A Letter To America (To US, from us)

by andrewcurnow1971, posted in Little Bit Of Politics, Trump

Hey America, what happened to you? You used to be cool, man!

It’s not even eleven years since you voted in your first black President, on a wave of optimism that wasn’t confined to just America. We all felt like the future had finally arrived.

Look at you now.

If you’re having to nitpick over the possible other interpretations of words in an attempt to prove your President isn’t racist … well, then he probably is. If you’re debating exactly what is meant by ‘concentration camps’… well, then they probably are.

Don’t get me wrong. I can absolutely understand the appeal of voting for somebody who’s not a career politician, who isn’t a part of the system, who’s just an ordinary guy. Trouble is, your man Trump is a multi-billionaire ex-TV star who lives in a big gold tower – he’s the least ordinary guy I can think of.

Maybe despite that, maybe you think he represents you, you think he cares. Maybe you point to the fact that he’s a businessman used to making tough calls and breaking hard deals. I guess that’s true – but a businessman does it to make profit, not to help people. You wouldn’t want this guy as your boss, why would you want him as your President?

Let’s take your Health Insurance. Over here we have something called the NHS (the S stands for Service) and it’s free. You get ill, you go to the doctor or the hospital and you get help. You don’t get a bill.

I’ll probably need to use up some of my word count to say that again. It’s a free service. You don’t get a bill.

I’ve repeated it because I can only assume you don’t know about it. If you did, why would you continue as you are, why aren’t you all demanding a US version of the NHS? Obama tried some small baby steps towards it, but even that’s been turned around now. Hard to comprehend, because I can’t see how it’s in anybody’s interests to have a health service which you’ve got to pay for.

Oh, wait – unless you’re in the health insurance business! And what’s good for business must be good for America, right. That’s why you want a businessman in the White House I guess…?

What about this whole gun thing? Every other country, one school massacre is one too many – for you, it seems to be a fact of life. You get so many shootings, they don’t even all make our news anymore. And what’s Trump’s answer? Arm the teachers! Yes of course, because more guns is bound to be safer than less guns.

And I daren’t even start on the whole abortion debate. Over here in the twenty-first century, the rest of us have pretty much accepted female emancipation and equality as being here to stay – but you tell us you want to turn that clock right back, so if a woman  get knocked up they’re stuck with it. What’s that you say, on religious grounds…? Dear God.

It’s horrifying, because you know, you look and you sound so much like us. But if we ignore the catchy music and actually listen to the lyrics… well then you really are a foreign country.

It’s not just horrifying, that’s the thing – it’s also really tragic. When I was a kid in the 70s, in the UK, America is what we wanted to be. Your toys were so much cooler, your TV shows so much more exciting, you seemed to have it all and we wanted it! Kentucky Fried Chicken, the Fonz, malls, McDonald’s, Starsky & Hutch, and Luke Skywalker.

Back then, and in an excited way, they’d say we were five years behind America, so we’d see these great things coming. Now, that same sentence is a curse, a depressing glimpse into an awful future.

I hope it’s no longer true – that the UK won’t end up being led by a self-centred man who speaks without thinking, insults without caring, who is a rallying cry to the nationalist and the extremist, and who ultimately has no interests but his own at heart.

Oh f—

A Quick Flash Before Bedtime

by andrewcurnow1971, posted in 1970s, Childhood, TV

I did it for twelve consecutive nights. Only while my wife was away, of course.

Don’t worry, this blog hasn’t been rated for even brief nudity, so I’m referring to the fact that for my birthday recently, my brother bought me the complete 12 episode Flash Gordon Conquers The Universe on DVD.

I’ll confess, I approached it with a little trepidation. A few years back, in a similar ‘nostalgic birthday present’ scenario, I rewatched ITV’s Dick Turpin from the 1970s. The theme music and title sequence were as good as I remembered – but the programmes themselves, other than Richard O’Sullivan’s superlative leading man performance, were rather disappointing. Dull, thin, repetitive.

