Rear view
Phil Kay
It’s time to time travel as Phil realises that 'l one day this day will be ten years ago.
It is Severiano Ballasteros (pronounced ~ in the wind with your back to them — ‘it's every piano by the stairs ross' ) who wins the ()pen for the first time a mere eight years to the month before Marietta lliggs.
Isn't it wild. only five months in late seventy-nine we get .llunhurmn. Anthony Blunt. lran Hostages. Mountbatten and (‘ambodia all starting.
Remember that photograph of the woman and the child falling from a collapsed apartment building lire escape. she's kind of swimming underwater towards the ground just above a smallish plant pot with a plant in it'.’ The boy is falling feet first. one leg raised and his arms out in perfect flight. his clothing torn and streaming up from the back of his neck out of the shot. They are passing a big window on the way down and their feet are nearly touching. Well that happened on 23 .luly N75.
The way lirica Roe shook her bosoms was so primal. It was effective and seemed new to me.
John (‘urry Robin (‘ousins John (‘urry Robin Cousins. Which one was thin and poofy'.’
Mount St llelcns remember all dusty in Washington State'.’ But was that before or after Shirley Williams and the gang of four'.’
(‘an it really be thirty—one years since I was born‘.’ Yes.
My god. surely it can‘t be true that one day this day will be ten years ago: this. the day l was given some boots by Donald and I threw the bread spinning into the toaster. yo. to land upside up all incredible in the middle of the rear‘.’
And what else will be ten years ago someday?
I have found and chatted the day and month and the rough time of two thirty in the afternoon for my first memory: watching the 1972 Olympics in the room upstairs in my house. in my mum‘s room with the sunshine.
t's never been fourteen years since Rick Astley had his first
number one. My god. it doesn‘t feel like fifteen years since
(‘hallenger exploded. It has and it must. I can‘t believe it‘s twenty years since that day when the Queen was fired at by blanks by the young lad from l-‘olkestone. Wow. that‘s simply amazing. isn‘t it‘.’ Well. the way I always remember it is that it feels about the same time the same year that McEnroe ended Borg‘s 41 singles wins string of victories.
Wild. isn't it'.’ Can it really be ten years since 7()() million tuned in to watch the wedding of Lady Diana to Prince Charles. sorry. I mean twenty or only sixteen years since (‘live fucking Sinclair had his thumb up in a (‘5. One thumb up mind you. only one thumb. he was an academic exhibiting flair.
Remember. that was the year that siege of Gibraltar ended and (leneral Franco had laid siege to 'the rock‘ in what I always thought was a vain effort to force Britain and the unwilling population to transfer sovereignty to Spain.
You could have fooled me.
You've gotta be kidding me when you say it was only seventeen years since Amadeus" was released and that is the same long ago as when Reagan got elected. ()ld Ronald Reagan with the pretend faces and the utterly insincere talking. smiling and waving. livil Nancy with the head. ()thers suffered because of them.
Knock me down with a feather. can it really be twenty-three years since Karpov suddenly was there with the ideal easy to remember yet devastatingly Russian and true name Anatoly Karpov. Like Kasparov but without those two stupid extra letters.
I am not aware of the ways in which a chess champion can look not like a chess champion. and Anaton Karpov looked exactly like a chess champion. He had been champion for years already and yet he didn‘t start his reign in my head until nineteen seventy/weight.
John Fardell
The way Erica Roe shook her bosoms was so primal.
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136 THE LIST 192‘: May 2001