18 September - 1987 Porn

Silence due mainly to prepping my flat for impending tenants. In order to have a place decorated as you know, one has to empty it and give it a clean before it then gets cleaned again post works done. This is exhausting if you do it on your own as has befallen me this particular week. It's all very well filling cardboard boxes with books and old vinyl ready to be put in storage but if you then can't lift them or place heavier one on top of not so full ones and the whole tower collapses, well, it is depressing.

Part of the problem is that I can't take boxes to storage until after the decorators have been in. This is clearly frustrating as 'things' will be in the way, but it's not merely as frustrating as realising that well stored in various nooks and crannies were approx a thousand cassettes. yes... that many. Half proper shop product and half the ones you've made or friends have made for you. If you're me, you don't just empty them in a bin and say 'voila', good riddance, have not listened to you for 10/20/25 years (in some cases) but you sort of re-examine the stash fondly. This can take hours off your life and you end up binning a grand total of 15 out of the hundreds.
Anyone young moving house in say... 5 years from now, would not have any of this shit as their music would be stored on a harddrive or other drive or a couple of ipods or phone or whatever. Hey presto. The same for their books. But no.. am from decades ago. Bear in mind that all I have to presently empty is the living room/kitchen. All clothes etc are already safely elsewhere. So how can this take so many evenings out of my going out time and be so depressing? Being medium vain, I dont think I have more photos than the next person but perhaps several full filing boxes is... a lot? I can't bin this stuff! It's just too precious to me.

My brain only works with prompts. So, for example, if I chuck the 1992 map of Seville, I will never ever remember again I went there with David, or the 1995 map of Tokyo, I will never remember I went there with Ronny. Sure, somewhere in the photo boxes are photos from those trips but do I ever write dates on photos? No, I dont'. Therefore whether I went to Seville in 91' or '92' or '93 would be difficult to say. Who do I need to say it to, you may ask. Well, nobody but I still can't chuck the stuff. Though 3 full bin liners later, I have had some success.

What made me laugh was the 1987 and thereabouts years, stack of porn. I never bought it, but boys surely gave me some. I rang my friend I. to ask would he want to come get some vintage porn. He correctly assumed this would be pre brazilian porn and by and large it was. Though of course shaving has always been performed. However, the quality of the perms and bodies left a lot to be desired. I kept him one or two mags, one called, and I hesitate but this is not a family blog, 'New Cunts'. I mean... talk about it does what it says on the tin. Though of course they may have been new to that publication and old dogs in another. But shame I have no time to advertise them to the discerning collector. Surely as someone will buy my copies of the Face magazine isse 1 to at least 60, there would be a market for vintage porn? Issue #5 of the Face may have had Paul Weller on the cover, but issue May of New C...s for all I know features the Diana Ross of pussy. I could have happily spent an hour or two reading the ludicrous stories as well or the small ads for swapping wives and so on. This stuff was mostly continental. If you'll remember back in '87 you couldn't purchase full on porn here that easily.

Anyway, too late, all ditched and made the mistake of putting the mags in same bag as a ton of old receipts. Not possessing a shredder, I did my best with manual tearing into strips but am sure my name is still there on many and what a nice haul to find if the bag splits... Horror. It's like, that stuff's not mine. Yeah, go tell that to someone else.

I think that were it not for the availability of porn on the net, my /those magazines would have enticed I. to trek from East London to my flat but alas, he couldn't be bothered. Also something to do with turning 55, he really is not that keen. Told me at dinner recently he turned down a 28 year old. It's just not what he can deal with anymore... They all bond and want more and he's not able to shake them off without consequences to himself. But I digress.

Yes, back to sorting things out tonight. Can't bear it. God give me strength and all that, and if anyone wants dozens of 80's vinyl, say so. Though, ultra depressing this, I spoke to a guy with a stall who showed me a flier from some music fair and the information on it stating you can buy bags of assorted 100 vinyl from the 80's for £2. Well, so much for hanging on to Tears for Fears for this long then! The 80's are only in for fashion. Gave a chunky metal gold chain to a girl the other day and heard myself say 'Was wearing this in '84, early Madonna days, it's totally vintage'. mmmhh, that overused word again.

18 February - Porn & Poker

Damn, there I was, worried that Toph may go cross eyed looking at his computer screen in the pursuit of porn (now that he has broadband and it’s so fast to navigate) but hadn’t thought about potential more ruinous pursuits. The boy is good at poker, always has been (and chess come to mention), but hasn’t played at anything more taxing than family get-togethers for a while. But here we are. A couple of days ago he showed me his latest state of play at a virtual table that you can join with $25. Glad he was not on the $1k tables.
He won, he lost, he won. I quite liked his poker moniker and wonder who the other players round the computer table were. One is a laconic Greenlander. When asked how life was in Greenland he simply replied ‘fine’, maybe he had to concentrate too hard on his game for chats or maybe some polar bears were knocking at his window. So I happily sat on Toph's lap for a while to listen to his 'live' commentary as he went about his moves.
Some of this has got to rub off I thought. Am still at the level where I play according to my hand and not according to what I think the others have in theirs (er, that seems to be what you have to consider) and more crucially what is the best hand anyone could have and I should aim to beat; if not, zealous folding is required. If I had 5 mins to think about it each time, I’d work it all out but you have to be faster. The computer tell you so quite drastically “BB23, you have ten seconds to make your mind up or you lose the chance of placing your bet or folding etc”. Make your mind up NOW. Too fast for me.
Today we have a development. Toph doesn’t join me in reading the papers sprawled out on the floor with smoochies in between getting each other’s attention about what we’re reading – the only section discarded unanimously being the sport one. After a short while I creep up to his office and there he is… as I suspected: the poker is up on the screen. In his defence he says he’s winning. I let him be. Half an hour later I still hear the soft tapping of keyboard whenever he places a bet. I go and remind him this is not on to ignore me this long. But he’s winning (from $19 back to $180, good work for an hour or so). Great, I say, quit whilst you’re well ahead. But oh no, he’s playing against not to so good players according to him and his new nemesis, NM88, who seems to always be ‘up’ on his stash, is not playing right now. Ok I say you have half hour and I pad back to the living room, but not before cursing him with “You’re now going to lose it all cause you don’t know how quit whilst you’re ahead”. Half an hour comes and goes.
He only stops playing two hours after he started, and that’s because his mate J. rings to go for dinner with us. By this time I’ve decided that I don’t want to know if he’s up or down as it would annoy me (if he’s down obviously, and you can never be always up, the game doesn’t work like that). He bounces in and kisses me and tells me he’s won but… I don’t believe him. He would say that, wouldn’t he? Especially upon noticing my scowl.
Am hatching a plot to sign up to his same website and play too, see if I can then catch him out when he says he wasn’t playing at such and such a time but I can easily prove that he is. However this is not easy to set up as a) he can play in the day and at my work it’s impossible (must count as instant sackable offence) and b) do I really want to play at home in the evenings just to prove a point? The point being a) you’re lying to me and b) possibly that a beginner can just about win too. Probably not, however, this spells the first Sunday he’s ever been in the same space as me, but not 'with' me. Is the honeymoon over so soon after 14 Feb? Oh woe! Think the next test will be to appear in fetching undies everytime he starts to play. If the poker wins, I'll get my coat.