Maybe that lowered my expectations this time round; or maybe I recalled that the Flash Gordon serials were already old when I’d first watched them as a kid. This final Flash story is generally regarded as the poorest of the three, and to be honest it made the least impression on me back in the day. But, just as I’d gladly watch Return of the Jedi even though I know it’s not a patch on the other two, so I enjoyed (re)watching Flash now.

Of course, you’ve got to take it on its own terms. As a child I probably watched wide-eyed from the edge of my seat, hanging off every word like it was some kind of gospel truth. As an adult, the response is often wry amusement rather than white-knuckle excitement. Professor Zarkov’s curious accent, which to my ear at least sounds rather more Irish than Hungarian, for example; or the recasting of Princess Aura from the arresting beauty of the first serial, to some kind of shrill, permed, sub-Lucille Ball type figure in this one.

Undeniably, though, there are some striking moments in it too, probably hugely impressive to the original Saturday morning audience of 1940. The weird movement of the walking bombs in parts three and four is clearly achieved by undercranking the camera, but it makes for an eerie effect nevertheless. And the language of the rock people, despite O’Zarkov’s claim that it is similar to an ancient Gobi dialect, is simply the sound played backwards – at times you can spot where whole scenes have been played backwards to achieve the effect, leading to peculiarities in the actors’ movements. At least it goes to show that somebody, the director maybe, was determined to experiment, even on a lowly-regarded, ‘knock it out quickly for the kiddies’, film like this.

Still, it’s a product of its time isn’t it. The treatment of the female lead is the most obvious sign of this. Nominally, Dale Arden is one of the three heroes but in reality, she gets little to do except say, “Flash!” a lot, and get herself captured. Her highlight is probably getting to change costumes around about episode six, into a female Robin Hood type outfit which, dare I say, she clearly rather fancies herself in.

But then, in context, Flash Gordon Conquers The Universe was made nearly thirty years before the first moon landing, when Gone With The Wind had only just been released. Looked at another way, in 1940 America was apparently happy telling this sort of tale, of brave, square-jawed heroes fighting a seemingly unstoppable tyrant hell-bent on absolute domination, while Europe was… Well, you can see where that’s going can’t you.

This was the last of the Flash serials, for whatever reason. Perhaps it was considered just as effective, and considerably cheaper, to reshow the old serials instead of making new ones, meaning of course that they, and he, was prevented from falling into cinematic obscurity. TV clearly snapped them up, so it’s no great surprise that more than thirty years after the last serial was made George Lucas wanted to make a feature film. Alas, he was refused the rights so had to go off and make up some sci-fi show of his own instead (not sure how that panned out for him).

A film arrived in the end, of course – Flash, in 1980. Proving beyond a doubt what we TV-loving schoolboys of the late 1970s already knew.

Gordon was Alive.

Our Beds Are Crowded

by andrewcurnow1971, posted in Family, Moaning, Sex

Speak for yourself, Freud.

I don’t know what sort of Austrian multi-player sexual shenanigans Sigmund was involved with (he wrote, wilfully misunderstanding for comic effect) and in the interests of full disclosure, I probably ought to admit that I didn’t even know the above title was a quote from Freud, until I just Googled it. Truth is, I half-remembered hearing it in an episode (possibly the LAST episode) of The Golden Girls.

I realise that there is a subtext to the quotation of course, but taking it at face value for now, my bed is far from crowded. In fact, more specifically, it is currently operating at below average occupancy, to the tune of one wife.

To put it another way, I’m sleeping alone at the moment because my other half is away house-/dog-sitting. She’s been absent for just over two weeks, and isn’t back for another four or five days yet.

It’s not by any means the first time she’s done this, and it isn’t very far away – it’s only the next village along in fact. Even that rather overstates the distance between us, as it’s no more than a ten minute walk, and downhill most of the way. (Unless you’re coming back of course, when it’s uphill most of the way. Obviously.)

