Thursday 14 January 2016

2015. The year that killed my youth

OK, so its a bit of a dramatic title....but 2015 was a bit of a shitty year for the heroes and icons that dominated my childhood.

I'm a late seventies child, so I only really remember the early eighties onwards (there are some years in the late nineties/early 00's that are a bit hazy, but the memories are there somewhere!). So of course, I have early memories of watching "Jim'll fix it" and Rolf Harris....and well, their reputations are now far more questionable than they were back then.

Watching dodgy blokes on TV aside however, I really mean the rest of my youth, I love Hammer Horror (and pretty much all dodgy horror movies) so the death of Christopher Lee in May was a loss.  After the death of Robin Williams in 2014, I knew that movies would never be the same again but now I can be doubly certain.  This followed on from the death of Leonard Nimoy, in February and as a (not so closet) Trekkie, it was a sad day. 

Musically it was a nasty year too, with B.B King, Scott Weiland and Lemmy all gone.  

None of these however were as much of a loss as one of my true childhood (and adulthood) loves, Terry Pratchett.  I admit that when the news of his death broke I was in tears on my commute home.  In a selfish way I wasn't upset because he had died, he had been suffering from Altzheimers for a number of years so it was quite expected in some manner, but because there would be no more of his books to look forward to and because of the sudden outpouring of grief on social media from such a broad range of people.   For Christmas Mr B bought me Terry's last book.  I haven't read it yet.  Not because I'm not itching to, but because when I do I know I will turn the final page and will never have any more to come.

Well, we are in 2016 now and already more big icons have disappeared...Lets hope it stops there for a while or we will only be left with reality TV and Katie Price "novels" to keep us entertained.