You Never Forget Your First…

Monday evening. I’ve just finished work and I do the first thing I always do after turning off the laptop…I check to see what I’ve missed on Twitter since last looking at it at lunchtime. I see the usual things – Tories bad; Labour infighting; Line of Duty opinion; America divided. Then I spot the following tweet: 

My internal monologue went something like this. “Hey I remember that film. In fact, I think that was the first film that I remember seeing in the cinema. 30 years old…man, I’m old. I wonder what I should have for dinner.”

Once I decided what to have for dinner (cottage pie, if you’re interested), I went back to thinking about what other ‘firsts’ have graced my nearly 40 years on this planet, and asked myself would this make a good blog piece? The answer is inevitably always ‘probably not’, but we’re here now and we’re doing it. I will now point something out that should be kept in mind when reading this post: I have not done any significant research for any of these ‘firsts’ (ie. asked my family, friends, or random passers-by) and they are simply the ‘firsts’ that I can actually remember. There may be instances that I’ve forgotten or banished from my memory, but to my knowledge these are the ‘first’ moments that I can actually recall.

Let me know if you have any other ‘firsts’ that you think would be interesting to consider, and feel free to get in touch with your own ‘firsts’. In the meantime, I hope you enjoy this blatant opportunity for me to enjoy some nostalgic memories.

 

First Film You Saw At The Cinema

We’ll start with the topic that inspired this blog post. We’d all like to claim that we saw an iconic film for their first trip to the cinema; Star Wars; Batman: Back to the Future. Alas, no. The film associated with my first trip to the cinema is Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles II: The Secret of the Ooze.

It may be the 30th Anniversary for the release of the film today, but we have to remember that this was back in the day when we had to wait several months for a film to come to the UK from America. I actually saw the film in late August 1991. I was over visiting my family in Derry/Londonderry for the summer holidays and my Uncle Andy took a then nine year old boy to see a film about talking teenage turtles. I can recall no other fact about this trip beyond the film itself and the fact that the cinema is no longer there. This was before the Omniplex at Quayside was built and became my cinema home when I moved over to Northern Ireland permanently in 1993. 

So what of the film? Well, it was definitely a lighter and more child friendly film compared to its predecessor. It contained stunt men doing martial arts in animatronic turtle heads (that still look amazing to this day) that were made by Jim Henson’s Creature Shop. It featured a lot of early 90’s jokes that I didn’t get at the time and probably still don’t understand, and there is a cameo from Vanilla Ice. Wait a minute…how is this film not considered a classic?

 

First Album/Single You Bought With Your Own Money

I’m pretty certain the first album I was given as a gift was cassette tape (ask your parents) of the Michael Jackson ‘Bad’ album in the late 80s. The album is called ‘Bad’, I remember it being quite good. It’s been a while since I revisited his stuff. I can’t think why.

The first single that I actually bought with my own money suffers from the similar problem to my first cinema visit back in 1991. You want it to be a classic by Primal Scream, REM, or even Enigma (??). It turns out that the first single I ever bought was ‘Do The Bartman’ by The Simpsons. Not great admittedly but it could have been a lot worse – Bryan Adams was at Number 1 for 16 weeks with (Everything I Do) I Do It for You later in 1991!! 

I’m still the proud owner of the 12 inch vinyl version (ahead of my time, hipsters) of the, admittedly, very catchy song. Why I went for the vinyl version I’m not entirely sure, and but I’ve definitely gone for the 12 inch version because of the ‘bigger is better’ mantra. Having got rid of our record player way back in the 1995, I’m pretty certain this particular piece of vinyl history has not been played since the year that I actually bought it. The shelf life of any novelty record is always going to be considerably short, and this definitely isn’t the cool classic I hoped my first record would be as I enter my 40th year. However, I remain grateful that I didn’t hold on to my money for a little bit longer and wait for that Bryan Adams jam that never seemed to disappear.

 

First Day At School

I remember very few things about my first day at Frith Manor Primary School in Mill Hill, London back in 1986. In fact the only thing that actually stands out from the day was that I was sent to school wearing large duffel coat with massive toggles. Oh, and I had a Postman Pat school bag! 

 

First Broken Bone

Basketball. We all fell in love with it in the first few months of lockdown when watching The Last Dance about the Chicago Bulls and Michael Jordan on Netflix. 

Prior to this recollection, my only claim to fame about basketball came from the it being the first time I broke a bone in my body. The incident happened when I was sent to compete for the jump start of game simply for being one of the tallest in my PE class at the time. I have never been great at any sport, and I didn’t really like basketball. I picked this class because my most of my friends were taking part.

I jumped for the ball, missed it entirely, and then proceeded to forget how to use my feet to land after jumping in the air. I basically tried to use my left hand to cushion my fall and ended up fracturing a bone in my left wrist. This event may well be clouding my vision on basketball, but the undignified collapse to the fall after forgetting how to land from a jump may well be the last thing I will ever do on the basketball court. WHERE’S MY DOCUMENTARY NETFLIX???