For several years I used to make the joke that she was away filming another series of sitcom My Wife in the Next Village (which I suspect is a rip off of forgotten Alderton ‘n’ Gordon vehicle My Wife Next Door) but that joke has started to wear a bit thin, at least according to my wife (in the next village).

I don’t mind her being away as such, and if I’m totally honest it’s nice to have full control of the TV remote for a change. But more with each time, and especially when it’s a multi-week haul like this one, I find myself put off-kilter by her absence. It’s worst at bed time, and not in a Freudian sense (well, OK, not just in a Freudian sense). There’s something fundamentally comforting about somebody else just being there, whether that translates into a warm back on a cold night, or simply the reassuring sound of another human being softly breathing (well, loudly snoring) in the darkest of the night.

After over twenty years, even if I’m not consciously aware of it I may well be subconsciously (yes, Freud again, I know) used to there being two of us in the bed; and to revert, even temporarily, to being on my own, to being all alone… it’s not as easy as I’d have expected.

In darker moments, I can’t help but be aware that the day will come when either I or she will be sleeping alone permanently. My wife has a friend who lost her other half, and on at least one occasion she has woken up absolutely furious with him for having died. So in those darker moments, I know that inevitably one of us will end up totally abandoning the other. And I’m still not sure whether it’s better to be the one who leaves, or the one who’s left.

In even darker moments, it’s what worries me most about the awful day to come when I lose one of my parents. That will be bad enough in itself, but my deeper fear of that scenario is how the remaining one will deal with it.

Thankfully, dragging myself away from dark and darker moments, in the current instance we’re more or less into the home straight now. I’m looking forward to her being back here with us soon (even if it does mean I’ll have to hoover on Wednesday) and to sharing the bed with her again and, hopefully, getting to know each other again.

Our bed won’t be crowded though.

It’ll be just the two of us.

La La La

by andrewcurnow1971, posted in BBC, Moaning

I’m not really into music.

This probably becomes clear when I say that the first single I ever bought was The Smurf Song; and the fact that one of the biggest surprises of my life came in my early twenties, when I discovered that not everybody likes ABBA, makes it clear that the punk revolution entirely passed me by.

Nevertheless, even I know this weekend is Glastonbury – if only because Radio 2 has spent the past week telling us so. Its our channel of choice at work, meaning that the days pass by to a background of Zoe Ball in the morning, through Ken Bruce and his legendary Popmaster, followed by the constantly surprising and occasionally controversial Jeremy Vine (generally giving us something to chew over at lunchtime). Then it’s Steve Wright in the afternoon (inspiring a rush of nostalgia for my late-80s A-Level years, when he performed exactly the same role but on Radio 1) and finally we end up with Sara Cox in the teatime slot.

If I leave work particularly late, I catch a bit of Jo Whiley’s early evening show from 7pm onwards. It is, if I’m honest, a bit of an acquired taste and not really my bag – because as opposed to the daytime shows, it isn’t entirely made up of well-known popular music. Rather, it determinedly and laudably champions new music too. That probably makes it inevitable, given my ‘not into music/Smurfs/who could possibly not enjoy deceptively complex cod-English Swedish pop stylings’ opening, that it doesn’t do much for me. (Although, the other week I must admit I caught the very end of Jo’s show when to my delight she played Perry Como’s For The Good Times which took me instantly back to 1975 when my Mum had it on double LP.)

So although I’m clearly not a Glastohead  (if that’s the word (if that’s a word)) I am aware that it’s on, I’m aware that Kylie was appearing on the Legend Stage on Sunday, and that Stormzy headlined on Friday night. In the interests of full disclosure, and once again I refer you to my ‘not into music’ credentials, I’ll have to admit that although I know all those things almost as a matter of rote after having heard it so many times this past week, I don’t actually know who one of those people is. (And it’s not the one who married Jason Donovan in Neighbours.)

