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Mom: 20 Years On

I can’t believe I’m writing down that it’s TWENTY YEARS since my mother died. In all kinds of ways it seems surreal, improbable and deeply perplexing to try to process this apparent fact of chronology.

And yet, there it is. I have lately been rebuilding/restoring the old archives on this blog, dating back to December 7th 2000 (how naïve it all seemed back then), more than half of which are now back online, with much more to come… and there’s no doubting that these events happened a full two decades ago. The same day Alex Toth died; the birthday of both Vincent Price and Christopher Lee—what is it about May 27th?!

Mom August 1956
This is mom in August 1956, aged 13. She was a cool teen.

If you haven’t already, I hope you go and read the blog I wrote back on May 27th 2006 (and indeed my contribution in the comments thread). These posts say it all, with much more clarity and raw immediacy than I can hope to summon today. I was curiously impressed, looking back, at how articulate I was. I’m not sure I’d handle it as well today. I know I wasn’t, in fact, handling it well at all at that time (who does?)—but I was expressing myself extremely well.

I would like to use the second half of this post to… go deeper. But first, the positive stuff. I have a photo album page, fully restored and updated, dedicated to mom—which I will update over time, as I continue to scan more of the best old photos I have. You can view the page as it stands here:

In Memory of Mom.
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Me & Mom & Horror (and More)

Some memories of mom as we approach the 20th anniversary of her death…

I got my love of horror from mom. Where mom got it from, who knows. But she was hooked on weird stuff fairly early on. One of my favourite stories that she liked to tell also explains her approach to me and horror movies when I was a kid.

In the summer of 1958, the UK was buzzing with the release of Hammer’s first entry in their Dracula series. Starring Christopher Lee as the Count and Peter Cushing as Van Helsing, the word was that this movie was seriously, hard-core scary and maybe, too, a little bit (GASP!) sexy!

Dracula Poster 1958

Mom was 15 years old on August 13th 1958. Dracula was an “X” certificate—she was too young to see it.
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Battle of the Bulge

(Top note: the personal posts are back!! Please tell me this isn’t a mistake.)

NEWSFLASH: I need to lose weight.

REWIND: I think it’s fair to say that I’ve had my ups-and-downs, weight-wise!

I was always pretty skinny up until about 1988, when I first gained a bit of weight. And I do mean a bit. At the time I was drinking some alcohol and also smoking an amount of pot (which, I’m sure many of you know, gives you “the munchies”). So, I was aghast enough, after seeing a photo where I looked kinda round-faced, to go on a diet! I probably weighed 11 stones. But by mid-1989, I weighed a mere nine stones—the lightest I’ve been my entire adult life. In fact, I was a bit too light. I am, after all, 5’8″, and my build, while not large, is not petite—so nine stones was pushing it!

It didn’t last long. I was back up to maybe 10.5 after a few months. And that, to my mind, was a good weight for me. Anyhow, I have to say that at the age of 20, losing weight was a breeze. I had a simple method: I just ate exactly half of every meal. The weight came right off, quickly & efficiently.
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Paul Gravett’s Brum Visit

A very good day, today, as I caught up with old comics pal Paul Gravett for the first time in aeons.

After meeting up at New Street (sorry, Grand Central, the station’s been a New York Wannabe since 2015 now!!), we went to the new-ish Wetherspoons there for a long lunch. We had fish & chips, and I had two or three of those refillable coffees (Paul stuck with tea! Very English!).

This was a great opportunity to pose for an awkward selfie with me squinting at the camera screen…

Me and Paul at Wetherspoons

Note my Darkseid badge! I brought Paul one too. After eating, I had a “commission” to do…
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Births & Deaths

So, as almost all horror fans know, today is the birthday of both Vincent Price and Christopher Lee… and just yesterday was Peter Cushing’s date of birth, by odd coincidence.

Lee, Price & Cushing, 1982
Christopher Lee, Vincent Price and Peter Cushing—publicity shot from 1982, during the shoot for HOUSE OF THE LONG SHADOWS.

Also, for me, a significant day for losses. On this day back in 2006, we not only lost the legendary cartoonist Alex Toth—my mother also passed away. Has it really been 18 years? Not to me. Time makes no sense these days.

A few pics of mom…
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Remembering the Two Freds

As hinted at in this post, March 14 would have been Fred (Jr)’s 20th birthday, if he was still here. He died in 2018.

Well, further to that, today would have been a big birthday for the “original” Fred, who was born on April 26 1994. Yup, the Big Three-Oh! Of course, no Westie in the long history of Westiedom ever lived to be 30, but it’s a bittersweet landmark that I wanted to note. I also plan to make a few more postings about both of the Freds in due course, 2024 being a big year for them. Below are a couple of pics of OG Fred in the meantime (I’m working on scanning many more)…

Fred July 1994
OG Fred as a pup, early July 1994.
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