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Something I'm reminded of on occasion is the fact that, when we're kids, not only don't we know what the future holds, it never really occurs to us to wonder. Sure, in a sense we anticipate the future by looking forward to birthdays and Christmases and holidays and next week's comics, but our anticipation of such events is firmly set in the present reality of our current existence.
As adults, we don't know what the future holds either, but we know that we don't know, whereas kids don't ever think about it. For example, when I had my 13th birthday, I was totally unaware that my next birthday would occur in a different house in another neighbourhood. Same with Christmas. On a subconscious level, I probably imagined that I'd have many more birthdays and Christmases in the same house that I'd had the previous seven. 'Twas not to be.
Looking back, I don't recall my parents ever mentioning to my brother and me that they were considering flitting (which we did a lot) until the event was practically upon us. We never heard them propose or discuss the prospect, nor were we ever informed in advance of everything having already been arranged, with absolutely no consultation with us. I'm sure it must've felt strange to buy a comic or watch a TV show while living in one house, then buy the next issue or watch the following episode in another. Curiously though, I can't remember.
Sometimes I'll look at a comic which I strongly associate with a particular house, and it seems I had the comic in that house for years, then I'll catch sight of the date and realise that we'd moved not too long after. Take the 1972 PERSUADERS Holiday Special as an example. In memory, it seems that I'd bought it months, maybe even up to a year or so, before moving from my former house. However, it probably went on sale around May, and as we flitted halfway through June, I couldn't have had it for any more than a few weeks (at the very most) before moving.
Y'know, I always have a destination in mind when I start a post, but by the time I get to the end I've very often forgotten where I was going. I find it extremely difficult to maintain my stream of consciousness for longer than a few moments these days, which is extremely frustrating for me. It's probably even more frustrating for you, wading through my woeful witterings only to be left wondering what I'm on about. (Or perhaps simply wondering what I'm on.)
I suppose I'm just idly reflecting on how, whenever I re-read a comic from an earlier time in my life, I'm often surprised when I look up from its pages to find that I'm not still in the house where I first read it (and with which I most associate it), even if I didn't have it there for as long as I thought I did before moving.
In memory's house, though, are many mansions (clever Biblical allusion), and you can live in whichever one you want whenever the fancy takes you. (Or maybe even in all of them at once.) In that way, the past is always present. As for the future? That will be the past soon enough.
Y'know, I always have a destination in mind when I start a post, but by the time I get to the end I've very often forgotten where I was going. I find it extremely difficult to maintain my stream of consciousness for longer than a few moments these days, which is extremely frustrating for me. It's probably even more frustrating for you, wading through my woeful witterings only to be left wondering what I'm on about. (Or perhaps simply wondering what I'm on.)
I suppose I'm just idly reflecting on how, whenever I re-read a comic from an earlier time in my life, I'm often surprised when I look up from its pages to find that I'm not still in the house where I first read it (and with which I most associate it), even if I didn't have it there for as long as I thought I did before moving.
In memory's house, though, are many mansions (clever Biblical allusion), and you can live in whichever one you want whenever the fancy takes you. (Or maybe even in all of them at once.) In that way, the past is always present. As for the future? That will be the past soon enough.
Was this a special from TV ACTION? The Persuaders was well drawn though in the show both actors were pretty smug performers. Not really the best performances from either.
ReplyDeleteIt's a long time since viewing the captions to the show but I seem to remember that actual photos of the actors military service were slipped in. Curtis in the US Navy and Moore from a Guards Regiment. Which reflected their status in the show.
Yup, it was a 'spin-off' Special from TV Action, T47. There are a couple or so stories from it on the blog somewhere. It's a nice Special, with good art, but there was only one - probably because the show was cancelled after one series/season.
ReplyDeleteI dunno about kids not thinking about what the future holds...I can't be the only young 2000AD reader who sat working out how old they would be when 2000 finally arrived and wondered if parents would still be alive, would there still be terraced houses as well as mile-high blocks, etc?
ReplyDeleteMy move from 'my' house in 1977 (as an 8 year old) was also only explained to me once it was a done deal. Now knowing all that followed, if I only had one chance at time travel I'd be solely focussed on convincing my parents not to make that move. Yeah, I know you could back Red Rum to win consecutive Grand Nationals and you could buy a house if you staked enough, but back then people (my folks anyway) used to bet in 5 or 10p's. Of all the many roads not taken, that's the only one that I'd want to see the alternate version of.
Naturally as a kid, it doesn't occur to you that the latest Christmas, etc, might be the last in a home, or even the last full stop unless you were particularly morbid...but every Mother's Day or on me Mum's birthday now, you can't help thinking about it and it's a constant shadow hanging over what should be a celebration...it's a blessing that it's not a worry in childhood...
