An hour in the past

I spent a joyfully sinful hour this morning catching up, appropriately enough, on The Hour, on iPlayer. I don't know why it should have felt so wicked - Presbyterian upbringing to the fore again, I think - but the combination of wonderful sound (on my iMac) and increasing involvement with this new drama was indeed a joy. But after I'd put it all to sleep and headed downstairs, I found myself somehow still immersed in the sounds and sights of my childhood - for when men wore braces and waistcoats and hats as a matter of course and everyone smoked, I was becoming sentient and this was the world that left the lasting impression.

So what was so different? I can't describe it all, but what about a list? So ...
dingy wallpaper, tending to dark colours; green paint to shoulder-height on office/school corridors; stockings and suspenders (on women, I mean - and hideously uncomfortable this skinny 15 year old found them, before the advent of the truly stretchy nylon whose generic name I forget); dim lights; fog; Humbers and Rovers for the better-off drivers, with the rear door handle at the front of the door; tiny- screened TVs in huge wooden cases (and only one of these in our close in Hyndland for the Coronation); dubious paste in white sandwiches; dark tea with milk (ok - this is a personal shudder not shared by all) ...

I could probably go on. So could you, if you're old enough - feel free to add more in the comments. But over all, and this is a memory reinforced by listening to Stephen Fry on the radio yesterday and to someone telling us how to bake scones as we hurtled up the M6 on Friday - over all these lie the accents of the near past, the cut-glass vowels of Received Pronunciation/BBC English. Even the Queen doesn't speak quite like that these days, though I'll bet there are still plenty of people around ready to judge you by the sounds that come out of your mouth. (Tip for today: try speaking with your molars firmly clenched together. Articulate as clearly as you can. You'll be amused by the instant resemblance to at least one member of the Windsor family).

The scones, by the way, were accompanied by a discussion on how to pronounce them. Skoanes, or skonns?  I always understood it was the truly posh who used the former, but the programme suggested otherwise. When it comes to forehead, however, I seem to be ... well, posh. Forred. And we used to talk about the drawing room, which I used to wonder about: did people draw there? (I was told - it's a withdrawing room). Again, I'd be fascinated by any contributions that you, gentle readers, might care to make to this conversation. It all seemed to matter, back then.

I wouldn't go back to the '50s. There is too much around now that I'd miss - for heaven's sake, I'd have to write letters to people. I don't even know that I'd want to be 12 again. But just today, as I imagine the men I know adorned by trilby hats and the odd fairisle pullover, I shall reminisce. And I realise I can recall, quite clearly, the Suez Crisis - though it all happened on the radio, natch. Smoke, anyone?

A little touch of Egypt in the night...

A touch of Egypt
Originally uploaded by goforchris.

I feel the need to return to the madness of Vegas - only in the blog, mind: I couldn't have stayed there any longer without losing a few marbles as well as my shirt. I invite you to look at this calm picture of our hotel. Our bedroom windows are right in the middle of that wall of the pyramid, looking out at the Sphinx's bottom. The smoked glass and double glazing add an air of unreality to what is, in effect, the only real thing about living there: the view of the desert and the hills beyond the airport. The room is quiet; unless someone passes the door talking loudly all we can hear is the hum of the air-con.

But open that door out to the balcony, and you step into the madness again. Down below are the statues, the palm trees, the fountain, the cinema, the food hall, the Tomb of Tutankhamun, some shops - and under that, the casino floor. And on the casino floor there are hundreds upon hundreds of slot machines, all playing insistent and manic tunes which suddenly resolve triumphantly if someone scores a win. The effect is that of all the pipers playing together at the end of Cowal Games - a sort of unified bedlam. And because everyone smokes on the Casino floor, there is, despite ultra-efficient air con, the smell of cigarette smoke.

On our first, jet-lagged night, it was this which haunted me. I became convinced that the air vents were pumping the smoke into our room - I'm sure that the sense of smell is sharpened when it's dark and I was well away. We've become so used to never smelling smoke indoors that we found it almost intolerable, though I'm happy to say that I wasn't aware of it in the room after that first night.

Another thing we quickly noticed was that it doesn't matter what time day or night it is - nothing changes in the atrium below the balcony. You can get a cuppa from Starbucks at the foot of the lift (I"ll say more of that in a mo) at 3am, and there are always gamblers on the slots and at the tables. The lighting and temperature are constant. I was tempted to look outside at night only once - because I found it strangely disturbing to be in a sleepless world.

The lifts are called Inclinators - we take inclinator 4 to our room - because they run up the corners of the pyramid, and they slope. This is unsettling, particularly after a frozen margarita or two. New arrivals look worried as they tilt gently into one another; the rest of us are only worried when the lifts misbehave and scoot up and down in a random fashion. You use your door key - a card with well-endowed girls on it - to activate the lift. No keys appear to have any well-endowed chaps on them.

Despite the extreme oddity of all this, we were saying "shall we go home now?" by the end of our time there, and realised it had become home. But as I opened my suitcase in snowy Dunoon and smelled the smoky air wafting from everything I'd worn, I was glad to be back in a country where fresh air came through an open window and smoking was no longer considered normal. My washing machine has worked overtime since then.

And, for those who care, Mr B and Master B (senior) both won at the slots and cashed it in. I, on the other hand, played my winnings away ...