For some strange reason, I woke up this morning with that song ringing in my head. It’s been almost 40 years since I visited the Saturday Morning Cinema Show at the ABC in Darlington but I remembered every single word. Busty usherettes with tubs of half melted vanilla, Flash Gordon in mortal battle with the Mighty Ming, Little Rascals being little rascals and the masked Zoro leaving his tag on everything that wasn’t female. Those were the days. Admission was always thrupence but when it rocketed to a tanner, my Saturday morning cinematic adventures came to an end.
An hour into my Sunday morning, I logged onto the interactive thief of time that is Facebook. With the ABC song on constant replay in my mind, a message from a friend had me scrolling through this blog back to the early days of Poor Circulation. It was a walk down memory lane, different memories from different lives. An hour past and a second followed. I was reading the long abandoned first chapter of the slowest book in history. It was the part where a good and recently departed friend had handed me a copy of Jupiter’s Travels along with the warning that it would change my life. That friend was Steve Corby, more commonly known as ‘Beef’, and his prediction had eventually come true.
Happy memories of time spent in the company of Beef; Bike Rallies, Bars and Parties. It was more than enough to banish ‘ABC’ from my mind. The ‘Tab’ on internet explorer was winking. I clicked tab and returned to Facebook. A dialogue box was flashing at the bottom of the page. “Hey ... how are you?”. It was an old friend, a guy I hadn’t spoken to for at least twenty-five years. His name is Dave, Dave Corby, younger brother of Beef. We talked for thirty minutes, thirty quality minutes.
After that conversation with Dave Corby, I opened a dusty old word document ...... and started writing ................