The return of play

This week something came to me in all this heat being out of doors for a bit of the time.
When was the last time you played in a public space?
I think it would of been about around age 13 and 2/3rds and in the process of reading a book around inner child rediscovery, the topic of when  and how the inner child got put away came up.


Here's a dialogue between mine and it's bigger self that follows the first one I printed a short while back.
Initials: LG - My younger side BG Big Girl/Adult side
BG: Hello again
LG Hi. You came back to see me?
BG: Yes.
LG: Why?
BG: It's been a short while since you and I made a pact. I need to know how you feel about it.
LG: When you said I could come out?
BG:Yes, that is it.
LG:I feel happy now. 
BG:That's good. Do you feel safe?
LG:I feel safer cos I know you will come and  protect me.
BG:I understand. You had a bad time in the past. Is there anything else you'd like to talk about?
LG: I want to run around and play outside. But I can't.
BG: You do? Why not?
LG: Before I got put away Mommy said too old for it.But I want to.
BG: Okay then, I say you go out and have a run around. Lot's of people run and there's no reason for you not to.
LG: You mean I can just run around?
BG: Yes but think about where, that's all. I'll help you with that.

On Sunday I run around a tree lined garden without a care in the world for the first time in ages in an area that was a bit secluded so I wouldn't feel too self consious but with plenty of light and near a sidewalk in case I needed help. It felt great

P.I.R. 40th Anniversary

Okay apart from having a outbreak of a rubbishy internet last week what else happened?
Well I had the pleasure of a BIG 10 cd box arrive Tuesday that had been preordered  a while back - more or less the minute I heard about it - as it seemed unbelievable.
It's taken four whole days to listen to it all!
Produced very much with the blessing of Messers Gamble and Huff themselves under Ian Dewhirst and programmed by Ralph Tee who in 1986 made the legendary 14 lp retrospective, this set gives us over 170 songs a good number previously unavailable on cd from the very beginning of their record label into the 90's and one previously unissued track. Some have unique 12" mixes and 45 edits.
You see  40 years ago the label was established and this is THE anniversary set.
Tracks in the soul, funk and 'disco' genres are covered with for instance disc seven for instance is mainly jazz influenced  with Dexter Wansel featuring.
Everything has freshly mastered for this set from the original masters to sound as good as it can.
If that wasn't enough there's a 60 page booklet giving track by track narration and a US label discography something that's very handy.
For people like me who love this stuff it's a dream come true - such much timeless soul -  and what is more this little gem only costs £41.37 from Amazon which is very little to pay for such a set.

I did however spend some money on some extra separate cds on Edsel of albums by MFSB who were the backing musicians of many of the labels hits and also of Teddy Pendergrass and Archie Bell & the Drells.
Edsel do most of the post 1976 albums from that label sounding really good.

Changing times

Just put me in pretty dress and put my hair in a plait with colourful lovely silk ribbons and I'll be your little girl forever.

Just make it so!

Shannon Doughty in Little House on the Prairie

Literary edition

I think I'll begin this blog with a few words on the death of Maurice Sandek who was born on June 10th 1928 and who sadly died Tuesday last (May 8th 2012).
Maurice you see was a writer and also a children's illustrator  when he wasn't doing that, he work on stage sets and  a few other things.
As stories go he give us a big one "Where the Wild Things are" which was later adapted as a play and a good many others.
Maurice knew childhood sadness all right having lost many of his family in the Holocaust but he also knew of children's resilience and the the ability to find fun in the most trying of situations.
He'll be missed.

Having converted  a few book vouchers I had as birthday presents for my bigger self for something well, you know - littler - is so easy you'll wonder how come more don't, I've finally gotten around to reading them.
I think we all know I love Jacqueline Wilson's  work so I bought three books with four stories  with a bit of a common theme that of emotional ups and downs.
Dustbin Baby is a title for 'older readers' by which I think they mean people my age and is the story of April Showers attempt to piece together the whole history of her life through all the carers, foster parents back to the teenage boy who found her in the bin all cold and lonely.
It's a very moving and thoughtful  story that does have a happy ending.
The Bed and Breakfast star is the story of a families struggle having fallen on hard times  told  mainly though Elsa, lost their home and goes through the revolving door of no homes available and dumping grounds otherwise know as Bed and Breakfast accommodation that  is run down for welfare benefit claimants.
Elsa is a happy go lucky kind of a girl who we learn misses out on her education but in the end is the heroine raising the alert as the fire risk accommodation actually catches fire!
The Suitcase Kid talks about some that ought to talked about handling family break with Andy having to spend alternate weeks at each parent, custody battles and new step families.
The Lottie Project on the other hand is Charlie's discover of her Victorian twin through a school history project where she discovers as bad as her life is her twins is much worse.It also tackles the difficulties of employment for single parents.

Maypole

Yay! A bank holiday over here so I'm able to relax a bit  read and yes write today's blog entry although the idea came to me a few days ago so i just jotted down the initial thoughts cos my short term memory isn't good at all.
Seeing it's May Bank Holiday I was starting to think about what kinds of things I used to around this time of year and one of the things that stuck in my mind was school maypole dancing

While that  picture wasn't taken it my school, it was taken at a school in Gloucestershire, England actually, it is very very similar to how we did it.
Those who had two left feet were selected as 'ballast' to hold the maypole down, the uniform was similar except the boys nearly always had shorts on and in alternate boy/girl pairings we'd dance weaving in and out creating the plait you can see from the top of the pole downward.
One difference is we have what in England you'd call 'Pumps'  a cotton with rubber soled gym type shoe that you had to clean and polish before the public performance with matching three-quarter length socks.
I use to take me ages to polish and whiten mine!
I was pretty good at it actually having a good ear for the tunes we danced to so we kept in time with the music as well as each other. Well it kinda helps, eh?

Tomboy

Thank goodness it's stopped raining as this damp stuff does nothing for my bones! The world is catching up with us as one in six UK adults sleep with cuddly toys and I just calmly announced to the world I was going straight on my swing after work and nobody batted an eyelid!!!
'Tomboy' has a longish history to me as  mode of expression putting together looks that got past all that crazy parental "it can be like but not be too obviously female" stuff way back in the day and in hindsight was the first obvious through dress attempt I did to keep  my LG side alive spending most of my free time dressed in shorts and girlie tops.  In fact just thinking back for a second, some of my tops from that period did have children's characters on them!
This was before I rediscovered Pinafores  and the whole school girl bit which is wonderful.
People tried loading guns, cars and cowboy outfits on me but they weren't touched as I'm sure anyone could told them really I preferred dolls but I did like playing with trees as at our first house we had a tree lined strip between the access road  and the main road where we could play at collecting sticks, hide and seek and attempt climbing.
Seeing weather aside we're heading toward spring I bought a few new clothes around that style.

One thing from those days that remains is I like laying on the grass, being sat or even crawling across carpets playing or colouring (it's a sensual thing) and sometimes Shorts can be more modest so I bought a new pair but minus all that brash sophisticated groan up branding all over them.
Anyway these are genuine kids PE shorts for the maximum authenticity and dead easy to keep clean!
It's easy to team T shirts with shorts something I'm sure most parents know but it can be harder to get  stuff in bigger sizes that isn't so obviously groan up with it's images and logos but I found two that did the job perfectly in their own different ways.

Well you were expecting something Kitty, right? But this is a more a Teen take on HK with it's texting slogan and Kitty posed with cellphone and will tie in my white and black shorts to as well as  skirts.

Aye! Indeed. It's Happy the talking cat from the anime Fairy Tail who's so cute and adorable. You can get him from animUK a online anime merchandise store in the UK although this T is American.