Knightmare, Labyrinth & Fighting Fantasy: A Retrospective on 80s Nostalgia
If you look back through your life, you'll quickly realise that certain selected memories have a power that seems to go beyond mere nostalgia. So many of those memories will involve things that have had a huge influence on who you are and the way in which you view the world. When I look back on my own childhood, it's very obvious to me that I felt different from other kids my age: not necessarily worse than everyone else and certainly not better, but in a very real sense...apart.
Where’s The Wabbit?
When I was growing up, our house was always full of men whom I naturally thought were my ‘Uncles’. One of these was a super friendly guy my mum and nan called ‘Legover Jack’. Now, being a small boy, I was obviously curious as to how Legover had got his name. One night, in the old Iron Juke public house that used to stand at the junction of Bellevue Road and the Plains of Waterloo, I asked the landlord – Johnny Giles – why the man had such a strange nickname.
Giles winked at me and said: ‘He likes a drink. The rhyme goes: Legover Jack, Legover Jack, takes three steps forward and four steps back.’
Naturally, I believed this, although it later became obvious that Legover was a ladies' man with so many notches on his bedpost that it was a small miracle he could still sleep on the bed without it collapsing.
In any case, I was maybe five or six years old at the time, and Legover Jack always did the same thing when he saw me in The Iron Duke. He would come up to me, bend down, whisper ‘What’s going on behind here, then…’ and suddenly pull a pound coin from my ear.
It was incredible, and I loved it...and not just because I was always a quid richer whenever I saw him.
It was MAGIC. Real magic.