Another song from a film, this time
Turtle Power - Partners in Kryme
(they never do time, a sentence for them has to end in a rhyme)
which, as you might have guessed, is from the 1990 'Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles' film, though interestingly, the song came out several months before the film in this country.
I have pretty distinct memories of seeing the film. I was allowed to go see it at the end of the Autumn school term, in December 1990. It was a half school day. I went direct from school with a boy called Sanveer Bakshi to the Odeon in Ealing. I guess the film wasn't until 3ish, as we had time for a McDonalds, and to hang around a few shops in Ealing. There were treadmills in Ealing Sports and Sanveer said we could just have a bit of a run on them, I thought that wouldn't be allowed if we hasn't paid for them, but he said, no, it's fine, so we did.
Anyway, I remember that this was a little independent treat my mum had allowed for me at the end of a long term, and I knew it was about to come crashing down.
Back then, they showed us our reports before our parents saw them, and mine was going to be Big Audio Dynamite BAD! I should say my mother was great, chilled, supportive, understanding, all the way through my education apart from for about 18 month in 89/90/91 when we all were driven a bit mad by some horrible hothousing pressure from certain teachers (all the teachers!) to get scholarships. I was speaking to Nick and Bobby, who were in that class with me, just a couple of months ago, and it was clear we were all, in our way, traumatised by it. It was weird and grim. Those two held themselves together to get those scholarships, but i did not. Fucked up my maths exam! Maths! Of all things! But really, I'd had a pretty horrid couple of years which kind of defined my life and the fact that I always do better when I shrink from, or rather avoid entirely, a challenge, rather than rise to it.
My mother and all the parents were brought in on the squeeze (we're 12, really important to say, we're 12, not 17, not 20). She probably also felt great pressure which she never put directly onto me because i was on a full assisted place, and when you're on a full assisted place, they don't want you just checking out of the high performance program ,,,
Anyway, all this to say, i remember the feeling of watching TMNT: The Movie because it was the first time i'd known what it was to be on borrowed time, or death row, or fool's paradise, or whatever one wants to call the current condition of the human race.
That was me then, pretending everything was fine on the treadmill with a Strawberry milkshake with Sanveer Bakhshi, knowing that my mother was going to, in a couple of hours, lose her shit with me.
Which she did. It is a bit tricky to remember how formidable my mother was when we were children, considering we've not had a cross word for over 20 years, but when Juliette said to her, when Rosa was little and we were extremely knackered, "Mary, I don't know how you did it on your own with four", she said, "nor do i, really. i think i was extremely ill-tempered ..." ... which she wasn't, but she was formidable, and i felt the full weight of it that Christmas holiday.
And, quite frankly, that killed the Turtles for me. I do not think fondly of them. I loved them before. Everyone loved them, slightly bowdlerised as they were in the UK (TMHT and all that). Boys in my class drew and wrote intense, dark, turtle fan-fiction. Again, that's a weird memory. The boy who was really great at drawing the turtles was pretty unpleasant and violent towards me. There'd been people who were my friends who became no longer my friends. A common school tale, but, yeah, weird, how it all relates to the Turtles!
I saw a lot at that cinema in Ealing over the years. Don't think it's a cinema anymore. Saw David Lynch's Dune there for someone's 7th birthday. I think the parents thought it was going to be like Star Wars. Traumatised everybody. Ghost, Honey I Shrunk the Kids, Notting Hill, all the classics ...
Talking of my mother, there was an alley next to the cinema called Barnes Pikle, which had a bit of a reputation, all a bit West Side Story. But Mattock Lane behind the cinema was the best place to park, so we'd run the gauntlet of Barnes Pikle to get to the cinema. One time, my mum was walking through carrying a cricket bat (mine or my brother's!) over her shoulder to intimidate any would-be attackers ... i remember some lads sitting on a staircase laughing and going "fucking cricket bat!"
The song, though, the song's the thing. Juliette knows all the words. I don't remember them so well. What I have noticed, though, is that 1990 and 1991 are the years hip-hop really hit the UK charts, or rather a slightly weird, comical, version of hip-hop - Number 1s in those years include - Dub Be Good to Me, The Power, Vogue, World in Motion, Turtle Power, Ice Ice Baby, 3am Eternal, Do the Bartman. Britain went crazy for crazy hip-hop. Cowabunga!
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