Mixed up memories? It always fascinates me how they can muddle up or get joined together. I always had a crystal clear memory of me watching Project UFO in 'my' house in the same time slot as Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea, Time Tunnel, etc, in 1975 or 1976. I was really shocked when I went on IMDB and found that it ran from 1978-1979, so I actually watched it in my next home. Likewise, I watched a version of A Christmas Carol one Christmas Eve was back...I'd never seen it before and the scene where the door knocker changes back and forth blew my mind. After much trying to remember and buying the wrong versions hoping it was 'the one', they put all the old Radio Times online and I discovered it was actually an episode of Record Breakers!
I love retreating into memory as much as you do, so the idea it can lie to us is particularly worrying...
Yeah, but regarding your first paragraph, it's sort of an 'academic' exercise, or like imagining a fantasy that you don't think will ever really happen when you're a kid, don't you think, HS? And it's hard to imagine anything happening in your life anywhere other than where you live at the moment. That's how it seems to have been to me back then anyway.
ReplyDeleteThe mixed up memories is a problem, though thankfully it doesn't happen too often with me. Which house I was living in when I got The Kellogg's Sooty figure is a puzzler, and there's a couple of TV shows that I remembered as having seen in one house when it was actually another, but I put that down to having the same furniture in similarly shaped living-rooms when I was a kid, so although it's surprising to learn that I didn't first see The Protectors where I think I did, it's not too worrying. Other lapses are a concern though. That's why it's good for me to record things on my blog before I forget things, so that when I'm sooking soup through a straw, it's all there for me to refer to.
Great comment as usual, HS.
I remember the idea that I'd somehow be 32 when the year 2000AD finally arrived as being so far distant as to be almost unimaginable - except I was imagining it, obviously - and I now find it funny that 'my' Victorian house is still there, still unsurrounded by Mega-City Blocks (in fact, the few tower blocks within sight have since been demolished). That said, these dickheads aiming themselves at you while engrossed in a their phone or powered skateboard is straight out of a 2000AD Future Shock (or at least, Sammy Brewster's Ski-board Squad)!
ReplyDeleteJust think, if we're all still here in 20 years time, and tech has moved on to some unforeseeable stage, this blog will be a reassuring nostalgic trigger! "I remember" (slobbered through toothless gums) "I used to post on Kid's site when I should've been working - can't remember where I worked now, though!"...drool...
The point you made about furniture is dead right and I hadn't thought of it! Of course we took that stuff with us and even the telly was likely the same set.
Or the Jet-Skaters from Thunder comic - remember them? Regarding TVs, we had the same ancient b&w set from around 1960 (if not before) right up until the mid-'70s I think, with a right old-fashioned aerial which you needed to adjust from channel-to-channel. And just think - only three channels back then. Ah, happy days.
ReplyDeleteThe first house I remember (though not the first I lived in) somehow seemed to me to be one I expected (subconsciously, as I never really thought about it) to be in forever, so I was totally surprised to be informed we'd be moving to another one 5 minutes down the road. When you're a kid, whatever situation you're in when sequential consciousness first dawns, is, I suspect, one that you think (without ever thinking about it - now ain't that a contradiction-in-terms?) is going to be the same forever, so it can be quite traumatic when you discover it isn't.
Oh, now my head hurts. It always does that when I try and think. Maybe I should give it up?
Nah, I wouldn't give up thinking if I were you - just have a look around you next time you go out to see where that can lead!
ReplyDeleteMy Freeview went Kablooey (not certain how you spell that) about 6 weeks back (I've a communal outdoor aerial) so I had to go to Argos and buy an indoor one to tide me over until it got fixed (in the 21st century, yet)! Never thought I'd see the day when an indoor aerial gives a crystal clear picture on all channels without needing to hold it up above me head!
Yeah, ditto re the house move. Still, you've managed to move back into an old home? How'd you do that?
How'd I do that? Magnificently, of course. (An old 'Mad' line.) I just decided I wanted to do it and did it. There were a few problems to be overcome, so I overcame them. Come my Lottery win, I'll be buying ALL my former houses, so that's something to look forward to. In the words of a poem I wrote - if only!
ReplyDeleteWell, when I was 8 or 9, my cousins and I may have speculated about 2000 A.D. (The year, of course; at the time, I'd never heard of the British science fiction comic.) We assumed that everyone would be living in high rises, robots would do all the house work and manual labor, there would be a 10-hour work week pushing buttons on computers, we would be flying around in those George Jetson cars, and there would be vacation resorts on Mars and Venus.
ReplyDeleteBut I bet it never occurred to you that you wouldn't still be 8 or 9 when you were doing all that, TC. Sure, you might've known on an intellectual level, but you wouldn't have felt it on an emotional one. And why haven't you got a Jetson car yet? I've had mine for years.
ReplyDeleteI do clearly remember trying to imagine what being 32 in 2000 would be like, albeit when I was around 13 rather than 8 or 9. I based my assumptions on telly, etc. Therefore, I always thought that my life by that point would be a fab cross between Man About the House and the Persuaders. Imagine my disappointment when it turned out more like an episode of bloody Sorry! (Language, Timothy!)
