I didn’t choose T-Rex because I was a die-hard fan or anything. In fact, because I was given ‘Arrival’ as a birthday present, it was ABBA I really loved. I just had a notion that buying a record was a very grown-up thing to do, so I wanted to buy a record by a band for grown-ups. The teenage girl who looked after me from time-to-time absolutely adored Marc Bolan and to me, she was a very cool grown-up. So T-Rex it was.
When I was almost seven years old, I relished going into the city with my parents. Nottingham seemed as big as London, even Los Angeles. The cinemas, cafes, taxis and traffic combined to produce a sort of exciting sensory overload. The scuffed streets were simultaneously frightening and thrilling. Walking the worn pavements reminded me vividly of the American cop shows my dad would watch.
But it was the shops I enjoyed most. Some say kids are only attracted to sweet shops. Not me. I wasn’t much fussed with sweets. Toy shops were impossibly fantastic though. If the sort of toy shop found in seventies Britain still existed, I know I’d still visit them. But things change. Toys R Us is as different from the toy stores I enjoyed, as the O2 Arena is from a basement jazz club. The former – regimented, clinical, predictable and corporate; the latter – ramshackle, random, chaotic and very atmospheric.
Toy shops were the zenith of any city trip. Nevertheless, it was quite a thrill to be in any shop, and I had just reached the age where I was capable of buying things for myself. Which is why my mum would occasionally allow me solo access to a retailer.
Now I think about it, she must have been hovering by the door, ensuring I didn’t bring a display unit crashing down or become hopelessly lost. However, for a few minutes, I felt I had been handed an enormous responsibility, which I was duty-bound to carry out without a shred of parental supervision.
And so, armed with thirty new pence, I was escorted to the doors of WH Smith in the Victoria Centre (one of the first shopping ‘malls’ in provincial England and, at the time, home to Europe’s largest underground car park) and entered. Alone.
Forty years ago, the larger WH Smith stores had ‘departments’. To the left, running the length of the shop floor were the magazines. Here, men and women would browse and read the publications as if they were using a bright, stand-up library. Through the room’s centre, bookshelves were ranged in narrow alleyways, almost tall enough to obscure the shoppers. Each alley hosted a genre – romance, text books, horror, thrillers and so on. Newspapers were displayed across the shop’s front aisle, between the tills and the windows. There were no movies.
Then, in the top right hand corner, on a raised platform, stood the music department. Lit in orange, contrasting groovily with the bright white tubes of the other departments, and reached via four steps, this was a louche island in a slightly prim sea.
Once inside, rows of metal-legged, deep trays were brimful of twelve inch vinyl discs, nestling inside printed cardboard sleeves. In turn, those sleeves wore plastic jackets protecting them from the hundreds of moist fingers flicking through the LPs. It was the action of the orange spotlights on these jackets which gave the music department its distinctive smell: warm PVC. Not the most pleasant of odours, but there in WH Smiths, to a seven year old lad, the perfume of something very powerful: the grown-up world of popular music purchase.
Unfortunately, the exquisite pleasure of rifling through albums wouldn’t be mine on this occasion. I was here for a single, and they were always stored behind the counter.
I guess the moustachioed fellow on duty at the dark-painted, wooden sales desk would have been no more than twelve years my senior. Though he may as well have been a different species. Not unfriendly, just another exotic part of the vast, grown-up universe whose boundaries I was beginning to breach.
“Hot Love by T-Rex, please.” I must have muttered, hardly audible above the unrecognisable rock, ringing from the speakers on the walls. And off he wandered, into the unknowable shelving which to me, reached back into infinity. He clearly knew his job, because moments later he emerged with the goods. Some singles arrived in a picture sleeve, but my seven-inch disc was clothed in nothing more than the flimsiest white paper, with an aperture just large enough to show its label. I wasn’t disappointed, quite the opposite. My mission was to own a record and, once I’d handed the man my coins, that’s exactly what I’d achieved. With a yelp of “Thank you”, I was back through the racks and their gently steaming, plastic wallets; down the steps, through an alley of literature; past the papers and out to the populace thoroughfares of The Victoria Centre, where mum was waiting.
