Memory Lane: Part 7

 So, we've seem so far, that I had a lot pf places to get my 'fix' of toys and models, and as you will recall from the first instalment, it was one of these lifelong (well I was only 12 going on 13  after all) haunts which gave forth my first whiff of wargaming models, and I was now buying the odd pack of figures (not blisters, but the baggies used by Citadel for trade stockists) and using my model paints - enamels back then - to give them rudimentary paint jobs.

I was going into Beatties and Redgates and looking at the boxed games including War Of The Ring, D&D and Sarforce: Alpha Centauri (a scenario from which had of course, given the name to the Sheffield synthpop pioneers 'The Human League') but I could not make that link between the miniatures and these strange new products - and it was frankly a little fucking frustrating.

I was looking everywhere, even in Sheffields 'Underground' book store 'Exit Books' just down from West Bar... I knew instinctively that there was a connection somewhere between the Commies and misfits and this new world of games, but, it was not as literal as that and the nuance was lost on my 13 year old self.

I was noticing however, that Military Modelling had adverts in which now clearly advertised these little metal figures, so I haunted some really dodgy newsagents in rough parts of town to find copies of MM. 

I worked out a method to avoid trouble, by getting a bus to the Wicker (look it up on the internet and look at it in 1981 - it was a truly dangerous place) early on Sunday morning whilst the louts and ne'er do wells were abed, where there was a dark and dank newsagents of very ill repute, who (conveniently) kept Military Modelling going back ages,  at the back of the store in the zone of filth, with some serious porn (or as I think of it, a 2 for 1 deal, both types of mag having the same physical effect on a youth of my tatstes. And whatever happened to those luxurious bushes?)

Exit Books, was run by the stereotypical 'student Lefty' burnout, and you could beuy everything from Das Kapital to the works of R. Crumb (and they were an eye opener). You could find fluyrs for all kinds of Leftist events and these in themselves were an education of sorts at a time when Fascism was all so real, and the 60s and 70s were not that far away. We were living in dangerous times, I cannot stress that enough.

If it wasn't the bomb that would get us, it would be skinheads or punks. The skinheads seemed a particularly nasty lot in Sheffield, and I remember their faces and names - which, you sort of just learned osmotically - to this day. 

They would even kick the shit out of a 14 year old, innocently leaving Hopkinsons, model kit in hand and taking a left rather than a right at the end of The Gallery would come up hard against the Right, if the small group of Skinheads whohliterally claimed 30 feet of raised tarmac walkway above the streets of Sheffield and adjacent to BHS (remember that great store?) as 'their' territory.

You'd think that these morons, who idolised a guy who invaded most of Western Europe, would have set their sites somewhere higher than a flight of stairs and the back doors of BHS.

But, if you went this direction, you got to cross an echoing footbridge which crossed over the road, so you could look down on the traffic and stomp your feet to make booming metallic sound - these were simpler times with simple pleasures - before jumping down the two flights of stairs on the other side, making some wonderful sounds of which Stockhausen or Einstürzende Neubauten, would be envious.

So, we risked it, learning to cut through Timpson's shoes to avoid the contested staircases, and looking left and right befor emerging, confident that these Stormtroopers of the Turd Reich would not attack kids in shoe shops (perhaps there was a dictat from the Fuhrer Bunker to that effect).

Once across the bridge, we would go up King Street, through the back doors of C&A, dropping to the basement via the staricase, through the 'Clockhouse' maternity department and through the exit into the Hole In The Road, a literal hole in the road with subway connections  to various parts of the city, and a fish tank and benches. It could be a pretty rough place, but generally it was a wonderful, futuristic, Brutalist place and we loved it. Later, we would skateboard through it on Sundays when that craze hit, and it was awesome, and we upset nobody because back then, city centres were devoid of life.

In the last image, above, you can see the 'hanging man' sculpture which was mounted on the Modernist Co-Op building, mentioned in an earlier instalment at the top of King Street, which ran betweenh that store and C&A.

Well, I have allowed myself to wander a little, but it has hopefully set the scene a little for the grim but exciting teenage world I grew up in and which, would see me become the gaming force of nature I am today, and I promise we'll get there next time...

TTFN