Conversely, Jo Whiley is clearly a fervent Glastonburyer (is that the word?) and she made the point one evening this week (not sure which, although clearly one where I left work particularly late) that for those who aren’t one bit interested in the whole Glastonbury thing, it is only for one week out of the broadcasting year, so why not just let those who enjoy it get on and enjoy it.

She makes a good point (and by crikey she does a good show, even if it’s not for me). There is a tendency, a need even, that some people have, to poopoo things that others enjoy. Maybe it’s the inevitably polarising effect of social media that makes it seem more prevalent nowadays, but as soon as somebody tweets [other social media platforms are available] how much they enjoy a film/sport/Somerset-based internationally-famous musical festival event, they will get replies that say they love it too OR that they absolutely hate it. (The vast swathe of middle-ground opinion, the ‘I can take it or leave it’ crowd doesn’t get much of an airing – because, I guess, if you don’t have any strong feeling one way or the other, why would you waste time telling anybody?)

I don’t enjoy Wimbledon, I can’t stand the Olympics or the World Cup, and clearly I’m no Glastonaut (that can’t be it?). But I don’t go around saying that (well, except in this paragraph apparently). We all like different things, and rather than raining on each other’s parades, we should try letting each other indulge our passions when the opportunity arises, rather than criticise or complain.

Although, obviously, if you don’t like ABBA, well… there must be something wrong with you, surely?

Liberty, Legality, Maternity

by andrewcurnow1971, posted in Little Bit Of Politics, Moaning, Money

The news story that has niggled me the most this week, is this one:

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-48671092

Now, I absolutely agree that we need to have more women in Parliament – just looking at the line up of candidates for Tory leader on Tuesday’s debate made that abundantly clear (although I must just add the disclaimer that, thank goodness that ghastly Esther McVey didn’t get past the first round).

So going in, I was perfectly prepared to be outraged on MP Stella Creasy’s behalf. I quickly discovered, as I read, that MPs do not get maternity leave, which really did sound genuinely outrageous. Every (other) employer in the land has to, why should the Houses of Parliament get away with it?

It struck me that here was a rare example of MPs getting a worse deal than a regular person, and there certainly aren’t many instances of that, other than… Erm… Well, there aren’t any instances of that in fact.

Statutory maternity arrangements for a pregnant woman are that she can have up to a year off work. For the first 6 weeks of her maternity leave she receives 90% of her salary, then a maximum of £149 for 33 weeks, and then, for the remaining 13 weeks, nothing at all. That’s not necessarily great, but it’s better than nothing (well, for 39 weeks it is anyway). And, getting back to my being outraged, it is a darned sight more than MPs get, because as has been previously mentioned, they don’t get maternity pay at all.

Except, in the midst of my outrage, and as I read the article in more detail, I came across the sentence, “MPs themselves are paid in full for the whole period.”

Ah. Right. I see.

So… although she’s not getting anything called maternity pay, in actual fact Ms Creasy can take off whatever time she likes and will still get her full MPs salary. Of just over £1525 per week. As opposed to £149 (or nothing) for anybody else.

Her argument seems to be that there is no facility to provide funding for a temporary replacement while she is on maternity leave. My counter-argument would be, what with all that ‘spare’ money (which just in case you couldn’t quite believe it the first time, is almost £1400 more per week than a normal person on maternity leave) she could surely fund it herself. In fact, just nip down to her local job centre and offer somebody £1000 per week to be an MP for 9 months, I’m sure there’ll be plenty of takers.

But no, what she would actually like is funding to be provided for, in effect, an extra MP during the period of her maternity leave. That just smacks a little bit of… well, of being hugely and grossly unfair; and to be actually complaining about it just demonstrates the same old obliviousness to the real world of which MPs are constantly being accused.

Of course, I’m a man so in today’s world it’s unthinkable for me to have any sort of opinion on something that doesn’t directly involve me – but if I was a woman, if I’d had to compromise during the first nine months of my maternity leave because I had less money coming in; and if I’d ended up going back to work early, because after nine months the money stopped and I simply couldn’t afford to stay off any longer… Well, if that was me, I think I’d be more than a little cheesed off at Ms Creasy bemoaning her situation.

