MY PAST INTERESTS PART 1
Wheel of fortune
In 1997 when I was 10 I used to like a programme called “Wheel of fortune”, and I used to record it. I also used to have my own wheel. The game is similar to the Hangman game where you have only one go at a time choosing a letter where as on ‘Wheel of fortune’, you had to have as many goes as possible until you say a letter that wasn’t in the puzzle or when the wheel lands on Bankrupt or Lose a turn. But when it landed on ‘Free Spin’, you had an extra go. The numbers on the wheel were 150, 200, 250, 300, 400, 450, 500, 600, 700, 750, 800, 900 and 1,000 and when the player’s turn, the wheel stopped spinning on one of them and they said a letter that was in the puzzle they earned as many points as the number they landed on times how many same letters that were in the puzzle. They had four puzzles every episode and the show was divided into two halves so there were two in each half and in the second half all the points were double. On the last puzzle when time was running out there had been a sound telling them that time was running out and so the host spun the wheel himself and whatever number it landed on, that was how many points they were playing for. And this time they had one go at a time and they had to choose a letter and if they chose a letter that was in the puzzle they had 5 seconds to solve it and if they couldn’t solve it, the turn passed on to one of the other players.
At one time I saw the wheel land on 150, which meant that for the final puzzle they were only playing for 300 points which was quite typical but also at one time for the final puzzle the wheel landed on 1,000 which meant they were playing for 2,000 points. And at the time when it was a contestant’s go she said, “N for Norman”, and there were 5 Ns in the puzzle which meant that she earned 10,000 points in that go and the puzzle was ‘Finishing Line, Line Dancing’ and the category was ‘The Common Word’. But the puzzle had only 1 ‘Line’, in it. And with “The Common Word” puzzles the middle word was used twice because it related to the other words.
Canals
I used to be very into canals and I used to draw canals and all the bridges over them and I used to enjoy walking along the canal with my Granddad Tom and we used to walk long distances but we don’t do that anymore. I first started walking along the canal with him at a young age but I don’t know what age I was. We first started from Lea Bridge Road and walked northwards. On my 11th birthday we walked from Lea Bridge Road to a riverside café and we walked back after having a spot of lunch. We gradually began walking further north from the café to Tottenham Lock the following year. At times we parked at Lea Bridge Road and walked southwards. And we kept walking along the canal to car parks and start from each one at times. When we came to ‘Wear’ in Hertfordshire the river started to turn west. We went as far as Hertford lock in October 2000 and we never walked any further and I don’t intend to go as far as that again.
I also used to have the waterways maps of the canals in Britain and I used to draw my own versions. Each section was on a sheet of A4 paper. When the pieces were joined together I had a really big map. I also photographed different bridges and had them in a scrapbook. I also used to be into Rosie and Jim because they lived on a canal boat.
Going on long journeys
When I was 10 I used to think to myself that I could phone up members of my family and ask them to take me on long journeys. When I was playing a game on my Play Station 1 called ‘Parappa The Rapper’ and I was playing the first level of the game and I’ll never forget it, I used to think that any member of my family would take me on a journey that would take every hour for every point I scored on that level. I remember scoring 289 points on the first level and asking my Auntie Lisa if she would take me on a journey that would take 289 hours. How unrealistic that would have been. It would have also been one heck of a long journey and it would have taken 12 days and 1 hour, and she said that 289 minutes would have been better which is 4 hours and 49 minutes.
Fifteen to one
I remember a quiz show I used to like called ‘Fifteen To One’, which ended in December 2003. I used to watch it in 1998 and 1999 and record it. I got back into watching it in 2002 but not for long. I also used to be interested in how many people still had three lives intact at the end of round one. The highest number of people I saw have three lives intact at the end of the first round was 8 which I saw on three occasions and other times, no one had three lives intact at all.
Because I was younger and too young to know, I used to write a letter to the quizmaster but never actually sent it and I wish I never had written it. I can recall the times when he said on the programme “Postcards only please”.
I got back into liking it in September 2005 even though it was axed by then and in November I found 2 episodes that I recorded from 2002; unfortunately I don’t have them anymore. I really got into missing it in early 2006 but thankfully I don’t miss it so much now.
The Gunge tank
I really used to be into a children’s BBC afternoon programme called “Get Your Own Back”, Because there was the tank full of gunge with writing on it and I used to be into what it would look like when the grown up went in it. I used to like imagining the gunge in it being white and a different character from a children’s cartoon called “The Blobs” on it for each episode and what they would look like when the grown up went in it.
I remember writing a letter to the host but again never actually sending the letter off and it said that I wanted him to have a picture of a Lavender Castle character called ‘Sir Squeakalot’, on the gunge tank and I can understand now that it wouldn’t have been possible but then I was too young to understand and I wish I hadn’t written that letter and I remember two of the five rules written on the screen half way through the programme and the last two I remember of the five were “No heavy weights”, and “The decision must be original”.
I remember being interested in imagining the three surviving contestants on Fifteen To One being poised for a drop into a gunge tank and going in when they got eliminated from the last round. Now I understand that it wouldn’t have been a very good idea if they had to go home in that state, especially if they were in a wheelchair which some of the contestants were.
I also remember wanting to be in something like a gunge tank myself. In the garden I wanted to be on the top of a slide with the bottom of it on the edge of a bowl the size of a bathtub and filled with white paint with a character on it from a children’s cartoon called ‘The Blobs’, called Poppy Red. I can now understand that it would have been a very bad idea because the clothes that I would wear would have had to be thrown away and there would have been paint in my hair.
Bohemian Rhapsody
I used to like a Queen song called “Bohemian Rhapsody”, and I used to like the silhouette at the beginning of the video, which I first saw on 5th December 1999. I also used to draw silhouettes of the Portland Bill characters in the same pose but saluting and with a green sunset in the background which sometimes you can have.
I’m not as keen on the song now as I was then but it’s not because I have over listened to it. At one time I used to play a part of Bohemian Rhapsody on my keyboard and I played the tune backwards but not all of it.
Geometric designs
Every month I used to draw on paper a square with a geometric design inside it and a number in the middle starting at number 1 in January 1999 to number 72 in December 2004 and I used to stick them on my bedroom door at the beginning of every month and as time went on the patterns became more complex. If I had still been doing it I’d be up to number 139. 9 of those designs remain with me, one of which I failed to complete so here are the best 8.
