Friday 18 April 2014

A rare photo of Stephenson


Here's a sad sight - this browned-off Christmas tree was put out for collection on the twelfth night morning, and is still there now, over half-way through April.

Maybe it is the plastic pot that they object to. The refuse collectors are very picky in this part of the world. They drive around in a huge crusher truck which has the message, 'Warning - Loaders at rear'. The first time I saw it, I misread it as 'Loafers' at rear, but that is because my mother trained me to look down upon the lower classes from an early age, so that now I have to fight the impulse, so naturally does it come to me.

I am often surprised when I learn from people who get to know me well enough to admit it, that I sometimes initially come over as an aristocrat who has fallen on hard times, but I put this down to misinterpreting the behaviour of someone who is unjustifiably self-assured, even when talking bollocks fifty percent of the time as I usually do.

My mother always insisted on the biggest Christmas tree  - cut or uprooted from out own private woodland - that my father could struggle into the house with, so I also look down on this little, withered rejection which even the rubbish men ignore.

The ceilings in our house were quite high, and one year our tree was so tall that the top twelve inches had to be bent over to accommodate it. The poor fairy had a hell of a time. It was in a pot with roots, and at the end of the festivities it was re-planted. By next year it was about twenty-five feet high, so was put out to grass.

Anyway, what am I doing talking about Christmas when it is an Easter bank-holiday with unusually fine weather going on outside?

I must have drifted off, like you will have if you have got this far. As a special treat and reward, I am going to show you a rare picture of me aged 21, which gives you an idea of how my bored disinterest in everything around me is so often misunderstood. I almost thought I would have made a good Mad Boy for the Hattatts, but it's the wrong sort of madness.

Note the Brian May haircut, but at least I don't still wear it like this:





This is who Jack@ thinks I look like.

31 comments:

  1. You've shown this photo before ……. I think that you resemble Side-show Bob from The Simpsons !!!! XXXX

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    1. Yes, I know I have, Jack@, but you can't have too much of a good thing.

      I'll have to look up sideshow Bob. Someone said I looked like that bloke from The Verve, but my neck was too short.

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  2. Today we had a picnic of Christmas cake and hot cross buns at the beach, so I'm with you on your meanderings

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    1. That's the good thing about Christmas cake - it keeps a lot longer than the buns. I'm sorry, but I could not bring myself to have a full Christmas dinner in the Australian Summer - I need to be freezing and uncomfortable.

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  3. I was in John Lewis when I made the brief comment OMG,

    I was going to put an early photo of me on my blog this morning. Funny coincidence.
    I find aging and looking at old photographs very difficult as I am sure you do like I don't want to do it, it is too painful, and I can be all sensitive about it. You may need Jacqueline to translate.

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  4. I would write "this is trash" on it. The tree, not the photo. The photo is sweet - we all looked sweet at 21. And in black and white.

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  5. my hair looks like that when I wake up. Half medusa snakes.

    why don't the people who live there cut the damn thing up and put it in the bin...

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  6. Carol's called you 'SWEET'..... ha ha ha.

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  7. Dear Tom,
    saved by the bell: my internet & W-Lan are working again - thus I could see that rare photo (again. Yes, I have seen it once before). Very cute!

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  8. A great likeness, I think you'll agree !!!! XXXX

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  9. At first I thought, what a good idea, we could all post a photo of ourselves at 21. Then I thought, in the cold, clear light of the day, we would all end up so depressed that we would stop blogging. Them where would we be?
    What if we all arranged to do the photo thing on the same day?

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  10. I don't know how old you are but were you a teenager in the 1970's you remind me of that time, or maybe late 60's a moody Donavan [ not sure of the spelling].
    Merle..........

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    1. I was a teenager in the late 60s, Merle, and it's Donovan, but he was Welsh. They called him Mellow Yellow (that's right ah...)

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    2. I'm just mad about Saffron and Saffron's mad about me..

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    3. It was a myth about the banana skins, btw. I had a friend who was stupid enough to try it.

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  11. I think I know what you mean, but I am not proud enough to not do it. Most people think they looked better when young - I don't.

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  12. Hello Tom:

    Looking like that we should have scooped you up in an instance and carried you off without a second's thought [unlike the 'loafers' on the dust cart]. As to the kind of madness, we should have dealt with that at a later date!!

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    1. I am now uneasy at the notion of you 'dealing' with my madness at your leisure, and wondering what your techniques would involve. Very sinister...

      You wouldn't scoop me up today, I bet.

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