Salt -n- Pepa and lashings of hard work

In the Virgin trains magazine today was a lot of retro reminiscing about the 80's which is flavour of the month at the moment due to the joyous A team remake (a highlight of my year used to be returning from a 4 week summer holiday to watch 4 episodes of the A team taped on Dad's £700 video recorder. It seems amazing how important this was and how much anticipation me and my sister had for this event. It was summed up in the year when the timer recording did not work properly and how gutted we felt) and other sundry things. Interestingly it wasn't the Ateam or Karate kid movies or even the Live action Danger Mouse theatrical performance (is there any brand out there that will die?) that caught my eye, but the news that Salt n Pepa were reforming to perform at a London Festival.

Now I have fond memories of Salt n Pepa and am instantly transported to the purchase of the greatest hits as a youngster, a bargain cd purchase, played on a CD Walkman whilst undertaking manual labour for my Gran and Grandad. I didn't do a lot of the manual labour but one summers day I had the joys of earning some spends whilst back from Uni by clearing a road that had overgrown the access to a gateway that was to be used again. The over grown gate was covered in nettles and brambles and it was very hot, I ended up hot sweaty scratched and stung. With the greatest hits blasting away (and the threat of batteries running out at any moment) I seemed to labour for hours to the tunes of Push it, shake your thang, let's talk about sex and all (funnily enough I would never have told my Gran I was listening to a song with the word sex in the title).

A great sense of achievement was gained from this labour and in hindsight it was something I should have done loads more of in my youth to spend more time with Gran and Grandad but my visits were limited to this........ and adventures on 'the ride on mower' - a fantastic hulk of a machine, petrol driven and probably about as fast as my first car. I remember making up quite complex games speeding round and round in circles based on Formula 1 to keep myself interested, and particularly listening to the inevitable first relegation of Birmingham City to the old 3rd division on the day of the Bradford City fire tragedy.

But I do have a soft spot for Salt n Pepa, their poppy brand of rap really hit the spot and Push it was an inspired song that filled many a Rugby Club disco. I am sure they felt pretty radical at the time but having read their wiki page it makes me smile to think these radicals were called Cheryl and Sandra which I will happy refer to them in the future.