A supplement to the recycled NOW&THEN fanzines provided by Harry Turner from 10 Carlton Avenue, Romiley, Cheshire SK6 4EG, UK. • Progress(?) Report: April 2002 First, apologies for the long silence since earlier issues of recycled NOW&THENs were sent out. I originally had a more urgent schedule in mind but, hell, what's the odd year or two when looking back over an almost 50-year gap... The trouble with old age is that I seem to live in an eternal present, and often find myself forgetful of long-term intentions when confronted by the immediate distractions of the day. But here at last is the recycled N&T#6. As for the future, work on N&T#7 is well under way and it should, hopefully, appear without undue delay. Then N&T#8, which proved to be the last issue of the fanzine, will be followed by some pages prepared for an aborted "Homes & Gardens" issue (material which was later passed over to Walt Willis and saw print in HYPHEN #25), plus a stray copy of THE GRIN, an RFV&SDS spin-off produced for a SAPS mailing back in 1955. Plus any other related ephemera of the Romiley Fan Veterans & Scottish Dancing Society period that may surface from rapidly disintegrating files... Future distractions permitting, of course. Gratified to find that the last bit of recycling was reviewed online by Alison Scott, though from the hardcopy version, Carved on Dead Trees, which she kindly sent along, it seems N&T mystified her on many points of period detail, despite the inclusion of a glossary in earlier issues. I can only console her with the thought that I occasionally encounter the same problems in reverse when reading that entertaining contemporary fanzine PLOKTA, that she also sends. So Alison's comments had me leafing through the pages of N&T#6, in search of items perhaps a mite esoteric in this day and age... like the reference to Johnny Ray in the hallowe'en party report – the partially-deaf singing star who excoriated us in the early fifties with the emotional howls of the pop hits"Cry","The Little White Cloud that Cried"and the like... sounds much-mocked by stand-up comics of the day. ["Never noted for swing, but a certain power, rasping clarity of voice guaranteed fans" writes Donald Clarke, in the Penguin Encyclopedia of Popular Music (Viking, 1989)]. N&T#6 also contains more revelations of the doings of schizophrenic Nigel/Spider Lindsay, prompting me to mention that the Savoy Cinema which the Turner family used to frequent has long gone. With the growing influence of TV entertainment among the local population, audiences shrank, until it eventually sought salvation as the village Bingo Hall for a few years. However that didn't stop the rot; there was talk awhile of the local supermarket buying the site, a proposal turned down by the council because the extra traffic would put the pupils of the junior school across the road at risk... So the Savoy became an empty ruin, finally demolished to make room for retirement flats, and today's kids have to dodge the speeding wheelchairs of roving pensioners.... As for the tale of Eric's encounter with a vampire, I guess any comment is superfluous in this Buffy-dominated era.

Sole © RFV&SDS, 2009.