Monday 11 January 2016

Was it him?

I've just heard from my German mate that an old shipyard warehouse near him is being converted into flats for refugees, and that he is quite happy with the idea. Bremerhaven, he says, has plenty of room even if you discount the brownfield sites.

He also tells me that there are 500 hard-line Nazis on the loose but hiding underground, because they managed to avoid the criminal justice system that took too long to swing into action before convicting them.

Also, he tells me that there is a camp in Sweden for refugees which is so far North that at this time of year, it never gets light. Fear not, because in the Summer it will never get dark either, so it will balance itself out. They ought to tell them this at the border maybe.

So David Bowie has died. I am pretty sure that I met him when I was about 10, and he a young teenager.

I was at a playground near Woking (only 30 miles from London), when a fascinating boy on a bike turned up who we had never seen before.

He was strangely handsome and attractive and all the girls were swooning over him. Someone asked him what his name was, and he said David Bowie. I had just seen the John Wayne film, 'The Alamo', in which they pronounce Jim Bowie's name, 'Booey', and told him that this is the way it should be pronounced.

"I should know how it is pronounced," he said with some irritation, "It's MY name."

I don't know when he turned from Jones to Bowie, but this is a bit too much of a coincidence not to be him, don't you think? Maybe he developed his stage name when he was quite young? I'll never be able to ask him now.

15 comments:

  1. I thought that I saw Prince Philip in Woolworth's when I was little ..... XXXX

    ReplyDelete
  2. As a longtime Bowie fan, I am very sad that cancer has taken him away.
    On a London visit some years ago, I bought a discounted stalls ticket for the play Skylight. I settled myself into my fourth row seat amidst a lot of folks even older than I was, and then glanced to my left to see Mr and Mrs Bowie sit down just a few seat away. I don't think anyone else around us recognized him. The play was grand, too.
    I liked your childhood remembrance. Best wishes.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Sounds to me like you have colourful characters in your life Tom, but that is hardly surprising as you are a bit of a colourful character yourself.

    ReplyDelete
  4. I told my husband this morning about how his sister had met David Bowie and wife when walking her dog in Richmond Park. I've just realized it wasn't David Bowie she met -- it was Sting...

    ReplyDelete
  5. I had sex with him at the Hammersmith Odeon.x

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Who? Tom's German mate or David Bowie?

      Delete
    2. Why don't you mind your own bloody business. You totally ruined the joke.

      Delete
    3. It didn't take much ruining, it has to be said.

      Delete
  6. I heard he took the last name Bowie to avoid confusion with Davey Jones (his surname also being Jones).

    ReplyDelete
  7. I'm not sure if he ever met me; I think not.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. That was mean of you, not to grant him an audience.

      Delete
  8. We all will meet him - in a while :-)

    ReplyDelete
  9. Do you mean that in heaven everybody knows everybody? Or rather, every soul...

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Britta shows great confidence about going up there... or does she mean down there...?

      Delete