There’s a secondary issue too, which is that presumably any stand in that the taxpayer funded would be selected either by the party or indeed quite possibly just by Ms Creasy herself. It’s fine to argue that your constituents won’t otherwise have a representative – but in that scenario, they’d end up with a representative that they did not elect, and whose appointment they had no say in.

I mean, imagine that. A politician being selected for an official position, without the electorate having any say in the matter whatsoever.

Unthinkable.

Body Talk

by andrewcurnow1971, posted in Family, Moaning, Sex

As I’ve got older, I feel I’ve got to know my body better.

Not particularly the physical quirks. The scar on my head, the chickenpox scab on my cheek, that slight bend to the little finger inherited from my Father (or Dad), my inexplicably shiny legs; I’m at ease with all of them. But beyond all that, I seem to understand more about how my body works.

So, for example, if I feel a headache coming on during the afternoon it won’t matter how many paracetamol or ibuprofen I take, the ache will get worse in the evening, will be really bad at bedtime, will still be there in the morning, and won’t properly wear off until lunchtime the following day.

And if I skip meals, I know that I’ll either get woozy or sullen. (Or both.)

For many years I never bothered with breakfast. Occasionally I’d skip lunch. And on the final Friday of each month, when I used to stay late at work to complete the month-end, I never brought anything in to munch on. I never felt any ill effects from any of that.

I was younger then of course – which is just another way of saying ‘I couldn’t do that now’. I was reminded of this on Thursday evening. My other half had mentioned/threatened earlier in the week that she wanted us to go food shopping, but she had said it would be Wednesday – so when, on getting home on Wednesday evening, there was no mention of it, I naturally decided not to remind her and congratulated myself on having dodged that particular bullet.

Alas, it turned out she meant Thursday. Unaware of this, I wasn’t home especially punctually, meaning that almost immediately upon my return we were off out again without anything to eat first.

Partway around Lidl, I felt myself slowing down, and overcome with the urge to yawn hugely. Usually if I’m a bit peckish I hear my stomach rumble, but on this occasion it manifested itself as an ever-diminishing level of energy, and as we progressed from aisle to aisle I was aware of both my concentration and my conversation flagging. At last we reached the checkout, where from some unexpected reserve I managed to find the strength to pack.

Then, tragically, as we reached the car my wife leant over to whisper softly in my ear those three little words, “Now to Tesco”, and without an excuse ready at hand and without the energy to invent one, on we went to round two.

I’m a ‘get in, get the job done, get out again’ sort of person (my wife’s always saying so) but when we’re shopping together I’m normally patient enough to put up with the fact that she is a browser. But on Thursday, after fifteen minutes, by which time we’d only got as far as circumnavigating the fruit and veg aisle three times in order to save 20p on broccoli, I could hear my ancestors calling to me.

My conversation dropping from functional to trappist, and my energy banks entirely drained, at long last we arrived home, and I could collapse onto the settee. It’s been a very long time since I’ve felt so weary and, despite my expectations, a quick sit down and a bite to eat failed to return me to my usual fighting-fit state.

I managed after twenty minutes to move from one settee to the other. Ten minutes later I stirred long enough to turn on the TV and select A Bit of Fry and Laurie on Netflix, after which I fell asleep again at ten to twelve, waking at five past one to find I’d not managed even the tiniest bit (or Bit) and that the TV was just sitting there looking at me.

I decided to give up and go to bed. My other half was already there and ironically, as I laid down, feeling that I’d had quite enough of my own body for one night, it suddenly struck me that I’d gladly take an interest in hers. I felt my body rallying a little.

It was not to be. Apparently she was worn out from all that shopping.

Fathers Day

by andrewcurnow1971, posted in Family, Moaning, TV

Quick disclaimer: it’s not about the sitcom, sorry.

