Always, no sometimes, think it's me (John Lennon)

Get Back (You may say I'm a dreamer - Chapter 1, part 9)

October the first, 1962, was huge! 

The Beatles signed a contract with Brian Epstein on that day in England and I started my education at Royal Oak Primary after a stint at Mrs Rogers Greenwoods Corner kindy. The year was also memorable in other ways - down in Dunedin, a few months earlier on April 14th Jacqueline Frances Smith was the first child born to Patricia and Brian Smith.

Like millions of people I can identify with John Lennon's lyric to Strawberry Fields Forever when he says, 'No one I think is in my tree'. From the start I knew I was different. I loved words and reading right from the start. Probably totally pretentious, but I'd love to try out new vocabulary on my parents, and peers at school. I was experimenting and I read A LOT!

Nose in a book - typical!

Grandma bought me Look and Learn magazines each week, I loved the reading boxes at school, I borrowed books from the library and I would have books bought for me to read. And there were always the adult books in the bookcase at home that I'd gaze at when bored. 

My imagination was stirred AND shaken. Look and Learn had some great comic strips, The Trigan Empire series and others. There were informative articles and my books were adventure oriented but not of the usual Enid Blyton kind.

The year 1962 was also tinged with sadness for my father and grandfather. William, my great grandfather, our solid link to Rochdale origins, passed away.

WNP, WNP and RGP

I can't say I ever really knew him, I was 5, but I definitely remember him. He was a kind of shadowy figure but he was a definite presence. The house called Roch-dene in Reimers Avenue, opposite Eden Park, belonged to him, not Deedoo as I always believed. My father and his parents lived with William rather than the other way around.

I feel a real connection to him, I share his initials, I proudly wear his gold wedding band and his roots in Rochdale feel deeply ingrained in me as well. Without William I wouldn't be here, so I owe him a great debt.

On the first day of school I arrived with my mum and immediately found a friend, or more accurately, he found me. I seem to have a knack for making strong relationships with people and Billy was the first. My first day of Primary and this little boy befriends me, a total stranger one second then we're mates! Just like that. Billy's open invitation to be a friend has stayed with me, long after the event.

Wherever you are, Billy, you did good to a funny little guy.

Royal Oak primary was a magic school and a wonderful start. I can still picture teachers and students and even individual lessons like they were part of my recent past: plays I performed in; getting cards from reading boxes; playing goalie and diving around like a maniac; being catcher for the softball team; playing four square; getting a kiss from Adrienne - my first love; drinking warm milk from cream sized glass bottles; being on school patrol at the Pah Road crossing; doing a speech about a family holiday to Australia; singing in Mrs Alexander's choir; protecting Ross from bullies; getting on the bus to the murder house (dentist traumas that linger still) and playing rugby at Te Papa Primary.

These things are all as vivid in my memory as if I'd read about them in a book. Yes - Royal Oak primary was magic, as was my childhood in the otherwise turbulent sixties.

Love and peace - Wozza

Two riders were approaching and the wind began to howl (Bob Dylan)

The Return of the Jedi...Empire

So I see it's me... and I'm still the child (Marillion)

Can you ever get back a piece of your childhood?

If you could - would you?

I got an email on the weekend from my comics guy in Wellington, telling me the 12 volume set of The Trigan Empire was in his store and could be mine if I wanted it!

I looked at the email for a few seconds and suddenly I got a glimpse of a parallel universe 'me', one whose mother had not disposed of the pile of Look and Learn magazines under 'my' bed when 'I' became a teenager!

Yes I've probably been watching way way too many Fringe episodes (we're up to the end of season four, one more season to go...)

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Brief back story: when I was growing up in Royal Oak, Auckland in the mid sixties, my paternal grandmother bought me Look and Learns every week. 

It was 1966 and I was 9 years old.

Look and Learn was a fantastic magazine for kids:

Look and Learn was a British weekly educational magazine for children published by Fleetway Publications Ltd from 1962 until 1982. It contained educational text articles that covered a wide variety of topics from volcanoes to the Loch Ness Monster; a long running science fiction comic strip, The Trigan Empire; adaptations of famous works of literature into comic-strip form, such as Lorna Doone; and serialized works of fiction such as The First Men in the Moon. The first major change to the contents of the magazine came in 1966 when it incorporated Ranger with issue 232 (25 June 1966). This amalgamation brought with it a number of comic strips including The Rise and Fall of the Trigan Empire, written by Mike Butterworth and drawn by Don Lawrence.

The magazine gave me a doorway into a world of history - Kings and Queens and literature and places that I could dream about. And it had comics - which somehow forever legitimised them in my young mind.