“Did they have it?” she asked. “Yes. Yes they did.” I confirmed, brandishing Marc Bolan’s first UK number one single.
It’s possible we then descended to the sprawling bunker where our car was parked. But I like to think there was just enough time to call into Skills The Toymaker before heading home.
But it was the shops I enjoyed most. Some say kids are only attracted to sweet shops. Not me. I wasn’t much fussed with sweets. Toy shops were impossibly fantastic though. If the sort of toy shop found in seventies Britain still existed, I know I’d still visit them. But things change. Toys R Us is as different from the toy stores I enjoyed, as the O2 Arena is from a basement jazz club. The former – regimented, clinical, predictable and corporate; the latter – ramshackle, random, chaotic and very atmospheric.
Toy shops were the zenith of any city trip. Nevertheless, it was quite a thrill to be in any shop, and I had just reached the age where I was capable of buying things for myself. Which is why my mum would occasionally allow me solo access to a retailer.
Now I think about it, she must have been hovering by the door, ensuring I didn’t bring a display unit crashing down or become hopelessly lost. However, for a few minutes, I felt I had been handed an enormous responsibility, which I was duty-bound to carry out without a shred of parental supervision.
And so, armed with thirty new pence, I was escorted to the doors of WH Smith in the Victoria Centre (one of the first shopping ‘malls’ in provincial England and, at the time, home to Europe’s largest underground car park) and entered. Alone.
Forty years ago, the larger WH Smith stores had ‘departments’. To the left, running the length of the shop floor were the magazines. Here, men and women would browse and read the publications as if they were using a bright, stand-up library. Through the room’s centre, bookshelves were ranged in narrow alleyways, almost tall enough to obscure the shoppers. Each alley hosted a genre – romance, text books, horror, thrillers and so on. Newspapers were displayed across the shop’s front aisle, between the tills and the windows. There were no movies.
Then, in the top right hand corner, on a raised platform, stood the music department. Lit in orange, contrasting groovily with the bright white tubes of the other departments, and reached via four steps, this was a louche island in a slightly prim sea.
Once inside, rows of metal-legged, deep trays were brimful of twelve inch vinyl discs, nestling inside printed cardboard sleeves. In turn, those sleeves wore plastic jackets protecting them from the hundreds of moist fingers flicking through the LPs. It was the action of the orange spotlights on these jackets which gave the music department its distinctive smell: warm PVC. Not the most pleasant of odours, but there in WH Smiths, to a seven year old lad, the perfume of something very powerful: the grown-up world of popular music purchase.
Unfortunately, the exquisite pleasure of rifling through albums wouldn’t be mine on this occasion. I was here for a single, and they were always stored behind the counter.
I guess the moustachioed fellow on duty at the dark-painted, wooden sales desk would have been no more than twelve years my senior. Though he may as well have been a different species. Not unfriendly, just another exotic part of the vast, grown-up universe whose boundaries I was beginning to breach.
“Hot Love by T-Rex, please.” I must have muttered, hardly audible above the unrecognisable rock, ringing from the speakers on the walls. And off he wandered, into the unknowable shelving which to me, reached back into infinity. He clearly knew his job, because moments later he emerged with the goods. Some singles arrived in a picture sleeve, but my seven-inch disc was clothed in nothing more than the flimsiest white paper, with an aperture just large enough to show its label. I wasn’t disappointed, quite the opposite. My mission was to own a record and, once I’d handed the man my coins, that’s exactly what I’d achieved. With a yelp of “Thank you”, I was back through the racks and their gently steaming, plastic wallets; down the steps, through an alley of literature; past the papers and out to the populace thoroughfares of The Victoria Centre, where mum was waiting.
“Did they have it?” she asked. “Yes. Yes they did.” I confirmed, brandishing Marc Bolan’s first UK number one single.
It’s possible we then descended to the sprawling bunker where our car was parked. But I like to think there was just enough time to call into Skills The Toymaker before heading home.
