Does time make the weather better?
Posted on | July 28, 2008 | 145 Comments
Yesterday was a beautiful day. Warm, sunny, the perfect summer’s day in Ireland. It seems like a rare treat during what should be called the ‘less cold rainy season’.
Yet when I was a kid my summers were filled with them. I remember being sunburnt, my arms and legs as brown as an African’s shite from running around the place in my t-shirt and my shorts. Going to bed at night and it was almost hilarious. You have these deep brown arms, a tanned face and head and neck, yet your chest and torso is as white as white can be.
We played football every single day. ‘Next goal the winner’ when it was 68-67 after hours of play. We climbed trees, threw rocks at the turkey farm roof that was nearby, played kick the can, made ramps to jump off on our bikes which never resulted in cool jumps but almost always in serious injury, we got chased by older kids or adults who we annoyed, we clubbed our money together so everyone could get a 2p Mr Freeze, we built huts, had water fights with balloons, went to the parks, and basically we were out of the house from early morning until the sun went down.
Sometimes we’d get taken to the beach, Brittas Bay usually and the water was always fucking freezing. It was like stepping into an ice bath but it didn’t matter because you could get out of the water, warm up because the sun was shining, run up dunes and fling yourself down trying to get up as much speed as possible, and then when you were exhausted you could go back and eat a sandwich which, no matter how well it had been wrapped in tinfoil, still had large amounts of sand in it.
It can’t be just a kid’s memory that the weather was better back then, can it? I don’t remember the rainy days we have now. The cold, the wind, the deluge, the monsoon shite we get nowadays just didn’t exist back then. At least not in my mind.
Maybe the weather knows that kids these days are perfectly able to entertain themselves indoors whereas we kinda had to be outside. After a while there was someone with a Vic20 or a ZX81 on which we could play ‘Flight Simulator’ but for the most part you were making catapults and trying to shoot crows out of trees.
Is it just memory? Was the rain a big part of things then? Maybe it was. But how did we get so tanned? Why is there no recollection of sitting around in somebody’s house waiting for the rain to stop? We were outside kids. Healthy, rumbunctious and probably very annoying for the families whose walls we used as goals and whose gardens we had to climb into a couple of times an hour to get our ball back.
Is it just time playing tricks on the mind? Was the summer the same? I don’t think so but maybe we just didn’t care as much about the weather as we do now.
What I do know is that this would be a much more awesome place to live if it was like yesterday more often.
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145 Responses to “Does time make the weather better?”
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July 28th, 2008 @ 12:11 am
Ye’re right, Twenty. I haven’t had a decent case of sunstroke since ’71. Those were the days when we suffered from heat rash, and sunburn. Kids these days don’t know what they’re missing.
July 28th, 2008 @ 12:11 am
I have a scary number of those same memories, I guess the range of activities to an Irish kid back then was so small that it’ll be the case for most. As for the weather, I think we only remember the summers as the couple of weeks that have the good weather.
July 28th, 2008 @ 12:12 am
Horrible weather – costing me a fortune in cold drinks.
July 28th, 2008 @ 12:13 am
Grandad – you’re right though, they need a good burning the youth of today.
Alb – surely if we were indoors bored and waiting for the rain to stop we’d remembe that? Especially if it rained as much as these days.
July 28th, 2008 @ 12:18 am
Is that bu r ning or bu m ing with a dropped m ?
July 28th, 2008 @ 12:21 am
Stop being a dirty, hatching pervert.
July 28th, 2008 @ 12:21 am
I’m not as old as yourself so I probably missed some of the scorchers that my parents told me of but I remember many days in the 80s being stuck in 2 channel land or playing with lego all day.
One staple you missed from the summer that I remember well was the water fights, everyone in just shorts out on the street with 2 litre soft drink bottles filled to the brim. And the one time we emptied some through the letter box of some students that refused to give our ball back.
July 28th, 2008 @ 12:23 am
We were outside kids
Yeah so were we, Major, and I wouldn’t change it for anything.
July 28th, 2008 @ 12:24 am
We all were though, weren’t we?
July 28th, 2008 @ 12:35 am
I’m old enough to remember the shocked reaction as the trial of Brady and Hindley unfolded.
July 28th, 2008 @ 12:37 am
Jesus, you must have had amazing summers that long ago
July 28th, 2008 @ 12:44 am
Kick the Can was a great game…but my favorite was ‘kiss spin the bottle’. U could play it anywhere..the lane behind my house or the church grounds. Or the concerts we used to put on in the lane..we charged the little kids one old penny to sit on a milk crate and watch the girls dress up in their mammys clothes and sing ‘when the red red robin goes…..bop bop boppin…’ The big boys on our road dug a hole about eight foot deep in a bit of waste ground, lined it with pallets…covered it with a mound of earth (would have done newgrange proud)with a tunnel for air and the rest of us gobshites paid our pennys to climb down into this bunker come den. How dangerous was that? Parents today would have a mickey fit if they thought their darlings were getting up to such dangerous shit.
