20th Century Childhood – Spirit of Dee

No Music Video Monday post again this week as my internet connection is still being problematic and it’s difficult to upload things/find videos etc. I feel like a very poor excuse for a 20th century girl at the moment as this whole thing is reminding me that I am just as completely and utterly reliant on the internet as everyone else in this godawful 21st century! Thankfully Geth rang BT again today and we’ve been promised that our new router will show up tomorrow.

(I’m not going to say anything along the lines of ‘I wonder what I did before the internet?’ because I know exactly what I did. I listened to music and wrote all day long, apart from when I was rudely interrupted by people making me go to school! Not so different from my life nowadays, except for the fact that I didn’t obsessively log all my writing online and I had non-internet ways of listening to said music, many of which I’ve had to rediscover in the last few days.)

Anyway, today I’ve found various non-internet things to do such as going for a long run, organising all the ’80s episodes of Top of the Pops that are stored on my digibox, and playing ukulele. Back to writing tomorrow.

OOTD 29th July 2019 — OOTD: it’s still muggy out there! T-shirt eBay/Fruit Of The Loom (2018), trousers Christian Siriano Runway Style (2018), shoes Primark (2018).

Today’s earworm playlist:

Avicii and Aloe Blacc – SOS
Crash Test Dummies – Mmm Mmm Mmm Mmm
Duran Duran – Come Undone
Duran Duran – Sound Of Thunder
Bobby Brown – Two Can Play That Game
Dire Straits – Romeo And Juliet
Duran Duran – Electric Barbarella
Duran Duran – All You Need Is Now
Elaine Paige and Barbara Dickson – I Know Him So Well
Freddie & The Dreamers – I’m Telling You Now
Nik Kershaw – I Won’t Let The Sun Go Down On Me

As I’ve been in a bookshelf place this week, what with getting my own ones back up and running, I thought I’d share my favourite of Mum and Dad’s many bookshelves: the one in the dining room that used to be an escape of mine when I was a kid.

This is where Mum keeps all her old childhood books from the ’50s. I was a voracious reader when I was little, and I would scour the whole house for new books to read (there are a lot), but this was one of my favourite spots to spend a Sunday afternoon. I’d pick out something that sounded interesting, and nine times out of ten it would be a jolly-hockey-sticks romp about maverick English boarding school girls in the ’50s. It was a world that was completely far removed from my own, but I found it fascinating, and those books later inspired one of my own characters in one of my ongoing novel series. I would settle down in the chair next to the bookshelf, so that once I was done with one book, I could immediately grab another.

Other books on the shelf included the entire Little Women series (published as four books in the UK – Little Women, Good Wives, Little Men and Jo’s Boys – I must have read them twenty or thirty times), Alice In Wonderland/Through The Looking Glass, and the entire What Katy Did series. Some real classics there, and I still borrow them from time to time.

Tag: 20th Century Childhood

When the world switches off

Stuff I like about my parents’ house #4: bookshelf full of classics