ICM - Leeds Design Agency

The year was 1979 when I was nine and it saw the explosion of designer jeans with the launch of Calvin Klein’s and it saw the release of the heart thumping box office smash – ALIENS.

Our girlie karaoke anthem was released into the charts “I will survive” by Gloria Gaynor”, which reached No. 1. What on earth did all girlies screech out before this came to fruition?

Sundays was spent watching a cranky old scarecrow chase a stuck up wooden doll offering her “a cup of tea and a slice of cake”. The walkman was launched and the ghetto blaster died.

1979 was the year I first fell in love with a boy in my class called Mark Seastrom. He was gorgeous but I never told him. I did the usual trick and pretended I did not like him.

I first heard the radio version of the tinder box about the big dog with eyes as big as teacups and I loved it. I still love the story written by Hans Christian Anderson.
Click the link above for the audio version.

Hope you enjoy the sto…

Read the rest...

Whatever age you are most people generally measure whether that time was good by the music of the time. And for me at age nine glam rock was king. Who could forget the great bands of the day – T-Rex with the sexily androgynous Marc Bolan, Sweet with their all-in-one multi-coloured jumpsuits and Slade, the hyper rock ‘n’ roll band with the biggest sound from Brummie Noddy Holder.

Trendy meant wearing trousers with at least 18 inch wide flares and my favourites were the two-tone ‘loons’ (I think it was short for pantaloons), purple and red for everyday wear and bright yellow lycra for the youth club. And of course platform shoes. I had to beg my mum to buy me some, she was afraid I would fall off them and hurt myself. But in the end she relented and I teetered on them proudly and only fell of them occasionally (but don’t tell my mum!).

Important events that occurred in 1971 but I was too young to notice – The Beatles split, Greenpeace was formed, decimalisation came into force, Philips launched the VCR video recorder and the Nike swoosh was born.

Favourite TV programmes were The Two Ronnies (and it’s goodnight from him), The Generation Game with Brucie (Nice to see you, to see you nice) and The Liver Birds (hilarious Liverpool comedy).

Toy crazes consisted of Klackers, like a giant pair of conkers that you clacked together, a totally lethal toy almost guaranteed to cause serious injury, and the fabulous Space Hopper – boing, boing, boing, ouch! Health and safety would have had a field day!

So that’s my trip down memory lane – would I go there again – absolutely, now where did I put those ‘loons’�…

Read the rest...

My memories of being nine are a little hazy – apparently it was 1983 and there were lots of new things in the world, Microsoft Word for one, the single source of the massive spike in stress since computers were invented. Lots of things happened, and I can’t say that I paid attention to ANY of them, changes in the big world were on the telly, they washed over me like so much airborne sherbet dip.

I remember wearing school uniforms that were the wrong shape for me, I was shaped like a comedy carrot and the uniforms were meant for . . . well . . . smallish humans. My hair was all over the place (and yes – I had hair back then), I gained a secondary nickname of The Fleece. I was good to mediocre at most things, hung around with a mix of kids and generally did not quite fit in any category. My form teacher for that year even told my parents this at a Parents evening that I was a bit of a conundrum, they just could not letterbox me.

And then nine became a good year for me – I found out I could run like a whippet, and when I went up against the fastest kid in the school (who happened to be the HARDEST kid in the school as well) and won, something happened. I got something that had eluded me for a considerable amount of my youth. Confidence.

I also found that I could draw, and what was more surprising – I enjoyed it. This gave me MORE confidence, and it all started rolling from there. The rest is history. I am now as messed up due to overconfidence. I have tattoos all over, only three fingers that bend, a surprisingly life-like left leg and an internal Sony Minidisk player where my fourth rib should be . . .

Oh yeah – as much as it guts me to say it, mum was right, you CAN eat too much chocolate and be sick. Do it anyway . . . Its all part of being Ni…

Read the rest...