Aw…I miss being a kid. I wonder what the neighbours would do..if tomorrow I stood out on the road..with an empty can of coke and roared “HEEEEERE Aul Fellas and Aul Ones..does any of yez want a game of Kick the Can”
July 28th, 2008 @ 12:46 am
I’d join ya Nolene
July 28th, 2008 @ 12:48 am
Summers were scratchy as I had to help bring in hay – and stacking bales in a barn was hell!
July 28th, 2008 @ 12:49 am
But what did you do with the bodies?
July 28th, 2008 @ 12:53 am
We ate them – it’s what maggots do!
July 28th, 2008 @ 12:54 am
You disgust me.
July 28th, 2008 @ 12:59 am
“Is it just time playing tricks on the mind?”
Alas Twenty, it may well be. Think of a favourite TV programme that you have not seen for ages. Focus on those images. Then find it on youtube.com. For me, they are never how I remembered them.
But maybe that’s just me. (Click me name for an example)
July 28th, 2008 @ 1:02 am
heh, poor old Bill. He’s looking ancient these days.
July 28th, 2008 @ 1:04 am
Eamon is Camilla Parker Bowles
July 28th, 2008 @ 1:08 am
pfft, ‘taken to the beach’ you don’t know you were born, we were taken to a river in Rathdrum, fuckin’ freezing it was. And none of us could cope with the ‘rapids’ I lost two dollies.
July 28th, 2008 @ 1:09 am
Dollies are for girls.
July 28th, 2008 @ 1:11 am
River in Rathdrum? Would that be the Meeting of the Waters?
July 28th, 2008 @ 2:05 am
You disgust me.
All part of the wondeerful world of nature!
July 28th, 2008 @ 2:28 am
I hate to sound like a hippie, but the change in weather is global warming. That means more rain for Ireland in the summer.
*ducks and leaves*
July 28th, 2008 @ 2:34 am
Its “Rambunctious” major, i had to look it up, you see..
You are wearing the old rose tinted glasses..
Life was all jumpers for goal posts and climbing trees for me too, hanging out with your neighbours was done then too.. Parents nowadays are afraid of the bogey man, and wont allow the freedom we had to roam, and explore and grow.
its unfortunate, but it will never be like that again. We live in a society of fear now.
The weather by the way, was always shit…
July 28th, 2008 @ 2:43 am
We were out rain or shine and although I always remember it as being sunny, there are loads of pictures lying around at home giving the lie to that: us with wellies, padded anoraks, red cheeks, snot, and damp, tangled hair.
Our parents would have died if they could seen what we were up to. Climbing the pipe over the “Jobbie River”, racing our bikes down the hill and across the main road – when i think of that now I cannot believe that none of us were killed.
And all the usual torn up knees and elbows, torn clothes from climbing fences and styles and trees, concussions from falling onto the concrete under the swings. It was sore sometimes being a kid, but we got to push and test ourselves and learnt our limits in our own ways far more quickly than the cooped-up kids of today can, I reckon.
July 28th, 2008 @ 2:43 am
stiles.
doofus.
July 28th, 2008 @ 4:48 am
I think global warming is a crock of shit.
I remember when, a couple of years ago, we were having a sterling summer and people kept saying how unseasonably hot and wonderful the weather was and wondering why it was so. A mate of mine said, ‘Shit, dunno what everyone is on about, when I was a kid we just used to call it summer.’
July 28th, 2008 @ 4:49 am
So much for starting a debate in the “crap Irish blogging scene”? I know, lets talk about the weather or something important. You moan about it and then go and post something as trivial as that?
July 28th, 2008 @ 8:24 am
Who said I was going to start a debate? And the post is about memory more than weather. And the amount shite coming from Greece these days is too much.
July 28th, 2008 @ 8:29 am
I think it’s a selective memory thing. If i were to ask my son about the heavy rain two weeks ago, he would be going “What rain” All he will remember from this summer is the sunny days, the summer camp, and the chinese girl who cuts his hair for whom he has serious hots.
July 28th, 2008 @ 8:35 am
Yes, for me the real problem with the current blogging world is reading posts and comments about how crap other posts are. I would much rather read a personal observation, no matter how mild or nostalgic, than find myself any further entrenched in that SEA of ARSE.
