Gah, will my childhood heroes please stop dying?

One of my favourite snooker players, Alex Higgins, has died, aged 61…

http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport1/hi/other_sports/snooker/8852020.stm

I might have a Guinness in his honour.

I know I’m late, I apologise. I’ve been at work, and have managed to find a few minutes free to talk about Joffa Smifff, one of my favourite ZX Spectrum programmers who sadly died over the weekend. One of his first projects, if not his very first, was “Pud Pud in Weird World” (normally shortened to “Pud Pud”). This was one of my favourite Spectrum games, mainly thanks to its theme of “In The Mood” reproduced on the Spectrum’s beeper, and the fact that the game would change the octave of every loop of the music, and also flash the border random colours. It didn’t seem much, but as a child, I loved it. And, I’m sure, if I had a Spectrum emulator installed on here, I’d be playing it right now.

Joffa also had a flickr account which I didn’t know until right now.

Hot on the heels of Michael Jackson’s cold, dead heels, I’m gutted to find that Mollie Sugden has gone to the great department store in the sky…

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/entertainment/8129617.stm

I shall always remember her from “That’s My Boy” and the episode where she said “Oooh, titties” about 50 times.

So, you’re looking at the screen and thinking “Who?” I know I normally post these things about somebody famous, then slap a tasteless joke somewhere in the midst. This, is not the case. I’m afraid I’m going to have to go into reminisce mode again, I’m afraid.

Dorothy, or how I knew her, Mrs. Pettler, was my junior school teacher during 1989 and 1990. I would probably put her as the best teacher I had during the whole of my junior school teaching. I have more memories about her class than I have about any other teacher.

I will refrain from typing paragraphs about the whole year, though I could quite easily do it. My most vivid memory has to be when we made plaster-of-paris figures for Christmas. This, was in itself, awesome. Obviously, after the figures had dried, we got to paint them. The particular one I’d chosen (or got given, can’t remember) involved a girl lying on a bed. After mixing the paint to cover the stuff such as the bedsheets, etc, I then spent a full morning trying to mix paint for the girl’s face. I had clearly used a lot of paint for this part of the project, enabling Mrs Pettler to chastise me for wasting a considerable amount of paint. I agreed to use the paint I’d mixed on the figure, therefore, the base of the figure was an odd, off-pink colour.

Not that it mattered. My mother loved it anyway. Allegedly.

I have not seen it for a while. I have a feeling I may have binned it, though it may be somewhere in the loft.

That’s just part of the list. Around the same time that happened, I was in the school play. I was Jacob Marley to Narbi Price’s Scrooge. It got recorded, and I still have the tape somewhere.

The acting bug didn’t leave me for another year, and I played the Wizard of Oz in the 1991 production of… um… The Wizard Of Oz. Narbi Price also featured in this production playing the scarecrow. I think.

There are photos in existence of the whole “cast”. In fact, it even appeared in the Hartlepool Mail. My mother bought a copy of the original print, but after borrowing it to someone to show his parents, we never got it back. The same person also never returned my copy of “Bubble Bobble” for the Commodore 64.

I’m moving wildly off topic, so I’ll just draw this to a close. December has also claimed other lives which have upset me, including someone I met during my visit to the PRoT flickr meet back in September. He was only 24.

Star of TV’s “On The Buses” has finally pegged it, he was aged 92. Apparently, Stephen Lewis (Blakey) is going to do the funeral service…

“I cremate you Butler!”

FOR SALE: Tumbleweed.