Illustration by Sheena
THIS shows how good St Saviour’s School was. I was taught to read by Mrs Chantry. We started off on the little blue Janet and John books and then went on to the thicker, hardback books called Wide Range Readers.
By 1972, when I went to live in England, I was on a book called The Five-and-a-half Club, which had on the cover a short-trousered kid painting the end of a shed bright orange.
The teacher in England couldn’t believe how far on I was – three books ahead of the English kids.
This has nothing to do with any advanced abilities (some kids at St Saviour’s were much further ahead than me). It was all down to great teaching.
Reading wasn’t a chore in those days. It was something we all wanted to do.
There wasn’t much competition. There were no home computers, no videos, telly had just three stations (and the same advert on every commercial break – ‘Check Rentals, Check Rentals, Check Rentals, the best TV for you… Check Rentals, Check Rentals, Check Rentals, the best TV for you – oi!’) and if you lived out of Town, the Gaumont and the Odeon were a world away.
And who could afford to go to the pictures every week, anyway?
So, reading was a means of escape.
When I got to England, all that went to hell.
I’d already been given the Beano book by my Auntie Lynne in 1970 and had devoured it.
Biffo the Bear, Billy Whizz, The Bash Street Kids, The Three Bears – all visually great and each strip drawn in black and white but coloured in some parts in either yellow, blue or red.
But in 1973, I was given the Sparky annual.
It was full colour all the way through: L-Cars, Keyhole Kate, I Spy, Hungry Horace, Thingummyblob and Mr Bubbles.
It was more anarchic than The Beano or The Dandy and even at that age I’d picked up on its satirical edge.
Then came The Beezer annual, with Ginger and Tin, the Dog and Topper starring the fantastic Numbskulls, tiny men who lived inside a man’s body.
The bloke was a quiet, unassuming, middle-aged everyman with a tash and a balding pate who got into all sorts of scrapes which the men had to help him out of, like applying more grease to the inside of his elbow during a tennis match or cutting up and shovelling food into his gut during a village pie-eating contest.
Who needed old-fashioned sci-fi like Brave New World or War of the Worlds when you had this cutting-edge stuff?
The unisex anarchy spread to a spate of Boy’s Own comics like Victor and later Warlord.
Nigh on 30 years after the war had ended, these were still teaching us that Fritz died screaming ‘ARRGH!’ while the Japs favoured a more exotic ‘AIIIIEEEE!’.
There would be a football story, several war stories, a sports story and then one funny story.
But the best by far was Alf Tupper, The Tough of the Track.
He was a welder who ate chips and encountered toffee-nosed types at every race meeting.
His opponent was always an upper-class twit and a cheat, giving Alf a dig in the ribs as the last lap bell went.
But Alf, spurned on by working-class grit and a diet of battered cod, was always first through the finishing tape.
D-Day Dawson was a British Tommy who had a bullet inching closer to his heart every week, which explained why he indulged in dangerously stupid heroics. And then there was the funny page about Figaro, a hapless bandit with weight issues and a tendency to end up in jail.
Paradoxically (and that’s the first time I’ve ever used that word), alongside all this macho stuff, I had a fondness for Ladybird books.
Yes, they had books about the army, navy and air force, cars and medieval knights, but they also had fairytales, How To Make and the various mild adventures of the decidedly middle-class, middle-England brother and sister combo, Peter and Jane.
Not for them the knockabout japes of the annual characters. Instead, these thoroughly white, well dressed, early teens indulged in good, clean fun.
Like helping out at father’s vegetable patch (P and J’s pa didn’t have anything as proletarian as an allotment), going for a seaside daytrip in father’s half-timbered Morris (obviously his weekend car, the 3.5-litre Rover Coupe was his work vehicle) and, probably the best adventure of all, writing their name and address on a postcard and sending it away attached to balloons.
This last wheeze had the balloons ending up in the hands of all sorts of everyday folk: a policeman, a vicar and my favourite, a very obvious Irish builder on scaffolding wearing a suit and eating his sandwiches.
Each recipient wrote back to Peter and Jane and everyone had such fun. The fact that these random people now had Peter and Jane’s address didn’t enter into it.
If, looking back, the books look quaint and dated, it’s because 30-odd years ago you could cross a busy main road and play in the park all day, go door to door by yourself asking for a penny for the guy and you could buy three bottles of ale from the off-licence and say they were for your dad and no one would bat an eyelid.
But as you grow up, both you and the world become less innocent. And I was no exception.
I started getting into American comic books. Having a western bent, I read Scalphunter and Jonah Hex. (Imagine the teacher reading that name out during morning registration: ‘Justin Hargreaves?’ ‘Here.’ ‘Daisy Hawkins?’ ‘Here.’ ‘Libby Herbert?’ ‘Here.’ Jonah Hex? Jonah Hex?’ ‘He’s off bounty hunting again, Miss.’)
And after that, I got into cowboy paperbacks.
My reading record really took a turn for the worse at the age of 14.
‘Lorna Doone by Richard Dodderidge Blackmore; Daphne du Maurier’s Jamaica Inn; The Silver Sword by Ian Serraillier; Edge no. 18, Ten Tombstones to Texas by George G. Gilman; Crow by James W. Marvin; Bodie the Stalker by Neil Hunter.’
And so on.
This led Mrs Jones, my English teacher, to write in red biro in the margin: ‘What about an autobiography or two, Shaun?’
But the thing is – and some literary snobs may think it’s sad, but I don’t – just about every book I’ve mentioned above I’ve kept. All my annuals, my Ladybird books, my bloodthirsty paperbacks, all of them.
And has it affected me?
Let’s just say Captain Macbeth by Chief Willy Shakes Spear would make a great cavalry western, with the Apaches attacking Fort Dunsinane at the end dressed as cacti rather than Great Birnam Wood.
So that’ll be a no, then.
Article posted on 8th March, 2008 - 9.21am
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