I was born in: 1976! And that year there was a heatwave – I think there were lots of long, dry summers around then and in the early eighties, I remember hosepipe bans and farmers worrying about drought. But apparently we had two wet summers in a row in 85/86? Did someone say that here? So perhaps it’s just a pattern.
However, I got sunburned by accident yesterday, so I feel a little ambiguous about the heat today.
July 28th, 2008 @ 8:39 am
It’s strange now I think about it, but I also have memories of better summers, of wearing shorts and burning my legs on the plastic seats of my parents Vauxhall Viva and being told to stop whinging as the third degree burns took hold. We played army, hound and hare, kick the can and were out from morning to evening without a worry. Never see that back in Scotland now, overweight kids because parents are afraid to let them out of sight. We walked miles to go fishing unaccompanied by adults, ran about the old quarry and all that shit that is unsafe but somehow fun.
July 28th, 2008 @ 8:51 am
My daughter went to sleep out in the tent the other night, for the first time, so excited. WE woke er up to bring her in when we were going to bed, and she wanted to stay out all night. I dithered about it but ultimately the vision of someone hopping over the wall and grabbing her in her sleep was too much for me. I hate it but I suppose you can’t recreate that safe world just by acting like it’s real.
Anyway, it was never real, was it – the aformentioned Moors murders being the stark example. We were just more innocent of it because there was no Sky news…
July 28th, 2008 @ 8:51 am
This is it. People haven’t changed, only what we know about people.
July 28th, 2008 @ 8:57 am
The weird thing about childhood memories for me is the small details, like memories under a magnifying glass.
Because we spent so many child-hours hanging out on bikes, with footballs, etc. the micro-geography was everything…
Whose path was best for launching a wheelie…(Carmel’s at no. 5 because it was sort of broken and titlted up a bit.)
The pattern in the wrought iron of the school gates that served as the goals for wrold cup and 3 and in. Now and then some caretaker or other would grease up the hinges on that gate and you’d inevitably end up wiping it off your hands on the grass outside no. 14 on the corner, avoiding dogshite which was everywhere.
Smoking robbed Gold Bond under the trees just in side the school gates and hiding the boxes in a drainpipe but on top of a stone in case it rained.
July 28th, 2008 @ 9:01 am
I love how nostalgic we are about dogsit. White dogshit…
July 28th, 2008 @ 9:04 am
Anyway, you’ve inspired me, I’d better go bring my kids to the beach.
July 28th, 2008 @ 9:12 am
People haven’t changed but society has, there were less opportunities for predators in my day because I was part of a community that took responsibility for its young. I walked to school because the route had houses all around with other parents who kept an informal eye on us all. In those days fewer mothers worked, and the people who lived there tended to have been there for a few years. The town I lived in has become a commuter town, no real sense of belonging and community and the kids live in front of the telly because their parents are too knackered to do anything else with them.
July 28th, 2008 @ 9:44 am
I used to hate going down the mine in lovely weather that would last two and a half months , then rain for my two weeks in Bray. I apologise to Morgor for insulting him in a previous post, I did’nt realise he was so influential.
July 28th, 2008 @ 10:03 am
I dunno, PP. I reckon bad things have always gone on but people were less likely to speak up about it, and like others have said, there wasn’t 24-hour news coverage back then.
When I think of how my mother used to let me run around, and she was one of the stricter ones. Now, with my kids, in the same town, at the same swing-park with all the rubber chips and rounded safety edges we never had on our slides and monkey bars and things she is far, far more cautious than she ever was with me, and she wouldn’t dream of letting them out to play unwatched at age 6, even with the gate closed and them just in the garden.
Of course, it’s always possible she just loved me less…
*Mope*
July 28th, 2008 @ 10:03 am
I must be a bad parent as “pug”, the eldest of our brood, was out most of yesterday probably doing just what we are all reminiscing about.. he finally returned home at 7PM.. got told off for not being back at 6 and was sent to bed with naught but a slice of toast for his lateness.. some of his fresh scratches and bruises definitely looked the part. But, we live in deepest rural Wales and most of our neighbours know him/keep an eye out for him and his evil henchmen.
July 28th, 2008 @ 10:03 am
You did the right thing there Kev. You don’t want to feel the wrath of morgor’s bombast.
July 28th, 2008 @ 10:07 am
What I do know is that this would be a much more awesome place to live if it was like yesterday more often.
Very much agreed there Twenty. Brilliant day.
July 28th, 2008 @ 10:12 am
God, hot sun & being forced to eat fruit that was ‘in season’ (about to go off)- especially rhubarb & stewed plums (hot, in a heatwave). Do kids get hives now? None of mine do. The misery of it almost wiped out the fun stuff.
July 28th, 2008 @ 10:12 am
It’s ok kev, I realise it must have been a typo.
