Ice cream van music

I have always wanted an ice cream van. Not for the endless supply of ice cream, or for the fact that their ice cream is the sort of squirty soft stuff I was never allowed as it was somehow more artificial, but because of the idea of a vehicle that played music that made me feel like I was entering a weird realm. That is what ice cream van music does. It's like a private music box moment on a public scale. You hear it, but if you don't hurry or look in the right direction you might miss it and it will disappear, leaving only an echo lilting around your street - a hint of a different place where it might have gone and you could have gone with it. I grew up in the wilds of Somerset where we never had an ice cream van, so I associated them with mythic-feeling memories of seaside holidays in Cornwall. I remember when I was 14 my boyfriend lived in the centre of a town and I heard an ice cream van outside his house one day - I was amazed they strayed so far from the sea! But they do, and when they do, they take on a whole new atmosphere - kind of like the Pied Piper of the inner-city vehicle world, they call out to local kids. I lived on Brick Lane for a while and our local ice cream van played the teddy bears picnic (you can buy a cd of said tune here but watch out for the sinister voiceover on the sample files). Each day me and my flat mates would hear it calling, and the innocent children's song suddenly had creepy undertones of come hither children and we will lead you to a world far from here. This might sound ridiculous to you, but we never saw this mythical van, just heard it every day calling out, luring people in...

Anyway on a lighter note, for those who want it, click here to read a paper on the history of ice cream vans. There is also a good wfmu blog entry on the subject.

If you, like me, want to buy one, then click here
There is also a flickr group

But beware... they might sound pretty, but who knows where you will end up... Actually I wish I had a photo of what I once saw out of the window of a train in South London - it was what can only be described as an ice cream van graveyard - lots of them quietly rusting back to nature as plants twisted round them in a patch of abandoned city greenery...