 

First Job

Carpark Attendant at Foyleside Shopping Centre in Derry. You’ll actually be amazed how many people can’t find their car in a multi-storey car park on a weekend. Those of you who know the Foyleside carpark will probably be aware that this problem usually resulted from people, mostly from Donegal, being unaware that there are two different buildings.

Seventeen year old me had to monitor the car park and assist people with any trouble they had, pick up litter, and report any issues to security if they encountered anything suspicious. You would think that being able to earn money and a greater sense of independence over the three months in the run up to Christmas would be the best thing about your first job, and you would be wrong. Basically this job was awesome because I got to use a walkie-talkie! It’s the little pleasures in life.

 

First Gig

This will not come as a surprise (especially after my first single revelation) when I tell you that my first gig was not the cool band that you could wow your children and grandchildren about when recalling your great moments later in life. 

My first gig was a fairly late affair and only came when I was in third year of University in 2002. Me and my friends visited the Odyssey Arena (now SSE Arena) to see Coldplay on their ‘A Rush of Blood to the Head’ Tour. This was the start of Coldplay becoming the arena and stadium filling behemoths they are today and it was pretty surprising how popular they were considering this was only their second album. We should however keep in mind how often Belfast tended to be overlooked by the biggest bands back in these days, and we seemed to really go nuts for any band that actually visited the city. 

Coldplay have gone on to become something of a joke these days, They’re the vanilla of bands, boring, uninspired and generally just a bit dull. Chris Martin’s over-eagerness and marriage to Gwyneth Paltrow are also easy to mock, but I’ll forever hold a soft spot for them mainly for being the first gig that I attended. The moment of the night for me will always be when the band played ‘Clocks’ . I love the piano and that intro is fantastic, but then they paired it with this green laser show that extended across the entire length of the Odyssey roof. It blew mind. It may well be soft, sing-along rock music, but I was here with my friends being distracted by a laser pointer. I was in heaven and I may be part-cat!

 

First Celebrity Crush

Let me take you back. It’s sometime in the early 90s. David Hasselhoff is there. He’s basically wearing very little on top. If you’re thinking that it’s someone from Baywatch…you’re wrong!

Would it help if I tell you that there is a talking car and I’m watching repeats of a favourite show from my childhood? Yes that’s right. It’s Bonnie from Knight Rider. “Who?”, I hear you collectively yell. “Patricia McPherson” I say back. “Oh…” you reply looking at me strangely.

It may seem like an odd choice, but seriously I loved this women back in the day. Patricia McPherson played Dr Bonnie Barstow (amazingly this is all coming out without having to look it up), the engineer/mechanic in Knight Rider whose main duties were fixing KITT (Knight Industries Two Thousand) in the back of a lorry and wise-cracking with David Hasselhoff’s Michael Knight. It was a simpler time in the 80s.

Seriously. What’s the issue here? She’s really pretty, good with her hands (this euphemism was not something that I was aware of back in the day) and clearly has that big 80’s hair-flick that I didn’t know did it for me until this very moment. 

 

First Kiss

This is what you’re here for, right? Salacious details. 

Well, I’m sorry to disappoint. I’d like to fill you in on all the details of how I managed to woo (I’ve never used this expression in my life) my first non-celebrity crush and reveal that my first kiss was a magical moment that I’ll never forget. The details in reality are so uninspiring that it’s probably more embarrassing that you got your hopes up.

It basically goes like this: I was walking home in the dark, from an evening at my friend Arron’s house, through a big large field that linked Nelson Drive and Kilfennan in Londonderry back in early 90s. On the way back I met a girl I sort of knew from school who was with another girl that I didn’t know. The girl I knew asked me where I had been and I told her (I really am this boring!). 

This other girl was a couple of years older than me. I think I was about 12/13 at the time. The girl I thought I knew (I have no idea of her name now…if only she had appeared in Knight Rider then I would be able to tell you everything about her now) then dared her friend to kiss me. Before I knew it, I was having a quick snog with an older woman (still counts) in a pitch black field 5 minutes from home with someone I didn’t know at the time and who I still don’t know to this day. Again…WHERE’S MY DOCUMENTARY NETFLIX?!!

 

First Mobile Phone

The BT Cellnet Philips  ‘Savvy’ TCD128 mobile phone. Oh yeah! 

This bad boy could make phone calls, text message using its single line space screen (scrolling through a long message was a nightmare), stored about 50 names (this is a guess) and it didn’t even have a game on it. When was this phone out I hear you cry? It was the great year of 1999. 

I brought this bad boy to University in Belfast in 2000 and distinctly remember Bank of Ireland offering a free version for signing up for a student account with them. I did so in the first week and was now the proud owner of two mobile phones. What an absolute baller I was!

Of course, it then dawned on me that I didn’t really have enough of a social life to warrant one phone, let alone two. I could of course now ring myself if I wanted to but, as you’ve probably gathered from reading this and my other blogs, the conversation and anecdotes would prove to be fairly derivative and somewhat underwhelming.