No-one would dare challenge the mighty morgor.
*does Haka*
Anyway Twenty, you’re some nostalgic whore, living in a dreamland of the 80′s.
Memories are very selective, I bet when you think about school you remember all the good times having a laugh with your mates, rather than the boring or unpleasant parts.
I think someone made a point about old tv shows a while ago and Jo had a similar post on her blog about it.
Is anyone else here of the age of the cartoon “Mask”.
It used to be up there with transformers when i was a kid, watched 5 minutes of it a few years back and felt sick. It was so boring, patronising and just plain shit.
Do you remember the commodore 64? it used to be the most amazing toy in the world, compare it to a PS3.
July 28th, 2008 @ 10:12 am
We were practically expected to get at least one broken bone or concussion per childhood. Parents didn’t hear the horror stories about delayed brain bleeds and detached retinas and horrible deaths and stuff back then.
I’d had 3 broken bones from 3 different things by the time I was 14. If somebody told me now that my kids would end up in the emergency room as much as my brother and me, I’d be horrified because of all the complications and shit you hear about with stuff now. Not to mention the possibility of getting flesh-eating necrotising flippen fasciitis from just being in the hospital. I know, I know it’s unlikely, but it makes you think twice as a parent in a way I don’t think our more poorly informed parents ever had to. A little knowledge is a dangerous thing and it’s making us all too cautious with our kids when things are probably a good deal safer. Swing parks and toys certainly are. We probably all gummed more lead paint off our cot railings than a kid gets in her entire lifetime these days. And look how fabulous we all turned out…!
July 28th, 2008 @ 10:16 am
Fruitpicking in Lambs.Getting off the train and chargin’ up to Beaverstown ‘cos you didn’t have a voucher. Pissin’ in the bucket to make the rassers weigh more, scabbin’the strawberries, gettin’ a good field. Waitin’ on the water lorry, Yep. Definitely warmer in the fifties.
July 28th, 2008 @ 10:19 am
Do you remember the commodore 64?
Sadly yes. And queuing for the space invaders machine in the pub.
July 28th, 2008 @ 10:27 am
School was a pain in the fucking gooch, Morgor.
I had to wait till I was an adult before I broke bones, Sam.
July 28th, 2008 @ 10:29 am
Ahh no I think the summer is still like that for kids, we are in doors so much we don’t realise it. The kids on my road were playing lamp to lamp the other night whilst I was watering the flowers. Then they wanted to do it, then there was murder over who’s turn it was to hold the hose. There is always one little bitch girls don’t you think, I was looking at one such madam and she was bossing them all about, “your not allowed play with us” seems to be her mantra. Regardless of the weather them little fraggels are always out and up to divilment, one day I went out and all the heads of my flowers in the garden were gone, they had took them to “plant” them in one of their mammy’s gardens. It was gas them all blaming each other. I definitely think kids still have good summers we are just not invited.
July 28th, 2008 @ 10:29 am
I have a two inch scar on the side of my head from when my mate came bounding off our homemade ramp on MY BMX as I was crawling across the road to get my football which had gotten away from me and he twatted into me.
Serious injuries are what cool scars are made from.
July 28th, 2008 @ 10:30 am
Ohh i still have my commodor 64 and it works, wonder is my favorite, it takes 20 mins to load!!
July 28th, 2008 @ 10:33 am
I have scar on my leg where the sister stabbed me with a bottle. She was like that as a child. No wonder I turned out the way I did.
July 28th, 2008 @ 10:34 am
Nonny, is that wonderboy? the little boy with the huge head?
or am i getting mixed up with the megadrive.
Could you get really rare cartridges for the C64 or was it tape only?
July 28th, 2008 @ 10:36 am
yep sorry wonderboy, his little fat head ha. I only have tapes and I have two black joy sticks with a yellow button in each corner.
July 28th, 2008 @ 10:45 am
I never broke a bone… touch wood, I’ve to get back up a high ladder later.
As a kid I once trapped myself in a very small shed when the asbestos roof broke under me… took me hours to get out. Never told anyone.
Once had to escape (through a huge nettle patch in short trousers) from a perv who was out to molest me. Told about that one, coppers came round.
There was definitely more sunshine because I had this magnifying glass which was great for starting fires and fucking up my karma with small insects.
So yes, an average childhood… outdoors, danger, perverts, setting fires and killing small things. And gallons of calamine lotion for the sunburn.
July 28th, 2008 @ 10:46 am
Calamine lotion – I wonder what happened to the people who used to make that stuff ?
July 28th, 2008 @ 10:50 am
I wonder what happened to the people who used to make that stuff ?