A few years ago I was trying to track down some images to represent obscure sitcoms of the past. What surprised me was, firstly, just how many of them I could think of – and second, even with the entire internet at my disposal, many of them were almost completely absent. I found scandalously little on triple-star vehicle Tom, Dick & Harriet, and both You Must Be The Husband and Streets Apart had vanished almost without trace.

So too had long-forgotten early-80s Channel 4 Sitcom Father’s Day, starring John Alderton. There is a mention of it on one or two comedy guides (which then go on to not actually give any kind of guide to the show at all) and a surprisingly-impressive guest cast listing on IMDB, but apart from that nothing. That’s quite astonishing, given that there are 116 million hits for teaspoon.

From memory it was filmed in a real house, which gave it a washed-out, dull sort of look; and it eschewed canned laughter (presumably the edgy new Channel 4 would have viewed that as outdated bourgeois BBC nonsense). So all in all, it kind of came across as a less Scousy version of Brookside rather than an obviously hilarious knock-about family-based comedy.

So, anyway, I thought it important to make that quite clear straight away, just in case some poor beggar Googles the show and gets themselves all excited thinking they’ve come across some really good info about it. Other than the above scant recollections, and the fact that I can still recall the opening lines of the theme tune, I’m afraid you haven’t. Sorry.

But anyway, and with that rather longer than expected disclaimer out of the way, I always have a bit of a problem with Fathers Day. It’s the unfortunate fact that my Dad (or Father) is not interested in golf or football. He doesn’t fish or drink lots of beer. He’s not even, unless he’s keeping it very quiet, interested in racing cars.

Yet card manufacturers feel sure that having covered those five bases so comprehensively, this will ensure something for everyone. I suppose one could argue that, he’s in his seventies now so surely he’s had ample time to have acquired an interest in at least one of those five possible options – but it feels a bit harsh to be blaming my Dad (or Father) for the complete failure of his life to overlap with any of the Fathers (or Dads) Day cards available.

And anyway, I don’t think it can be just him. In fact it’s definitely not, because I don’t like any of those things either. (Although, I suppose… well I suppose that could be heredity kicking in couldn’t it… In which case… Maybe it is his fault after all…?  No, no, it’s not him, it’s definitely the Greetings Card manufacturers that are to blame.)

To be honest, I also have a problem with Fathers Day in general. As a father myself I’ve spent several years telling my own daughter not to bother, because it’s basically just an exercise in commercialism, and I genuinely don’t mind her ignoring it. (So far she has ignored me saying she can ignore it, which just goes to show how contrary the female mind can be!)

I’m sure my own Dad (or Father) would entirely agree with that sentiment; but forty-seven years in it might seem a bit off to suddenly give up on the whole thing. It would be very hard not to infer some criticism or slight, I think. By common tacit consent, however, we have pretty much given up on presents for Fathers Day (or at least, we’ve stopped getting him anything and he hasn’t complained yet) so that at least is a chink of sanity.

But, and in a ‘this is more or less where I came in’ kind of way, we do still buy him a card. Dad’s not a sportsman or a drinker, and in his quiet, modest way I don’t think he’d welcome a huge, flashy card proclaiming ‘World’s Greatest Dad’ either.

I mean he is, obviously, but even so…

What’s New Pissy Cat

by andrewcurnow1971, posted in Moaning, Pets

Our cats pee. A lot.

I don’t necessarily think they pee any more than any other group of cats, and in fact I don’t even mind cat pee as such. Obviously (he added quickly) I don’t actively like it, but I’m certainly not bothered by it while it remains in its proper place. Which is inside the cat, outside in the garden, or (slightly begrudgingly but still acceptable) in a tray of woodshavings kept in the corner of the kitchen for just that very purpose.

No, my particular problem, and it’s one that is exacerbated by the fact that we have five cats (yes, that is excessive) is that ours seem to pee in an awful lot of places which are definitely NOT on the list.

One of our cats is knocking on a bit, so it would be kind of understandable (though still annoying) if it was just Sootica having the occasional spontaneous, unpreventable wee. Coming from a family of weak bladders myself, I feel it would be bad karma to moan too much about our old cat having the odd accident because frankly sooner or later it could very easily be me.

