lads want to go to the Wessy or its official name, West Glebe Park. The Wessy had two things going for it, the bike track through the woods and the playground. My gang of five would hit the bike track first. Now Wessy woods were not like today’s mountain bike trails. This was unadulterated mayhem where you stared Death in the face, and you could either accept your fate or slap his face. Being a typical Corby boy on the lookout for an adventure, we would always slap the face of Death, sending him on his way. So once the Wessy trail was successfully navigated a few times to rub Death’s face in it, we would head to the kid’s playground. But first, you had to run the gauntlet of practising golfers. Hell yeah, Death chucks you a curveball to make life more interesting. Fecking GOLFERS!!. Those feckers would launch golf balls across the stretch of grass kids used to get to the park. As I’m writing this Blog, it means I’ve survived the short ride without having titanium inserted in my skull, but there were a few close shaves – if you have been Paintballing, you get my drift.

Without going into too much detail about the park itself, let’s say it had all of the typical life-threatening equipment that had the potential to kill you or, at the very least, change the way you walked. Now I’m about to make a statement I thought I would never say as a kid. Kids today don’t know how lucky they are (all your Dads said the same thing). To set the scene, Google 10 Pieces of Playground Equipment that Nearly Killed Your Grandparents – a picture is worth a thousand words.

Let’s say hanging off this instrument of torture whilst your mate spins it as fast as he can, didn’t leave a lot of time for the ambulance to arrive and the paramedics to do their thing. But do not worry, my global audience, when it goes wrong, as it would inevitably do, due to the pull generated centrifugally, coupled with gravity, let’s just say Physics always has the last laugh. Being thrown at high speed generally doesn’t end well, but your mates would pick you up, laugh at you and help you hobble over to the Ev’s (Everard Arms for those not from Corby or familiar with the nearby drinking establishments). The good thing about the Ev’s was the landlord would patch you up and allow you to buy a can of Skol and 10 Silk Cut – with that, the best Skol related cartoon I remember as a kid…

Staying in the 80s. Specifically, April 4th 1981, and it’s the Grand National. For those not into equestrian sports, it’s a horse race that runs at Aintree near Liverpool. It’s the race that everyone either puts on a cheeky bet or participates in the office sweepstake. But in 1981, the race was won by a horse called Aldaniti, and its jockey was Bob Champion. The real story about this win was overcoming adversity. Bob overcame lengthy hospitalisation and chemotherapy to win by a distance of four lengths. Aldaniti had recovered from a chronic leg problem that would send most horses to the glue factory. The story of Bob and Aldaniti was made into a film called Champions, with John Hurt playing Bob. They were the days when men were men and horses were horses

You probably wonder how we got to Bob and Aldaniti from Cupid Stunt’s red frilly knickers and manscaped beard. Well, it’s to highlight the way the world is heading. We have gone from simple and funny to feckin Pronouns. How have we gone from He/Him/His to Hor/Horse/Horseself, but the one that just made me shake my head in disbelief was fishing? I was a keen freshwater angler. Now to point out the obvious, Angling is defined as using a hook and line, whereas Fishing means using nets and traps – it fecking annoys me when people bugger about with the vernacular. I will use the term Fishing to demonstrate how feckin crazy life is. A bloke, Angling has gone from a Fisherman to Fisherthem. For fecks sake, the world has gone mad, proper mad, and it’s getting worse my global audience!!

So the Blog has bounced from Merry-Go-Rounds to Angling as we land on Conquistadors.  Contrary to popular belief, Conquistadors were not trained warriors but artisans looking to advance their wealth and fame. Still, they did develop into being the enforcers for the Portuguese Crown looking to expand the Portuguese Empire, which wasn’t too friendly to the Aztecs because they had Gold, feckin tonnes of the stuff. The Conquistadors were barbaric in the pursuit of Gold, and nothing was off the table regarding the collection of this precious metal. They were ruthless with the sword, but that was not the worst of it. They spread old-world diseases such as smallpox, flu and typhus that decimated the indigenous population. All I can say to the place I now call home is that you are lucky the Conquistadors turned left at Africa and headed towards the Americas and not right towards Australia.

Please don’t take this the wrong way, my global audience. I love Australia and am thankful I’m a citizen, but the tradition of Australia Day has somewhat changed. We don’t celebrate being Australian but protest, shout, and scream against the Colonial invaders. That’s Blighty and Captain Cook, by the way. There are calls for the day to be changed to another name, like Survival Day or Invasion Day. Please, can we leave things alone and not judge tomorrow against what happened yesterday and just enjoy today.

Before I wrap up this controversial instalment of Badger and Batbottom, I would like to say live your life as if it were 1982. So to end on a brighter note, from 1982, here is Billy Idol……

With that, be safe, people, respect our front liners, choose life, and, for pity’s sake, look after each other regardless of pronouns! – SAVVY