They died out with the bugs that used to give kids hives.
I remember being covered in them once as a kid and the count was about 90 of them on my body.
July 28th, 2008 @ 10:50 am
What happened with the perv? Did you just happen to be in the wrong place at the wrong time?
And calamine was for the chicken pox, wasn’t it?
July 28th, 2008 @ 10:50 am
It’s still out there Maggot, buy yourself a bottle for the scent of Summers past.
July 28th, 2008 @ 10:52 am
I don’t know if they ever got him, they may have known who he was from the description… perhaps he had previous form. There’s been a swish shopping centre on the site for years.
July 28th, 2008 @ 10:58 am
It’s still made, excellent for chickenpox.
July 28th, 2008 @ 10:59 am
In the long, hot summers of my youth I remember running out from behind lots of ice cream vans and I never got knocked down once (and I ate a lot of ice cream)! I used to eat ‘screwballs’ which were clear, plastic cones filled with vanilla ice cream with a ball of chewing gum at the bottom. We got a little wooden spoon to eat the ice cream with and made daleks out of the cone from matches and stuff. Great days!
July 28th, 2008 @ 11:06 am
Just looking at reports on BBC – must be a bugger for those SOCO guys in their white suits.
July 28th, 2008 @ 11:07 am
bit behind with this as i am supposed to be working… maggot that is a LIE. you are full of scars because our mother threw us out of doors & immediately washed all the floors so we couldn’t get in again (the days of lino) & you fell out of trees & had nosebleeds to pass the time.
July 28th, 2008 @ 11:09 am
before I get back to work- Hooronahonda – I remember those too! Did they have a weird brught green syrup in them?
July 28th, 2008 @ 11:13 am
Children don’t seem to get good nosebleeds the way we did – I had to have my nose cauterised. Less rat poison about these days?
July 28th, 2008 @ 11:14 am
They did indeed Sister M. Sometimes we got green and sometimes we got red we could not give a name to the flavour as no-one really knew what flavour they were. Probably had more E numbers than you could shake a stick at.
July 28th, 2008 @ 11:15 am
Jesus – I’d forgotten all about stewed plums and custard that burned the mouth off you.
July 28th, 2008 @ 11:16 am
Hooronahonda – spangles acid drops – great for rotting teeth!
July 28th, 2008 @ 11:16 am
I got sunburnt on the soles of my feet once… dont really like the sun.
July 28th, 2008 @ 11:20 am
I definitely remember hotter and sunnier weather when I visited Ireland during several summers as a kid. Recall sunburn, swimming in in the river (I was the only one who could swim!) and nicking apples… harmless amateurs besides the current scumbags living in my neighbourhood today. Oh, it started to rain in 1976, so I’m sorry to everyone for causing climate change! Someone mentioned fruit-picking… that reminded me of how I went strawberry picking one day with my cousins, such a fucking slave labour trade. Reminscing about childhoods… does this mean we’re getting old?
July 28th, 2008 @ 11:24 am
Being bored I just pulled this out from the International Journal of Climatology:
The records of sunshine hours obtained since the late 19th century from four stations distributed throughout Ireland were analysed. A gradual decrease in sunshine hours has occurred at all four sites since records began. Increasing cloud factors, resulting from enhanced evaporation rates over the Atlantic as sea surface temperatures have risen, is one possible explanation for the decline in sunshine.
July 28th, 2008 @ 11:44 am
Jesus Maggot, I remember them very well! do they still make spangles? I bet they have changed the name to something ridiculous like scrotalfizz or upemwang. My own drug du jour used to be fruit flavour polos.
July 28th, 2008 @ 11:46 am
This is neat – Women arrested after flight
Other passengers remarkably restrained!
July 28th, 2008 @ 11:47 am
Great post. I had a conversation yesterday with friends in the sunshine eating BBQ Burgers and drinking cold beer. Exact same topic, same conclusions. We’re with you Twenty. Different world back in the day. And that is to be lamented I guess.
July 28th, 2008 @ 11:49 am
do they still make spangles?
No, mores the pity. I hated the “Old England” flavour ones.
July 28th, 2008 @ 11:58 am
“do they still make spangles?
No, mores the pity. I hated the “Old England” flavour ones.”
They used to remind of cough sweets as I recall, or was that Pear Drops?
July 28th, 2008 @ 12:01 pm
Yep – cough sweets – blech. Closest thing these days to acid drops are those sour apple sweets – loaded with fluorescent colours !
July 28th, 2008 @ 12:11 pm
Mmmm, pear drops…
July 28th, 2008 @ 12:29 pm
You could get cartridges for your Commodore 64. They were great because you didn’t have to wait for them to load.
