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.
I didn't post on the blog on Sunday because it was a very busy day for me. It was my brother's birthday so we had to pop over to my mum's house to take his presents, then later on I had to work so the day passed in a blur of activity.
In the morning I was sitting on my bed doing some work on my laptop when Emily came into the bedroom looking very sad. She told me that Tony Hart had died, and she went on to say that he was amazing. I'd heard the news of his death on the news earlier in the morning and my reaction had been much the same as Emily's. As a child I had watched Vision On an amazing combination of art and performance, I loved the art part of the show especially the gallery of viewers art work. Tony Hart was original, inspiring and clearly very talented, he made art fun and he made it accessible to everyone, in so many ways he fired our imaginations.
When Emily was a child Tony Hart was there to inspire her too be creative too. He had moved on with series that were entirely based on art and animation such as Take Hart, Hartbeat and Smart Hart. All of my children love art and Tony Hart played a part in inspiring them to try many different aspects of art. Laura was always very good at three dimension work and Sam loved those very large pictures made of household objects that you have to look down on, he used to create them on the lounge floor. They still love art, all can draw and paint well and all have their own style. I wonder how many children have been influenced to enjoy art because of Tony Hart - what an incredible legacy. I can't write about Tony Hart without mentioning his annoying little sidekick Morph, a plasticine stop motion animation who appeared with Tony. Morph lived in an artists pencil box and he appeared in short clips of little more than a minute, he was fun and it was just one more way of introducing children to different aspects of art and creativity.
Tony Hart made a huge contribution to children's television, and he will be sadly missed by the many people who have enjoyed and been inspired by his work.
We made a relatively early start this morning, by holiday standards. I was the first up, but when I went to have a shower I had to clean first because I found that we had our own private beach in the shower basin - Sam! He had showered after going to the beach yesterday and (being a boy) he didn't notice that he had deposited half the beach in the bathroom. It is a brilliant shower, I could stay in there all day.
By 10am we were in Padstow ready to take a leisurely look at the shops. Laura found a lovely fair trade jewellery shop called Uneeka on Saturday and she wanted to go back to buy a couple more items. We looked at lots of other shops and I took advantage of the early start to take some photos while Padstow was relatively quiet, nothing opens until 10am. It was a dismal morning, but not raining and not cold, it brightened up later in the day so we can't complain.
We stopped at a nice little cafe for a bacon roll and a cup of tea. Poor old Robbie was really struggling to walk today and it was obvious that he was in a lot of pain, but he enjoyed his bacon roll. I hope you like the photos of Padstow.Later in the afternoon we went for a walk along the coast path. We walked towards the lifeboat house because there is a bench where we can sit and 
watch the sea birds and surprisingly we can get an excellent phone signal there, there is no signal in the caravan. The lifeboat had gone out earlier and as we looked out at the sea we spotted it coming back, so we watched as it made the approach and was winched back up the ramp to the boat house. I was sad to hear that one of my favourite artists Beryl Cook has died. I loved her larger than life characters, they always seemed to have great confidence and to be enjoying life immensely, with just a touch of wickedness. She had a unique style and she will be much missed.Beryl Cook Paintings
