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Wednesday, July 26, 2006

Spaghetti Westerns!

Sitting here surfing the web and listening to Today FM as I do so and they've just played that ubiquitous piece of music that seemed to appear on every spaghetti western. Reminds me of my childhood. It was a real treat to get staying up to watch a spaghetti western. There are about three readers of this blog who will remember what I'm talking about.

Summer holidays and one of the greats was on the telly; A fistful of dollars, The good, the bad and the ugly. You get the gist of it. And if we were really good we could stay up late to watch it. Fantastic. If we were really good there might even be chips from the greasy spoon take away where the owner was more Italian than his Italian wife, despite coming from down the road. God, those chips were greasy but bleedin lovely. I can still smell them.

So we're tucked up on the sofa, bellies full of greasy chips and it begins. The music goes on forever and eventually a huge guy in spurs, cowboy hat and a poncho swaggers onto the screen. You just know there's going to be lots of shooting, brilliant. Tomorrow we can borrow the brother's gun and caps and pretend we're in Mexico.

But back to the film, there's not much talking. A lot of moody stares, looking surrepticiously out from under the cowboy hat. Lots of hands by the side, every ready for action, like a battery! There are lots of scuffles, gunfights on the street, hijackings in the canyons, flirtations with the ladies (who I now know are the local prostitutes) in the saloon, they consume copious whiskys, sasperillas and tequillas, play a fair bit of poker and ride for hours in the dusty, never-ending wild west.

Finally the real shooting begins, a dual on the main street of the one horse town. The good guy staggers, he keels but by God the he has won, that last shot he managed to get off, after taking two straight hits, has managed to kill his target. The local undertaker cum bartender cum preacher He rides into the sunset, lots of loot in his pocket and a mysterious look on his face. He'll be back and maybe we'll get HB ice-cream in a wafer to go with the chips the next time.

Ah the memories; good memories!

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6 comments:

Anonymous said...

Amazing how a piece of music can catapult you back in time like that.

May I take this opportunity to thank you for the wonderful descriptions you added to your links in your sidebar!

Curly K said...

Music and smell are two of the most evocative things for most people I think. Thanks about the descriptions, not 100% there, did them very quickly but it's a start!

Anonymous said...

Sounds like ennio morricone.... Pippa

Curly K said...

Probably right Pippa, but I couldn't think of it when I was posting.

Anonymous said...

Oh the joy of it! Evocation of westerns. You transport me back, and back. It think it was all westerns and WW2 in those days. I think of the spagetti westerns in much the same way I think of Riverdance: revolutionary.

I'm afrid to read what you might have said about my blog. So I'm engaged in displacement activity. I will look. Of course I will look but I have a fantasy about what you might say about me and I don't want to spoil that. It was excellent of BlankPaige to publicise your innovative blog.

By the way, wouldn't it be better to be in Lisdoonvarna than in those cattle spaces in Dublin?

Curly K said...

Omani; Lisdoonvarna probably would be better than the cattle marts in Dublin, except they exist all over the country including the rural town where I live. Plus it'd be a helluva drive to Lisdoonvarna from where I live!