Re Sunshine in the 80′s, we haven’t had a proper snowfall since about 1982 either, what’s with that??
July 28th, 2008 @ 12:40 pm
I fucking hate sand, the though of it on my skin and between my teeth.
A grass beach would be fucking cool.
From the time I was 6 till about 15 I had to pick strawbeeries for about 6 weeks of the summer. What a back breaking bastard of a job.
I remember getting badly burnt but I also remember days when it was pissing raining.
I remember my hands being numb with the cold as I searched throught the wet leafs looking for the berries. And from 6 years old! Fucking child slave labour. Imagine these days if a 6 year old was left out in a field from 6 in the morning till 2 in the afternoon and expected to pick 4 or 5 stone of berries.
Great days. Especially the strawberry fights. The unripened ones were bloody sore if you got one in the head. Then there was the over-ripe, mouldy ones which would splatter all over you on contact. I’d love a strawberry fight right now
July 28th, 2008 @ 12:44 pm
Those commodore games were entertaining even though they were simple and crude.
There’s a really addictive game online that is the equal of C64 games,
i dare you to try it : http://www.handdrawngames.com/
Add your scores to the group : wolfenstein to see if you can beat me
July 28th, 2008 @ 1:07 pm
I had a commodore 128. Bought it second hand off my mate’s older brother (he shafted me too, cos he was aware i was flush with confirmation money), the bollicks.
In our estate we used to have “Tours de France” and “Wimbledon” (complete with chalk marked tennis courts on the road, with no nets) depending on what was on tv. Another favourite were the gang fights with kids from neighbouring estates, which involved a lot of stone throwing, and no one being hit apart from the parked cars we were hiding behind.
Mr Freeze was 7p in my youth, or seven-penny-drinks is what they were called at any rate.
July 28th, 2008 @ 1:15 pm
morgor, what level – easy? medium? hard ??
July 28th, 2008 @ 1:16 pm
Peader, did you have to do “tattie” picking in October, lifting frozen spuds out of the ground for eight fucking hours with the added bonus of hitting a mushy rotten one. Eating your fucking sandwich with filthy hands. When I got older I was allowed to lift the baskets full of potatoes and drop them on the tractor and that was a promotion. What a way to spend your October school holidays, its no fucking wonder I think farmers are cunts.
July 28th, 2008 @ 1:33 pm
Excuse me.
The Commodore64 DID NOT accept cartridges. Software was loaded, on a hit-and-miss basis from tapes, for which there was a dedicated add-on.
I believe the confusion is with later models from the Commodore range, like the Amiga.
Don’t try to tell ME about video games!
July 28th, 2008 @ 1:33 pm
I’ve yet to break a bone either. I’m a careful (some might say cowardly) person :)
Pear drops taste like nail varnish. Mmm.
Calamine lotion great for cicken pox? Apparently not! It dries out the pox and ultimately makes them itchier. Oats in a sock, soaked and rubbed on the skin/put in the bath is the way to go, apparently. My children have yet to be afflicted. I haven’t yet summoned up the nerve to go rub them on the afflicted.
Conan, those are scary stories. I can’t imagine not telling about the shed. Were you parents violent!?
Though I do remember breaking the glass of a painting in my room, from colouring on it, and cutting myself cleaning it up, and not telling.
I wiped the blood on one of the boards of the bed, and it left a big gory smear and stained.
That’s one ting that frutrates me about Harry Potter, though, the refusal to involve grownups.
July 28th, 2008 @ 1:36 pm
Stream of conciousness there Jo?
Very impressed!
July 28th, 2008 @ 1:37 pm
morgor, what level – easy? medium? hard ??
well start on medium. easy is too easy. hard will be too hard if it’s your first attempt.
The Commodore64 DID NOT accept cartridges
Oh yes it did, i think they plugged in at the back, i ever saw one though. I had 100s of tapes at the time.
July 28th, 2008 @ 1:39 pm
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/b/b6/C64_Interfaces.jpg
There’s the cartridge slot, innit?
July 28th, 2008 @ 1:40 pm
No stream of consciousness, just a response to various comments. Who do you think I am, MB, Molly Bloom?
July 28th, 2008 @ 1:41 pm
Yeah, spent many days ‘picking spuds’, a bloody awful job as well. Miserable cunts paid us 5 pound a day and a small plastic bag of spuds for me Ma.
July 28th, 2008 @ 1:44 pm
There’s the cartridge slot, innit?
AHA! I knoew someone would fall into my little trap, but I didn’t think it would be you Twenty!
Yes, it’s a cartridge slot.
A memory-expansion cartridge slot to be precise.
Try again.
July 28th, 2008 @ 1:44 pm
This sticking ‘h’ key is giving me a midlands accent. I can assure dat’s not de case.
