Purely Horley Crawley Surely

Another random set of words slung together from observations and doing random shit. The title doesn’t make any sense, but it rhymes.

It was time to take the car in for its annual service, done at the Kia dealers so we can keep the seven-year warranty going. The drop off time is early at 8am, but we are actually there early to drop the car off. A quick walk to Charlies for breakfast (the café on the industrial estate and not the burger van in Three Bridges station car park). And then onto the Broadfield Stadium to get tickets for the away leg of the playoffs.

Because we were going to be doing a fair bit a busing around, I got a two-adult bundle of Crawley day rider tickets on the Metrobus app. Only for me to activate it but then have issues once on the bus. It scanned my ticket but wouldn’t register it as for two people, or flick through to a second ticket QR code to scan. The driver got hacked off with me trying and failing to get a second code and just waved us on. Once sat down and able to take a look, it turns out that the two adult day rider bundle isn’t a ticket for two adults. It is two tickets for a single adult to use on two different days. Helen had to use her phone to get another ticket for her to use for the rest of the day. It does mean that I have got another day rider ticket for use at some stage in the next twelve months. The app isn’t clear about this at all. I was cursing myself as I had already counted out the exact change to pay cash for two day rider tickets before changing my mind and using the app. I knew there was a reason I hate there being fucking apps for everything.

After getting match tickets it was back on the bus going in the opposite direction as we were going to Horley for a mooch about.

A visit to the original factory shop before pottering around charity shops. It must be ten years since I last did that in Horley, back when I was only ever looking for records. I remember it quite clearly though, as I had never seen so many James Last records in such a short space of time.

There was a lot of decent stuff around in the charity shops today, and we had a good look in the first three of them we went in. But in the fourth one that was cut short as the atmosphere in the St Catherine’s Hospice shop was toxic as two staff members were having a political so-called discussion. When a third person joined in people started walking out.

From there it was into the lovely Art Deco building that houses the Wetherspoons called The Jack Fairman. The building used to be a car showroom owned by the Fairman family. Jack Fairman had been a formula one driver back in the fifties. When we were sat at the table, for some reason I kept thinking I had already got a drink, and so I kept reaching out to pick it up and have a swig. But drinks hadn’t even been ordered let alone brought to the table. I kept seeing the ketchup bottle out of the corner of my eye and reaching for that until Helen moved it.

We went into Collingwood Batchelor. It was somewhere I’d seen plenty of times but had never been into. I had never seen an advert for the place either, only to then see an advert for it the following night on every ad break whilst doing a NCIS watching marathon.

The service was done, and it had the bonus of them doing a free mini valet as well, so it saved us the trip to the car wash. I wandered back into town. I was looking for a decent sized travel rucksack, one with a separate pocket large enough for my beast of a laptop. I did find one in TK Maxx, but I got some strange looks as I went into various shops and had the tape measure out measuring the inside of various compartments in lots of rucksacks before finding an appropriate one.

I went into HMV. Not for a rucksack mind you. And the escalators still aren’t working in either direction but do act as very weird steps to climb up and down.

I also went for a haircut. Which with my requirements should be an easy ask. It is always the same. A number four on top, number two for the back and sides and a number one for the beard. Just get the clippers out and change the plastic guard length a couple of times. A five-minute job tops. But no. It took the best (or worst) part of an hour. I have no idea why it would take so long. Or why there were twenty-one different implements used. A hair dryer to start things off. Three different clippers, all with no length guard at some point, but five different guards were used as well as four different combs, three different pairs of scissors and a cutthroat razor, shaving gel, a brush, a couple more trips out for the hairdryer, and two different mirrors.

I’m sat in the chair not trying to have the look on my face of “what the flying fuck is going on here.” I wasn’t sure just what to expect next. I was half expecting him to pull a six iron out of his bag, or busting a snooker cue out. I say these latter two things because there were several times when he stopped and was looking at my hair or beard from every conceivable angle just as if he was lining up his next shot at St Andrews or The Crucible. It’s a set price of twenty-five quid, which as it took an hour, isn’t a bad hourly rate, but some of his colleagues got through a couple of people in the same time.

