Chatham

Took a trip out to Chatham today, a place I've never been to before. A place that had a  proud naval history that is now long gone. I know that there are plenty of places that are worse, Croydon and Woolwich for one but Chatham seems to be one of those places where its just vaguely depressing. 

It's not multicultural and run down like Croydon, or just a shit hole that Woolwich is. Or smug and left wing shithole like Hackney with no proper shops. It has a Smiths and Poundland for christ sakes, its a proper high street.

No, I think its just a lot of people on electric scooters riding round that have put me off. A general twat chariot, for road men and dealers. Most of the pound shops were shut, they did have a gadget shop selling over priced records, but they did have modern stuff even if you needed discogs app to tell you what it is.

To make matters worse we wanted to go to Maidstone but got lost, so this is the compromise trip instead. Hopefully Maidstone is better. If we ever go.

Hiatus

 This was supposed to be a hiatus of such. On Wednesday we were meant to be going to Benalmadena, on the Costa Del Sol but thanks to SARS 2 electric boogaloo, we had our holiday cancelled not once but twice. I've just got done cancelling our parking reservations for the airport and with any luck we'll get a refund.

Now all I have left is a shed load of leave that I've not cancelled and maybe I can get some scanning done and the conservatory cleaned out. It's not what I wanted to do but seeing as the alternative is a staycation which is pricey. Then a bunch of projects seems much more worthwhile.

In fact, thanks to the amount of forest fires going on across the med, mostly Greece and Italy and a massive incursion of what can be called murder heat (50oF 120oC near enough recorded in the past week alone). Maybe its not such a bad idea after all.

Disappearing floors and files.

 I thought I had a post to this already but I have finally uploaded the UK version of The Disappearing Floor a legendary train wreck of a story in its original form. 

You know what also disappeared, the PDF of The mystery of Cabin Island, as we found out that the final chapter is missing from the original, so we've  taken it down.

Also I've placed and received an order for the original and there is a nice coincidence as it came yesterday which I'll share.

Our copy came from World of books down on the Sussex coast along with Secret of the Caves. It has a library label in it from Greenwich library in Greenwich which is not a million miles away from us here and to make it worse it was stored at the Metropolitan Joint Fiction Reserve at Plumstead which happened to be our local library. 

Weirdly it feels like its come home, so will have to scan and OCR it to give you a proper PDF of this.

Anyway the Disappearing floor.

Its strange one in the original where the boys deal with, bank robbers, strange Wilhelm Reich style cultists and a crazy mansion where the floors move and the laws of electricity are disregarded. Poor old Fenton gets attacked by tigers and shocked by untold amount of volts from Aden Darrow's machines.

The remake cuts down on most of the craziness, relegating the tiger bites to Tiger's Bight a small bay in Barmet. Our bank robbers have become jewel thieves and the story flows a lot better for it.

You can read both of them, here and here

Porn for kids.

 Here is a thing. A lot of galaxy brained weirdos are going on about pron for children. Dedicated soft core stuff. Whether it's an MP's daughter or Radio 4's Women's Hour. They are all pro this sort of stuff.

It doesn't horrify me as much as all the other people commenting on this, basically its been my one mainstay growing up and through adulthood. What they seem to be advocating is the old jazz mags in the hedge type of pron we used to get, growing up in the 80's and 90's in the UK before hardcore was really allowed here.

How much better would it be if we could sit down and basically cover this in sex ed without some God freaks going off on one about thinking of the children. Telling kids that porn is OK but not remotely real life and that, and to generally respect your partner.

Sky G(One)

Sky One is to close 20 years after it ceased to be relevant. It's being superseded by two new channels both of which are, if we're honest, too little far too late. If anything Sky Living was what Sky One was in the past few years, back before it became Sky Witless, but, as I grew up watching Sky its time for some memories, that I've probably aired before.

The DJ Kat show

With cool cat, DJ Kat, and Rod Hull's daughter it was an excuse to play a load of obscure and cheap cartoons such as the English version of Spoon Obasasn, and the full version of Super Mario Bros Super Show with Lou Albarno. Later gained a mouse puppet called Yummi Ticklemouse.

Card Sharps / Concentration / Jeopardy / Press Your Luck

American Gameshows were an early staple of Sky, Card Sharps is just a Rebranded Play Your  Cards Right with Bob Eubanks  rather than good ol' Brucie. Jeopardy is the Paul Coia version which no one remembers.

In Living Color.

Comedy show with the Wayans brothers and a little known comic called Jim Carrey. I wonder if he ever made it big? 

The Simpsons.

6:30 on a Sunday night, where you could watch the greatest show of all time, So much good writing and probably shaped me more as a person than anything else save Beavis and Butthead.

The X Files.

Never cared about the big two sci fi series Stars Trek and Wars. This was my jam with a strong female lead and Mulder who just didn't give two fucks. The show ended with season 9 as did any relevancy that Sky One was going to be decent again.

Fun Factory.

The weekend equivalent to the DJ Kat show, this was a cartoon block presented in the early days by Crocker the Crocodile and Snook the Seal. Later would scrap them entirely and just play decent cartoons such as Fox's Peter Pan and Ultraman.

Pokemon and Yu gi oh!

What you don't realize is that Sky One was the home of Pokemon from about 1999 onwards, Yu-gi-oh! was the final gasp of the weekend cartoon covering all the way up to the Darts / Eye of Timaeus story arc before it withered and died.

There was a few more things that I should mention, such as the original Flash series and Stargate airing but I think that was Sky 2 of all things.

Edit totally forgot about ALF and Sale of The Century, both mainstays of early Sky.