Welcome to my perfumed garden

...called 55brianb has uploaded a load of trade test transmission films to You Tube (yes, I'm still on You Tube). Remember those, children? They used to show them during the day on BBC2 back when there hardly any daytime TV at all. They include Light, which my sister and I still quote (how beautiful you are on the retina of my eye...! heh) and my own favourite, the magnificent Paint.

I remember them so well. I've been watching them all day! I know, I be bad but I'm a grown up now, I can do what I want. *g*

Then follow me to You Tube! Yes, you know you're very old and probably terribly sad when you've spent all Sunday morning watching this

and this!

this...
this...
this!

and (omg!) THIS! Continuity clock squee!

and this - of more regionally restricted interest but (OMG!) made me almost wee myself with teh joy!)

and this is particularly awesome, parts 2 and 3 especially with A Whole Scene Going, Dee Time and Late Night Line Up - absolute gold, my fellow children of the sixties.

Ah. I feel giddy. I need a cup of tea and a nice sit down now.

46 chapters, 136,303 words, 95% complete.  Only 2 chapters, 8,000 words to finish . Dear god, whatever will I do when it's done? Suggestions on a postcard...

In other news, m'sister just took delivery of a Radio Times from 1st May 1969. So many ads for slimming-aids (and 50/50 featuring men as the dieters which is interesting) and just utterly fascinating. I cannot tear myself away!

and bringeth succour to all prevaricators.

Mark and I had an exchange of views inspired by watching the highly animated Alan Haven in The Music of Lennon and McCartney
Got worms from the look of it, poor chap
Is that what happens when you get worms, go ape shit crazy on a Hammond organ?
Or piles.
Must’ve been sitting on a cold step. You’d think his mother would know better than to let him.

Gosh, the flare on that guitar is so nostalgic, you don't see black and white, 405 line weirdness like that these days, deed you don't. Marianne Faithfull looks exactly like Marina off Stingray, she even moves her head like there are strings attached. I'm on a mid-sixties thing now and feel the sudden need to watch Tomb of the Cybermen, or maybe Bedazzled - the real one, not that thing with Brendon thingy and whatserface.

No, I haven't been drinking even though it is FRIDAY! my darling dearios. May it shine like a great shiny orb for you all. Permission to blow kisses!. XXX

As you're drifting off to sleep. Last night for - who knows what strange, possibly cosmic reasons - my thoughts turned to a cheap little drama that used to play (constantly, it seemed) on afternoon telly back on the 70's called Doctor Simon Locke.

Why that particular piece of crud nonsense popped into my head I've no idea. I didn't care for it at the time; off school for afternoon 'prep' (ie eating toast, watching Crown Court and Houseparty) you'd switch on the telly to find bleedin Doctor Simon bloody Locke. Even as a twelve year old, I knew it was the most awful arse.

But thinking leads to Googling and there it is on imdb with some deply amusing anecdotes.
The budget was so low that the company couldn't afford trailers for the cast, who had to change clothes in the bushes.
Jack Albertson was so disgusted at the cheap, slipshod way this show was produced that he actually pulled out of it halfway into its first season, after seeing a particularly bad set of rushes. Reminded that he still had a contract, he said, "After what I just saw up there, no jury in the world would convict me." He received his release shortly thereafter.

And now I want to cue the helicopter, cue the big shiny light, cue the man on the ground, shielding his eyes, cue the shout; 'Doc-tor... Simon Locke?!'  Cue the boomy trumpet music. Funny how even bad TV memories can make you smile. (o:

I have too much time on my hands, don't I? ::exits in search of coffee and toast::

I don't  know if anyone else is watching BBC4; Top of the Pops, an end-of-year retrospective show from 1978. Now, I'm old enough to remember the seventies - it was Glam Rock and Punk and Disco, wasn't it? Dear God; so far we've had Grease and The Brotherhood of Man! O: - and The Smurfs and Mull Of f***ing Kintyre!! (how can we make this bloody awful dirge of a song even worse than it already is? I know, let's add some bagpipes!) and Noel sodding Edmonds in flares.

And just when you thought it couldn't possibly get any worse... Matchstalk men and bleedin Matchstalk Cats n Dogs.

I mean, as if we didn't have enough to put up with with the rubbish piling on the streets, the power cuts, the dead rotting unburied in the morgues, the Winter of Discontent and all the rest....

Has my memory been playing tricks on me? Was it really this bad?