If you don't know where you are going, any road will get you there - Lewis Carroll

I'm fairly used to the quirks and idiosyncrasies of my fellow humans - I have to be, life with Robbie is full of surprises. However I was startled when a rather odd looking man rushed out in front of my car as I drove down the road yesterday. I came to an abrupt halt and the man stood in the road in front of me, turned face the car and saluted! He then engaged in a series of repetitive hand movements as if he was conducting an invisible orchestra, but something about the movements reminded me of the mechanical movements of the figures on the Trumpton clock. Then the man stopped conducting his orchestra, saluted again and marched back to the side of the road enabling me to continue on my way totally bemused by the experience. 

As I drove away I wondered why seemingly insignificant childhood memories such as the Trumpton clock remain vivid in my mind so many years later. My daughter Emily introduced me to Pinterest a while ago and I have to confess I'm addicted to it, I've been creating a album (known as a board) of childhood memories. Pinterest enables you to create and share as many boards and add as many images as you like.  The comics and television programmes of my childhood took up so much space on my childhood memories board that they had to be moved to create boards of their own. Comics played an important part of my life when I was growing up and I looked forward to the arrival of my comics each week with a sense of anticipation which the children of today wouldn't understand. Every issue was read from cover to cover and then saved to be read again another day. Creating that board of all my old comic favourites brought so many memories flooding back.

One of my early favourites was a comic called Treasure which included a beautifully illustrated comic strip about Wizard Weasel who created all sorts of trouble in Princess Marigold Land. I have recently bought a few old copies of Treasure and I realise how wonderful the artwork was, no wonder that it could keep me occupied for hours. As soon as I could read independently I discovered the joys of Beezer, Topper, Sparky, Cor, Beano and Dandy. Cor was my favourite, but I had favourite characters in each of the comics so I read as many comics as I could each week. I liked Keyhole Kate, Beryl the Peril, Desperate Dan, The Bash Street Kids, Mini the Minx, Pop, Dick and Harry and Ivor Lott and Tony Broke to name but a few. I wasn't the sort of little girl who read the Bunty, my comic heroes were all rebels and none of them would be considered politically correct in this day and age. 

One of the characters who has stood the test of time is Minnie the Minx, she looks a bit like a female version of Dennis the Menace but to me she always seemed a bit cleverer and more rebellious than Dennis. I enjoyed her antics but it never occurred to me to copy them, I was a bit of a tomboy but I was a well behaved child and I knew the difference fiction and real life. I think what appealed to me about Minnie the Minx (and some of my other favourite characters) was that she lived life her way, being a girl didn't stop her doing anything. Jim Petrie the artist who drew Minnie the Minx for over forty years (from the beginning of the 1960's to 2001) died at the end of August 2014 and when I read his obituary I realised that I owe a debt of gratitude to the many comic artists and illustrators, whose work entertained us and helped to develop a lifelong habit of reading. The heyday of comics is long gone, times have changed, but Minnie the Minx is still going strong, she was 60 last year - she even has her own statue in Dundee.

The Voice of my Childhood

I was so pleased last week when I heard that Brian Cant had received a special award at the Children's Baftas. The name Brian Cant will be instantly recognised by almost everyone who grew up in the 1960's and 1970's. To Robbie he is the voice of Play Away on Saturday afternoons, to my brother he is synonymous with Play School, but to me he is the voice of Camberwick Green, Trumpton and Chigley. Far too many years later I can still recall the Play Away song and the start of "Here's a house, here's a door. Windows: 1 2 3 4, ready to knock? Turn the lock - It's Play School."

Camberwick Green began with the words "Here is a box, a musical box, wound up and ready to play. But this box can hide a secret inside. Can you guess what is in it today?" Then the box would open and a character would emerge from inside the musical box to begin the story. I always hoped it would be Windy Miller of Colley's Mill, he was my favourite character and I loved the sound of the sails of the windmill going round.

The start of Trumpton was also memorable "Here is the clock, the Trumpton clock. Telling the time steadily, sensibly, never too quickly, never too slowly. Telling the time for Trumpton." Then the picture would pan away from the clock to the activity in the town street below and the story would begin. Trumpton always ended with a band concert but my favourite part came in the middle when the fire brigade were called to attend to a problem (never a fire, as far as I can remember). Surely a whole generation can still recite the names of the Trumpton fire brigade Pugh, Pugh, Barney McGrew, Cuthbert, Dibble, Grubb".

I have to admit that by the time Chigley came along I was too old to watch it, but my brother is 6 years younger than me, so he always wanted to watch it. I don't recall much about Chigley except Lord Belborough who travelled everywhere on Bessie the engine. There were so many memorable Trumptonshire songs, all sung by Brian Cant, but my favourite is

"Time flies by when I'm the driver of a train

And I ride on the footplate there and back again

Under bridges over bridges to our destination

Puffing through the countryside there's so much to be seen.

Passengers waving as we steam through a station.

Stoke up fireman for the signal is at green.

Time flies by when I'm the driver of a train

And I ride on the footplate there and back again

In the cutting, through the tunnel,

Rushing clanking on the track.

Wheezing pistons, smoking funnels,

Turning wheels go clickety clack.

Time flies by when I'm the driver of a train

And I ride on the footplate there and back again."

For me the voice of Brian Cant transports me back to childhood and to the kinder gentler world of Trumptonshire. I wouldn't swap places with the young children of today, they have more choice but in those far of days there was a special kind of magic that was lost as programs became more sophisticated.