However, the fact is that it isn’t (just) Sootica. (Plus, karma or no karma, if I had an accident it definitely wouldn’t be all over the kitchen tiles or up the pedal bin. I’d be a geriatric, not an acrobat.) All five are likely suspects, and it’s now like Russian Roulette going into our kitchen because you can never be quite sure what you’re going to encounter.

Perhaps inevitably, then, I’ve developed something of a sixth sense for cat pee. Not the smell particularly, although there is something nonetheless very distinctive about it – it’s insidiously unpleasant, a smell you catch out of the corner of your nose, and not always easy to locate.

But it’s rarely the smell I pick up on first. More likely, quartering the kitchen like a tiptoeing Child Catcher type figure, I might spy a slight variation in the quality of the shadow against one wall; or a reflection of the lights from a particular patch on the lino. Some tiny insignificant detail which registers unconsciously, before my eyes (and then my nose) properly catch up.

One smell I do like is the smell of bleach – which is fortunate, because our pedal bin has needed a considerable amount sprayed on and under it these past few months. Even more maddening are those occasions when a cat has done it literally right in front of the tray, in what can surely only be a deliberately act of provocation?

In the age-old battle of Cats V Dogs, I was for a very long time firmly on the side of the Cat. Even after my wife finally persuaded me that we should get a dog (and I’m using the word ‘persuaded’ quite incorrectly there, since it was a fait accompli (no, tell a lie – it was a Labrador, I’m rubbish at identifying breeds)) I was still pro-Cat, on the grounds that they are a lot more intelligent, and require a lot less walking.

Somewhere in the intervening decade, however, that swingometer has, um, swung against the feline and towards the canine. That’s not to say dogs don’t pee, of course they do, but ours at least are polite enough to wait until they are outside to do it. There are other things they do out there too, but despite that (even despite the brief phase one of our puppies went through of eating it after they’d done it) still, in mess terms, the dogs win paws down.

But back to the kitchen (no, no, I don’t want to go back in there, please don’t make me go!!) and it sometimes feels I’m on what Kryten in Red Dwarf once referred to as “twenty-four hour wipe alert” with our cats. The smug beggars have all demonstrated in the past that they know how to do it right – yet still they continue to go where they shouldn’t go, and leave me constantly cleaning up after them.

No wonder I get a bit pissy about it.

Comic Effect

by andrewcurnow1971, posted in Doctor Who

My Doctor Who Magazine came this week.

It’s a magazine not a comic (feel free to imagine me saying that in a defensive, whiny, teenager sort of a voice) but even so, and although I no longer sit under the letterbox like I used to when I was a kid, there’s undeniably that same ‘new comic’ vibe when I know it’s due.

Comics seemed to figure very heavily in my youth, in a way that they don’t seem to with kids today. When I look at the magazine racks in supermarkets or in newsagents, the children’s section is full of over-bright, generic, photographic covers, and the only selling point seems to be the free gift.

In my day, as a given you’d get free gifts with the first three issues (very occasionally, the first four). After that, the comic had to stand on its own two feet, with free gifts used only very sparingly – a Judge Dredd badge with issue 178 of 2000AD for example, or the occasional plastic glove puppet of Dennis or Gnasher in The Beano.

And we seemed to have so many comics. Whizzer & Chips, Topper, Krazy… Starlord, Tornado, Battle… Roy of the Rovers and especially the long-running Tiger were my brother’s particular favourites (featuring Johnny Cougar, Skid Solo, Hotshot Hamish – and of course Billy Dane, the one with the boots). I started with Buster, another long-runner, which had Faceache and The Leopard of Lime Street.

I regularly got Star Wars Weekly (later Monthly (later still, back to Weekly)) and the 1980s revival of Eagle with Dan Dare the headliner, accompanied by a host of other, mainly photographic strips. (A curious delight of the subsequent DVD age was spotting heroic-but-doomed ‘reporter Howard Harvey’ from the legendary first Doomlord strip, popping up as an extra in 1980s Doctor Who stories.)