ReplyDeleteI remember once deciding with a pal that, when we grew up, we'd invent a serum to give to two Supergirl lookalikes so that we could each have a superpowered girlfriend. (Never thought about inventing one for ourselves, strangely.) I would've been about 9 or 10, and in my mind, a 'grown-up' version of me looked exactly like the 9 or 10 year old me, though perhaps taller. You don't ever imagine yourself being stooped, jowly, with bags under your eyes, crow's feet, saggy paunch, fading eyesight and hearing, etc. Of course, I have none of those things, and look exactly as I did as a youngster. (Cough!)
ReplyDeleteWell, joking aside for once, I honestly believe that maintaining this enthusiasm for this stuff does keep us young to an extent...or a real enthusiasm for anything come to that! Surely looking forward to something, whether it's only the next issue of a comic or a 'new' back issue, must do you more good than waking up with only the supermarket to look forward to, and then a bunch of Bargain Hunt repeats?
ReplyDeleteA colleague (60-odd years old) recently turned up for a lunchtime pint and admitted that he'd never read a book in his life, and that's not the only colleague I know of here at the library that's admitted to that! To me, that says either says 'I've no interest in anything at all', or 'I'm illiterate'. What can you talk about after that? 'A lot of weather we've been having over the football lately...'?
I know when I look in the mirror, sometimes, particularly first thing in the morning, I think 'Who's that old bloke staring back at me?', but I'm convinced it'd be far worse if I wasn't looking forward to finishing my latest book so I can get stuck right into the next one!
I remember a woman I once knew actually boasting to me that she'd never read a book in her life, which got me thinking "so ignorance and stupidity are things to be proud of?" Odd to hear, though (or ironic), that people who work in a library have never read a book.
ReplyDeleteYup, looking forward to all these great facsimile editions that Marvel and DC are bringing out helps keep ME young. I doubt the same can be said for looking forward to the latest episode of Eastenders, which is all some people seem to have in their lives.
It's rather amusing to read a Scot referring to The Eastenders as something that might be all people had in their lives.
ReplyDeleteAs an uprooted Londoner living in the US I was attracted to the idea of watching this show when it appeared on local TV stations. Given that said stations preferred Downton Abbey or Doc Martin for British 'hi brow' imports this weekly serial seemed an odd choice.
Now I am familiar with the part of London depicted. I also have a friend in New York who was born there and who's brother still lives there and made a living as an actor. This brother auditioned for The Eastenders and was told by an 'Oxbridge type' that he didn't sound suitable, even though he lived in the area all his life.
That's how credible this show is for depicting Londoners. The only worthwhile thing about the show was watching Barbara Windsor whose voice was one of the few authentic local accents.
It seems to be all that SOME people have in their lives, T47, invariably women, who gibber on about the previous night's episode when they're at work the next day. It's the most grim, humourless, dour, dark and depressing show that I've ever had the misfortune to catch bits of when visiting friends. I'm sure the real East End of London isn't anywhere near as depressing as the show.
ReplyDeleteNah, it's a shithole! :)
ReplyDeleteThe original inspiration for the Albert Square set was apparently Fassett Square in Hackney which is right opposite 'my' old home that I keep going on about. I heard they took the character names from gravestones. Despite being a real eastender, I'd cross the street to avoid the people in the show, so why the Hell sit watching it? I can no more relate to them than I can to Downton Abbey. Perhaps they should amalgamate the 2 into Downtown abbey, about a police precinct in Walford that only employs ex-butlers?
T47, one of the oddest things about Eastenders is how many cockney accents (or attempts) there are in it! Unless you go in one the few traditional pubs left, it's either kids all talking in cod-patois, or well-spoken hipsters...and, funnily enough, lots of American accents. (One of the funniest was some dozy American woman over the park repeatedly calling her dog about 20 times, but Odin was too preoccupied with another dog's genital area to care. In the end she yelled, "Odin! She's more than that! She's got a personality!")
I have a cockney accent so thick that even my Mum can't understand me half the time, so I'd be completely miscast in a show about the current east end of London, guv!
Is the Elephant and Castle in the East End, HS? I've been there - it reminded me of Glasgow (parts of it anyway). The sad thing about soaps like Eastenders is that halfwits like Colin Clueless and Mary Moron start basing their lives around them, seeking the sort of exaggerated drama seen on the show. Thus do TV shows end up 'mirroring' real life, having set the pattern for it in the first place.
ReplyDeleteYeah, once that's set up as 'normal', I guess it does becomes something for sheep to emulate. Same with these TOWIE-type shows. Christ almighty. But the complete opposite side of that is this hipster craze where they've heard Pulp's Common People and assumed that's a lifestyle choice...none of them could care less what the area was like 50 years ago...
ReplyDeleteElephant & Castle is south of the river some miles away, but also pretty rough. Whenever I've visited pals in Waterloo or Blackfriars (close nearby), I've felt quite at home despite the long bus ride!
I think Eastenders is long past its sell-by date - time it was cancelled.
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