Monday night saw me happily planted in front of the first episode of BBC4s’ Comics Britannia. It was an utter joy, and had me loudly agreeing and reminiscing at the telly all the way through, while Clare rolled her eyes and got on with finishing the last bit of her final assignment before her October exams. She knows better than to disturb me when I’m wallowing in nostalgia.
My love for the Beano stems from the era when I was a little speccy thing. My uncles had a thick pile of annuals from the 60s that they’d collected as boys. They’d left them at my Nan Gwen’s when they moved out. A surefire way to keep me quiet during visits to the grandparents would be to point me at that pile and tell me to dive in. Sometimes I’d have to be forcibly dragged away from them at the end of the visit. I was mesmerised by the Bash Street Kids, and Leo Baxendale’s extraordinary, annotated grotesquerie. Equally, Dennis the Menace and his smalltown anarchy resonated deeply with me, as a thin, meek shortsighted child who would never tear ass the way that spiky-headed terrorist would.
Interestingly, I’d never realised just how crude and energised Davy Law’s artwork was until I saw some of the loving closeups that Comics Britannia layered thickly through the show. The word “punk” was used a few times, and pretty appropriately too. You could almost feel the glee with which ink was slashed over hasty pencils in an adrenalised rush. His art was impressionistic, anarchic. Small wonder I enjoyed it so much.
On occasion, I would be allowed to take one of the precious volumes with me, and I would inevitably treat them with the respect with which I treated all of Doug and Sam’s valuables.
They were read to bits, then swapped for the latest Whizzer and Chips annual.
In mint, some of these early books are worth hundreds of pounds. To me, mint is something that comes in a tube labeled Polo. Books were a commodity, not a collectible. To some extent, I still think that way. I’ve binned, or more recently donated a ton of books and magazines over the years.
Only the most priceless of volumes are worth hanging onto. And by priceless, I mean priceless to me. The dog-eared Kurt Vonneguts I picked up from my favourite second-hand bookshop in Woodford will always be with me, because at the time every book of his I bought was new to me, and because they were bought with my best mate Chris in tow. We were, and still are, serious bookhounds, and many of our happiest moments were spent scouring bookshops for strange and interesting stories. The Vonneguts, Asimovs, Ellisons and Harrisons we snarfed for pennies a go have history ingrained in every page, and informed the kind of reader and writer that I am now. They are passports to memory, and as dear to me as any other possession.
I appear to have wandered off the point. Nostalgia will do that for you.
EXCUSES AND HALF TRUTHS 