Along with Look and Learn she would also have a copy of Shoot waiting for me on a Saturday morning when we went to visit (yes - every Saturday morning mum and dad would load me and Ross into the family Purdmobile and we would drive from Royal Oak, through Sandringham to Mt Eden - Reimer's Ave by Eden Park to be exact. Ross and I would troop in and while we loved seeing Deedoo - Harry Purdy, my grandfather, we would never have the same bond with Grandma - no feelgood kids name for her - Christina Purdy was always 'Grandma'. She would give me the latest copy of Shoot (a British football magazine) and Look and Learn and that would be me for the duration of the visit!).

Back home at 18 Korma Ave., I'd go through that doorway and be lost in my fantasy world of, among other things, The Trigan Empire.

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Suddenly that email miraculously managed to take me back to my pre teen self. My thoughts turned to my mum and dad and, well, I got a little overcome actually.

Thinking that I could recapture a glimpse of that person and that time when I had both my parents was pretty overwhelming.

I wrote back a quick OMG - YES! message to the comic guy in Wellington and now I'm waiting for the courier to deliver a bit of my youth back to me.

Yes - you can (get a piece - just for a moment)!


Love and peace - Wozza

The hero knew what he had to do (David Crosby)

Currently, I'm gutted by all the negative reviews of the new Fantastic Four reboot.

Apparently the story line is a mess. Other stories/reviews have complained about the way the FF franchise has been treated over the years.

What a giant shame.

The promo looked so good too.

A reminder:



But everything I've read about it tells me the movie sucks.

I'm not sure why they can't get this story right. 

The comic holds a special place in Wozza's World. FF was my first favourite comic book...maybe.

Actually that's not true, come to think of it.

First there was Look and Learn and a comic series they featured called The Rise and Fall of the Trigan Empire. 

It. Was. Beyond. Awesome.

While I was trying on some trousers last weekend in Hastings' Hallensteins store I got a call on my mobile.

I didn't know what to do for a second. SWMBO was with me in the store and I could see her and she wasn't on her phone.

No one else ever calls me so I was confused.

I answered the call and it was a comic book shop in Wellington. I'd visited them months and months ago and left my number in case they ever got a lead on reprinted volumes of the Trigan Empire.

I've searched for years. Ever since my beautiful mother (bless her heart) threw all my Look and Learns away.

Devastated? Not even close!

So wherever in the world I've washed up and whenever I've spied a comic store I've asked (one in Brugge was OMG, humungous, but...no Trigan Empire).

No luck - out of print and other sad stories have been a constant...until that call last weekend.

The upshot: I may have a shot at the 12 volume set from Holland. It's expensive but I've waited nearly 50 years for this so...eff it.

Love and peace - Wozza

Mountains of despair, I can see the pain (Mastodon)

I read an extremely interesting article on the Guardian website about Game of Thrones which has prompted an internal debate and also one with SWMBO about whether I/we should continue watching it.

The substance of the Guardian bog post is that the continued racism and sexism has got the better of this particular writer and she's decided to stop watching Season Four. 

She's certainly weathered quite a storm - incest, season long torture scenes, murders and deceit by people who aren't nice - but it appears that rape scenes in the last two episodes aired have been the final straw.

The comments to her post are also fascinating - I urge a gander. I particularly liked the Marge Simpson reference (her target - Itchy and Scratchy of course).

http://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2014/apr/29/game-of-thrones-racism-sexism-rape

The history

SWMBO and I started watching Season One while I was reading (and enjoying) the first book. Season two we watched as a Box Set (after I read the second volume in the series) and Season Three I taped off the Soho channel (didn't read volume 3 - couldn't get into it as much). Now Season Four is playing weekly on Soho.

The Trigan Empire had it all!

What do I like?

• Tyrion Lannaster - he's evolved into an erudite 'goodie'.
• Cersei Lannaster - an evil Lady MacBeth. She wants to be King you know.
• The Shakespearean treacheries and machinations.
• The medieval fantasy world of knights and swords reminds me of The Rise and Fall of the Trigan Empire comics I loved as a child.
• The Starks in general who have now been pretty much wiped out by treacherous evildoers.
• The suspension of disbelief is mostly achieved (those damned dragons!)

What don't I like?

• Dragons? Oh please.
• The rape scenes - Cersei's rape by her brother was stomach turning.
• The season long torture of the evil Theon Greyjoy by the even more evil Ramsey really tested our resolve.
• The lack of a payoff in the above and elsewhere - evil abounds.
• The gratuitous sex scenes of all description - incest, orgies of all descriptions.

Why we will probably not give up on it just yet

• The 'why we like it' column wins - 6 to 5.
• Habit
• I need that pay off - I need the white hats to win out along the way.
• Unlike Banshee, as well as the blood and guts, there are still all those Shakespearean plots to follow.

Love and peace - Wozza