Thursday, July 27, 2006

Cilla Moments Part One

What is a Cilla moment (CM), I hear you ask metaphorically. Well back in the day, and by day I mean an era nostalgic and romantic to me as relatively carefree, in that day I was brought up by two loving parents and one loving television. Being a child of the television culture most of my memories are linked with the theme tunes to such family favourites as Knight Rider, Street Hawk, Sesame Street, Pigeon Street, Transformers, Captain Bucky O’Hare, He-Man and Manimal to name a random few.

Now although I was big into watching television, my dad wasn’t. Indeed it was a rarity for my time to see him spend any extended time in front of the tube. So when he watched something you must know it would be worth watching. Which made it all the more tragic that he joined my mother and sister in actually tolerating Blind Date! Yes, if Cilla Black is famous for one thing on TV it is the monstrosity of a programme that ran for 18 years based on the spurious notion of matching potential partners together through the rigorous method of asking banal, inane, ‘humorous’ (although that’s a stretch) questions to three potentials who would spout out even worse witticisms for audience appeal and hopefully a chance to spend a few days in some exotic location (‘You lucky pair will be spending a glorious weekend in Norway!)

At the end of the day I cannot deny success. The programme was a ratings winner for most of its 18 years run. Saturday nights would have to include watching this show – and that was the family staple in our household despite the fact that I was the only telly addict! And so in a move to shock and surprise no one, a CM has nothing to do with Blind Date (or ‘Blind d-d-d Date’ as it was often exclaimed by ‘our lovely Graham’ the announcer at the start of the show). I just thought I’d give this context to launch my usual tirade against this shocking travesty of a waste of commercial expenses.

No the CM refers to Cilla’s second most popular TV programme which was called Surprise, Surprise. This show was really all about … get this … surprising people! What a great gimmick. It was actually also on air for 18 years, but it was not as big as Blind Date and later on was just shown on sporadic occasions. People who hadn’t seen people in ages were reunited and Cilla wasn’t as annoying as she was on Blind d-d-d Date which was nice. Don’t get me wrong, it wasn’t awesome television, but it was cool to see two friends who had never seen each other since being separated at the Second World War finally reunited almost 50 years later, or siblings separated by adoption in their childhood now finally back together in their old age after thinking each other dead. And hey, at least these were natural bringing together of people, not the artificial claptrap that was the other show. So the CD summary of a CM is a nostalgic reunion with a memory, person or thing of the past that comes back to you after being away for a while.

It just appears lately that I’ve been coming across a number of CM. I attended an induction session a while ago and when I turned up I came across an old friend that I hadn’t seen in years and linking up again was great. Catching up and sharing. What’s cool about the scenario as well was that the person was someone I liked. There’s nothing like bumping into someone you like – cos there’s nothing more awkward then coming across someone who you hoped you’d never see again. So anyway, not only was there that person, but another dude that I used to work with when I helped people get into work or training. He was a success story – really took his life seriously and pursued his ambitions well, so it was a pleasant CM bumping into him again.

That’s not the only CM I’ve had recently and I’ll share some more in future entries.

4 His Name’s Sake
Shalom
da man cd

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