Where Have All The Sevens Gone?

It’s not exactly a secret that I have a thing about records. And that has probably been the case since I was a small child.

There was a record player in the front room, and in the meter cupboard was a cardboard box of 7” singles. Most without any sleeves. I was fascinated by these black pieces of vinyl with the different coloured labels in the middle. I would play the same ones over and over again. The music and lyrics becoming embedded in my brain. I knew the records by sight before they went on.

The black label with the grey band at the top; that was the London American label, and it was Curtis Lee singing “Under The Moon Of Love”. Then there was the bright yellow label with black writing on. This was the MGM label and was Connie Francis’s “Stupid Cupid”. Then there was the purple label of Pye, and Lonnie Donegan with “My Old Man’s A Dustman”, with its humorous set pieces which I still use all these years later. The dark red with faint grey writing of the Parlophone label, Peter Sellers and Sophia Loren “Goodness Gracious Me”, and another London label, slightly different as it wasn’t American. This time Pat Boone with “Speedy Gonzales”. I’ve played the latter two just this week. Of course, they wouldn’t get made nowadays with their cultural appropriation and stereotyping to the fore in them.

Over the years I bought lots of 7” singles, albums, 12” singles, cassettes, CDs and even downloads, but nothing matched that mania for 7” singles. My collection has had its ups and downs in terms of volume, and its back down to a more manageable level nowadays from the peak of over 11k six years ago.

A couple of things have brought the thought of seven-inch singles to my mind recently. The first being that there was a writing exercise around early musical memories a couple of weeks ago in one of the writing groups I go to, and some of the above sentences come from that.

The second is I’m reading a collection of books by Andrew Cartmel in his Vinyl Detective series. I read the first one last year, but I’ve read three more in the last week and I’m about to start on number five. They are thoroughly entertaining, even if the searching for records by the lead character brings about all sorts of shenanigans you wouldn’t expect to come across when flicking through some vinyl.

There is a lot a searching through charity shops for records involved, and it reminded me that I have done a hell of a lot of the same thing over the years. Even in the years where there were virtually no new records being released, there would still be lots of second-hand stuff lying around.

So, I thought I’d go and have a wander around the charity shops of Crawley on Friday to flick through the vinyl as a nostalgia thing.

The first rule of charity shop records is that you have to wade through the mountains of LPs first. There will be lots, and they will invariably be made up of classical, soundtracks and then James Last and Ray Conniff records. I’m used to that.

What I’m not used to is there being piles of those naff albums, but then there being no 7” singles in sight. Not a single one (or a single single if you want). In any of the charity shops. So, in a brief sojourn from workshops and other tedious calls at work I had a quick wander around the charity shops on Boundary Road in Hove only to find the same thing. I thought back to a previous week when out in Shoreham, and it was a similar thing there, even in the record shop I nipped in.

Where the hell have all the 7”’s gone? There used to be boxes full to sort through, but now there is nothing. So much for a nostalgia laden wander around the shops.

And that’s the other thing, the charity shops are disappearing as well. Well, certainly in Crawley. Dr Barnardo’s went a few years ago, but in the last year Sense and Revive have gone from The Broadway, and in the last few weeks Cat’s Protection has closed on The Broadwalk and Save The Children has disappeared from The Boulevard. That’s half of the normal charity shops in the town centre gone (the furniture ones don’t count).

I’m not sure where I’m going to get my fix of nostalgic flicking through seven-inch singles now.

But I’ll leave you with a list. Of seven 7” singles with seven in the title.

The Four Top – Seven Rooms Of Gloom

Cola Boy – Seven Ways To Love

James Fountain – Seven Day Lover

Dubliners – Seven Drunken Nights

Chuck Woods – Seven Days Too Long

OMD – Sailing On The Seven Seas

White Stripes – Seven Nation Army