Long ago and far away, in a dimension which can be accessed only through the mystical portals of memory, I popped into the neighbourhood newsagents on my way to school one day and purchased a copy of TV CENTURY 21 #3. Within this great comic, paradoxically dated a hundred years in the future, was a sheet of card from which could be pressed out a model of FIREBALL XL5.
When I got to school, before lessons began I sat and assembled the folded pieces into their predetermined shape while my teacher and classmates looked on, fascinated. I wasn't one who particularly enjoyed being the object of of such rapt attention, but I was so engrossed in what I was doing that I paid them scant heed and just got on with it. When I had finished and the teacher had expressed approbation for the fruits of my labour, lessons began, and although I couldn't tell you anything else that happened that day, that particular moment is a fond recollection nigh-on forty-eight years after the fact.
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| Relax - mine doesn't have 'Northernlad' stamped across it |
I never saw that cardboard 'model' from childhood again until nearly twenty years later, when it was reproduced in black and white on the back cover of S.I.G., a magazine devoted to the puppet programmes of GERRY ANDERSON. I remember thinking that it was a shame it wasn't in colour and hoping that someone would one day get around to producing a proper facsimile of this free gift which I greatly coveted.
Well, almost three decades on, someone has finally done it. Printed on card (though not perforated for pressing out), it enables nostalgists like myself to relive a part of our cherished childhood and bridge the span between past, present and future. Future? Sure - after all, the comic was dated February 6th, 2065, so technically it's not due to be published for another fifty-three years. Thanks to a rift in time and space, however, I managed to obtain a replacement for the actual comic a good while back. It's immensely satisfying to finally be able to reunite it with a copy of its original free gift after so long a period.
Suddenly I'm an eager five year-old child once more, sitting in a chalk-dusty classroom in a different century - when the one we now live in was the stuff of dreams and seemed too far away to even contemplate.
4 comments:
Goodness points go to your teacher for allowing your creativity to come out rather than confiscating/destroying your XL5 - didn't realise they were so tolerant/open to things like that in your school days.
Well, technically speaking I was still an 'infant', so I presume teachers were more tolerant than their secondary school counterparts. Also, I imagine her curiosity about what the results of my efforts would look like over-rode any natural teacher-type instincts.
This is yet another one that I JUST missed as my first issue was #4 after I learned that the Daleks were on the back. After #4 I was completely hooked and ,for me, TVCentury 21 in its tabloid format has to be one of the greatest British comics ever . Really wish I had kept mine.
Good as TV Century 21 was, I thought it lost something when the Daleks strip ended with issue #104.
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