But I was probably most passionate about, most engaged with, 2000AD. Some of its strips were extraordinary storytelling – targeted at kids (well, presumably) but pitched at an adult level. The classic Dostoyevsky dilemma (to create a Utopia could you torture to death one innocent creature?) I first came across in one of Tharg’s early Future Shocks. And an instalment of one particular Robohunter story ended with the Mayor discovering that he was actually a robot replica of himself. It would be a great cliffhanger with somebody else finding out; but to discover it of yourself… That still blows my mind.

Occasionally I think about tracking down some of those memorable back issues: Dredd’s Judge Child saga say, or the Sam Slade story where they all burst into song. Halo Jones maybe, or Fiends of the Eastern Front. Something always holds me back.

As a child, no question, I had an awareness that at their best these strips were treating me ‘as an adult’ in that they weren’t patronising or condescending, and they certainly weren’t shying away from ideas. But I’m not sure that necessarily translates today as ‘for adults’.

Many memorable and influential things from my childhood come a cropper with this dilemma unfortunately. On the one hand, I’d sort of love to revisit them; on the other, for all that they felt grown up to me as a kid, I know they’re not really meant for me as an adult. Grange Hill was extraordinary back in the day, but I’d feel just a little bit odd about buying the DVDs and watching them now.

Maybe I’m feeling that “when I became a man, I put away childish things” (which, depending on your point of view, is a quotation either from Paul’s Letter to the Corinthians or Doctor Who’s The Curse of Fenric). I definitely remember collecting Star Wars toys well after Return of the Jedi had been released, until in my mid-teens, having just bought a large Kenner Rebel Transporter toy, it suddenly seemed ‘childish’ and ‘wrong’.

Of course Doctor Who is, as ever, the exception to the rule. There’s a show that’s absolutely intended for children but with adult levels to it, yet I revisit that (and often!) without ever feeling it’s ‘inappropriate’.

I don’t even feel childish when my comic turns up each month.

Magazine. When my magazine turns up each month.

PS, the High-Pitched Voice Would Also Like To Say…

by andrewcurnow1971, posted in Doctor Who

The Podcast in question, as I feel it would be remiss of me not to mention it, is primarily (although not wholly) Doctor Who related, and this specific edition focusses on a range of books collectively called ‘You on Who’ (and its various spin-offs, including one entirely based on the works of Douglas Adams).

There are two main things to point out about the ‘You on Who’ range. The first is that they are a collection of essays from ordinary fans rather than professional authors, giving their personal recollection, or response, to a particular story or element of Doctor Who. They aren’t reviews, or studious academic critiques – they are about what it means to the writer, or what effect it had on them, or why it always reminds them of a particular time in their life.

The most recent volume has just been released, which covers the Peter Capaldi era – so that’s all the Doctor Who stories from 2014 to 2017, from a Prehistoric Dinosaur in Victorian London all the way through to the bit where he turns into Jodie Whittaker (sorry, spoilers). Also included is a wide selection of additional, random entries, on a mix of other stories and aspects of Doctor Who. There’s even a piece by me about the title sequences, but please don’t let that put you off buying it.

The second thing to point out, is that the books’ proceeds all go to charity. For specific details about which charities have been covered in the past, you can listen to the Podcast – but the very first Y&W book in about 2012 was for Children in Need, and the most recent one (which unless you’ve dozed off and missed a whole paragraph, you will know has just been released) supports The Lucy Faithfull Foundation, which works to prevent child sexual abuse.

For more information on the books and their contents, you can try here: https://watchingbooks.weebly.com/

For the current Y&W-based Podcast, you can try here: https://player.fm/series/doctor-who-strangers-in-space

And, probably most importantly, for The Lucy Faithfull Foundation, please try here: https://www.lucyfaithfull.org.uk/