July 28th, 2008 @ 1:45 pm
I wish I had one of them, MB. That would solve all my alzheimer-esque memory issues.
July 28th, 2008 @ 1:45 pm
Maybe he had the Commodore 64 GS which was the console version of the C64.
http://www.zzap64.co.uk/zzap66/thec64gs.html
July 28th, 2008 @ 1:46 pm
I never had a C64 but I thought some of the games were on cartridges. Was the Vic20 a cartridge machine?
July 28th, 2008 @ 1:48 pm
I had a C64 but never saw any cartridges for it. The only one the I remember having cartridges was the Commodore Amiga.
July 28th, 2008 @ 1:48 pm
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flimbo%27s_Quest#Reaction
in your face MonkeyBalls.
July 28th, 2008 @ 1:51 pm
Jo, no, it just part of the ‘being caught where I wasn’t supposed to be’ syndrome that most fre-ranging kids are faced with now and then. Some instances you fess up to and others you keep deeply schtum.
Btw I’m intrigued by your being “frutrated” by Harry Potter. Sounds painful!
July 28th, 2008 @ 1:53 pm
and it wasn’t a console version, it was the original with the keyboard.
http://classicgames.about.com/od/classicvideogames101/p/Commodore64.htm
July 28th, 2008 @ 1:55 pm
It was the Commodore Amiga (128) that took cartidges, I think. Didn’t have one meself. I was too busy trying to get tapes to load on my C64, or typing in code for days on end, only to have it all crash at the end.
The Vic20 predates the C64, and I didn’t have one of those either, but I don’t think it took cartridges either.
Emulate them on your computer. Have a look here; http://www.emulator-zone.com/
July 28th, 2008 @ 1:57 pm
The cartridge was also distributed with the ill-fated Commodore 64 Games System console (also known as the C64GS).
In whose face?
July 28th, 2008 @ 2:03 pm
nerds
July 28th, 2008 @ 2:05 pm
still in your face MB.
http://classicgames.about.com/od/classicvideogames101/p/Commodore64.htm
Rear Panel:
* Cartridge Slot – Accepts program and game cartridges.
July 28th, 2008 @ 2:10 pm
nerds
Yeah I agree. I was too busy picking strawberries and spuds to have time for computer stuff
July 28th, 2008 @ 2:14 pm
Show me a cartridge.
July 28th, 2008 @ 2:19 pm
Calamine lotion great for cicken pox? Apparently not! It dries out the pox and ultimately makes them itchier. Oats in a sock, soaked and rubbed on the skin/put in the bath is the way to go, apparently. My children have yet to be afflicted. I haven’t yet summoned up the nerve to go rub them on the afflicted.
Mrs Blowfly’s answer was to put us in a cool bath to which had been added a big dollop of baking soda – it did seem to help.
July 28th, 2008 @ 2:20 pm
MB click link on cartidge from Wikipedia C64 entry they have a picture of a Vic20 cartridge and do state that stuff was available on cartridge for C64
July 28th, 2008 @ 2:20 pm
http://www.classiccmp.org/dunfield/c64/h/softw.jpg
July 28th, 2008 @ 2:23 pm
If you click on my name it will take you to a list of all reported software cartidges for the C64
July 28th, 2008 @ 2:25 pm
And if you go to buyreland.com you can still buy Vic20 and C64 cartidges for a couple of dollars.
July 28th, 2008 @ 2:26 pm
Oh for fucks sake.
this is the best I can do….
The C64 offered me two ways to play games – cartridge and tape.
http://the40watt-thisblogison.blogspot.com/2008/01/my-gaming-history-p1.html
July 28th, 2008 @ 2:27 pm
Commodore Wars!
July 28th, 2008 @ 2:31 pm
Bagsy be Lionel Richie!
July 28th, 2008 @ 2:31 pm
The nearest I came to having a computer was when I was given a very early Commodore calculator. It was similar in size to a cereal box and the decimal point key was missing (which is the reason it was given to me). It could not calculate worth a fuck but I was highly amused when a mate showed me how to type ‘shell oil’ and other pithy phrases on it.
July 28th, 2008 @ 2:35 pm
‘Commodore Wars!’
Sounds like a game cartridge for the C64.
July 28th, 2008 @ 2:36 pm
Morgor, we had a C64, and the first game we got was international soccer(or something like that) and it was a cartridge that you stuck in the back.
July 28th, 2008 @ 2:36 pm
Hours of entertainment typing 55378008 in my first calculator, simpler times
July 28th, 2008 @ 2:38 pm
Thing is, it was never sold as a cartridge-based machine. It had a cartidge slot, for memory. Enthusiasts may have created games on cartridge after the machine’s actual shelf-life, but it was primarily a tape-loading pain in the arse when it was alive.
