Thursday, June 16, 2005
Meme-A-Rama
Is Meme pronounced "Me Me" or "Meem"? I always thought it was "Meme", but S pronounced it "Meem" on the phone when I spoke to her yesterday, which confused me to buggery. Any thoughts guys?
Anyway, as nothing too much is going on, and I've been meaning to do this for days, and that my last post is now redundant (which I don't agree with at all), here's my answer to Ally's meme.
Five Things I Miss From Childhood
1. Arcades: Each week, we got £1 pocket money off my Mum and £1 off my grandparents. I was encouraged so save, but bollocks to that! It was the early ninties, and arcades were not the scary gambling places they are now. Arcades were full of video games (most of which I'm reliving now thanks to Mame. The two we had in Colwyn Bay (The Premier and The Golden Goose) were completely different. The Premier had a lot of the newer, 3D games and driving games, whereas the Golden Goose had the games popular in the mid 80's. Every Saturday whilst my mum was shopping, we were allowed to stay in the arcade. A few of my friends were always in there, and I was more than happy to kick their faces in on whatever was popular at the time (usually it was Street Fighter II, Killer Instict, Mortal Kombat or Virtua Fighter). Happy memories were had when we used to buy magazines to find the finishing moves, ultra combos and throws for each character. One of our old teachers also was in there often, and I pretty much owned him on Street Fighter II (though he was amazing on Killer Instinct). Happy memories.
2. Commodore 64: I still have my old C64, though it's very hit and miss whether a game works. Back in the day, I had tons of games for it. These were the days where they gave away free games on the front of magazines. I remember spending AGES (and I mean ages) typing in PEEKS and POKES (which took ages) to get cheats and the like. Luckily the C64 is still well emulated, and I encourage you to try some of these games out. Mainly Summer Camp, Creatures II, Mayhem In Monsterland, Bubble Dizzy, Paradroid and the shit-scary Detective Game.
3. The Playground: For the summer of 1993, the council decided that our estate was big enough to open a playground, and they did. It was located overlooking Rhyl and Old Colwyn, and it was brilliant. For that one summer, all the kids hung out there, just having fun and the like. There were scuffles (I remember getting into a fight with some kid who's name escapes me), but we were kids. Occasions such as my mum bringing me fish and chips to the playground, and playing endless games of Danny 1,2,3 all summer long.
4. My Grandad: My grandad was like my best friend for a long time. Whenever the schools were off and my mum was working, we used to go around to our grandparents house. We used to play games in the bedroom (this was when the WWF was popular, we used to wrestle pillows on the bed), and he treated us to pringles. At 3:30, we used to watch countdown. We had our own version of "A Full English Breakfast" (Featuring a glass of coke, 6 squares of Dairy Milk Chocolate, and a bowl of cereal). He was a brilliant man, who could do anything - he worked throughout his life as a soldier in WWII, an estate agent, a TV repairman, and about 1000 other jobs. When he retired he built a boat and sailed it to the Isle of Man, just for fun. He got bored of retirement so he came out of it, to work as a part time journalist for the Daily Post. All that, and he could play the piano too!
5. Saturday Morning TV: When I was little, I much preferred the new ITV to the still stuffy BBC, and had a number of shows I loved. Motor Mouth - which featured a giant version of the classic board game Mouse Trap as one of their games. I used to wake up at 7am to watch about 4 to 5 hours of TV, before heading out into town with my mum to do shopping. Ahh, the memories.
Unlike Ally, I'm not pushy. I would like the following people to continue this meme.
Right, that's your lot for today. I'm hungover (I'll explain why tomorrow), so bugger off. And put the big light off.