I was there. I remember, rather than believe what some spotty 16yr old posts on Wiki.
If one person can honestly tell me that they had a cartridge for a C64 I’ll admit I’m wrong.
But you didn’t, so I’m right.
July 28th, 2008 @ 2:42 pm
Monkey, i refer you to comment #120.
next time I am down home, I’ll take some pics, and post them.
July 28th, 2008 @ 2:44 pm
If one person can honestly tell me that they had a cartridge for a C64 I’ll admit I’m wrong.
I did too.
I wasn’t too sure of the machine when first mentioned, but after seeing a few links I’m certain that it was the commodore and it did have a cartridge.
NOW FUCKING GIVE UP!
July 28th, 2008 @ 2:48 pm
People who need to get laid
July 28th, 2008 @ 2:48 pm
I never had that stuff when I was at the age for it. Couldn’t afford it, I suppose.
But I did have sheets of paper and pens and would make the ‘Star Wars’ game where two people each draw 10 spaceships on their half of the paper. Then you would draw a spot on your side, fold the paper over, rub it so the spot transfers over to the opponent’s page and try to score a hit against their ‘spaceship’.
July 28th, 2008 @ 3:02 pm
Monkey Balls, I had a C64, and most of my games were on tape (most copied on a double deck stereo from mates tapes), but I also had two cartridges, one was a football game, and I can’t remember what the other was. You could also get a disk drive, but I didn’t have one of them.
July 28th, 2008 @ 3:07 pm
Supergrover, that was resourceful.
We made fortune tellers (cootie-catchers was the less pc, American term) and my mother could make a mouse out of a handkerchief. But we played a lot in a way I don’t think kids do so much anymore….
July 28th, 2008 @ 3:20 pm
Morgor – check out Wolfenstein…..let battle commence.
July 28th, 2008 @ 3:25 pm
Holey flaming testicles, RedLeeroy!
I was playing it for ages before I got a score like that!
You try to beat my score on hard and i’ll try and beat yours on normal…
July 28th, 2008 @ 3:29 pm
cool, but people are watching……it might be later !!
July 28th, 2008 @ 3:38 pm
True, Jo, the unaffordability of technology forced interaction which was good for the imagination and creativity, no doubt.
July 28th, 2008 @ 4:09 pm
addictive little game though eh?
July 28th, 2008 @ 4:09 pm
Not just unaffordability – I didn’t know what a computer game was til my brother was about 7!
July 28th, 2008 @ 4:18 pm
morgor i got 361 points on hard, 361 for fuck sake.
July 28th, 2008 @ 4:30 pm
It does what it says on the tin.
A good trick is to look up the maps of the top scorers and see how they won…
July 28th, 2008 @ 4:53 pm
Oh for fucks sake, you’re on 6560 and i’m on 6559.
July 28th, 2008 @ 5:30 pm
whoop whoop whoop.
there’s a new high score in town baby.
July 28th, 2008 @ 5:59 pm
Ahh, the summers of the 70s. I remember being down at Brittas Bay and all the driver’s doors of the cars open with the Dad’s all listening to the GAA. Old Ford Cortinas, Austins, those really old Opel Kadetts and Renault 12s (pronounced Renawltt). Orange bevelled edge Flasks with the cups long gone and lost in the dunes years before. USA biscuit tins full of sambos, TK red and maybe Lilt too.
Pie pie come out.
July 28th, 2008 @ 6:13 pm
Jo, that thing that flew over your house was actually three vintage planes in formation. They were doing laps over the city .
July 28th, 2008 @ 8:55 pm
Yes! Water fights, the craic, thanks for the reminder! We were always outdoors, climbing trees, swimming (mind the rats!), or playing in each others gardens, no one minded. If they did they got a dog or planted briars . Sometimes we even got ice-cream wafers. One great summer there was a local cement mixer we took turns to spin each other in.
I think there were more empty green spaces too, open to kids? Hot tarmac stuck to your bare feet. Warm Miwadi. Makeshift tents that weren’t waterproof. My godchild thinks it’s great when she & her friends are allowed to make their own sandwiches. Sigh – just not the same.
July 28th, 2008 @ 9:29 pm
God, spinning in a cement mixer! There’s an urban myth waiting to happen.
Holemaster, I was fairly close, so :)
I forgot there was an airshow yesterday.
July 28th, 2008 @ 9:36 pm
I was looking up at them in mid burger flip with cold beer in hand imagining we’re were being invaded.
July 28th, 2008 @ 11:30 pm
we we’re. damn.