A journey into the past - I’m Ten Years Old Again!

Well obviously that’s not actually true however I certainly felt it the other night. You see the small town I live in has a few charity shops that do rather well, however it differs from a lot of other UK towns and cities in that the regular shops on the high street have not gone out of business and seem to be doing quite well. We have a nice selection of family owned businesses and one or two large chain stores along with the usual assortment of banks so the charity shops don’t dominate the shopping. Anyway I digress, “why did you feel like a kid again” I hear you ask. Well on a recent scan through the DVD section of one said charity shops I spotted something that I last saw when I was the aforementioned age.

Nice building, great grounds.

You see my flirtation with the wonderful genre of fantasy started when I moved from primary school to middle school (way back when the UK had a three school education system). I loved my primary school, it was large and modern, huge playground, lots of playing fields and surrounded by greenery and trees etc. As you can guess there wasn’t a huge amount of children in attendance so you felt like you were one of the “Big” kids all the time. The classes were about 20 kids so the teachers had a lot of time for you on an individual basis. It was great. Unfortunately as the education system moved to a two tier system the school was deemed "unsuitable" to the pupil increase this change would entail and thus it was eventually shut down and demolished. And now it’s just a waste ground that’s slowly getting overgrown. Grrrr

Anyway I keep digressing. So I moved to middle school where there were more pupils and I (and my friends) were no longer the “Big” kids. The usual jockeying for position ensued, new friendships were made and the complications of social interaction for pre-teens began. Being a rather large and gangly child, and coming from a council estate I was subject to some rather unpleasant treatment from those posh kids from the supposedly posh primary schools I mentioned earlier. However as I said I was rather large (i.e tall) and therefore this unpleasant behaviour didn’t last long as the threat of being squashed by me was a little bit more than the posh kids could take.

So there I was, big school, a little bit alienated and trying to clumsily make friends. I was never good at sport, I wasn’t particularly confident or good looking so things weren’t looking too promising. And then like the proverbial Golden Fleece I discovered something that would change my life forever - THE SCHOOL LIBRARY. Here was a whole world of adventure, stories, pictures, excitement by the bucketload. And what was the first book I checked out? The Hobbit by a certain Mr Tolkien.
I devoured the thing in two days and hungry for more I hunted for something else by this mysterious author. I asked the school librarian and she said she knew just the thing but would have to order it in. I waited patiently for a week, then impatiently for another week, then I started to despair and she got bored of me pestering her at break time. Arghhh school holidays coming up and I still hadn’t got this mysterious book. Then as I was about to go to my last class after the afternoon break before we broke up for the autumn half term I passed by the library. And lo, there it was, a thing of beauty -The Lord of The Rings. All three books and appendices in one volume. It was like a house brick, my school bag weighed a ton.

I devoured, consumed, absorbed every page in five days. My journey into the magical world of fantasy literature had begun. My parents were baffled as my older brother was football mad, my younger brother constantly climbing trees and trying to escape parental supervision. Neither of my parents read books, they’d never read Mr Tolkien’s books and found my obsession unfathomable. I didn’t care, this was something that made sense to me, finally my imagination had somewhere to go - I battled trolls and goblins, found treasure, journeyed over mountains and through forests all within the safety of my own imagination.

I returned to school and sadly returned this magical book, the librarian asking if I liked it. I gleefully replied “Yes” and she pointed me in the direction of A Wizard of Earthsea by Ursula K Le Guin, Magician by Raymond E Feist and a whole host of others, I met a few like minded souls who were also reading the same books and friendships ensued. My path was set and led me to where I am today.

However returning to the title of this post and the inherent question of why did I feel ten again, well the next school holiday after reading the Lord of The Rings was Christmas and way back in the early 80’s we didn’t have many TV channels so Christmas TV was a big deal, everyone bought a copy of the Radio Times so they could find out when the big movies were on. As I said earlier my parents didn’t really get my interest in fantasy but they did (in their own way) try and find me things of interest, so one afternoon just after Christmas day I was planning on playing out with some friends when my Mum says “Stephen, why don’t you stay in, there’s something on TV I think you’ll like”. Hmm weird thinks I but as she had moved the little portable television into the bedroom I shared with my little brother (who was trying desperately to escape the garden by climbing up a tree to jump the fence) I thought it must be something good.

So I settled down with a glass of dilute orange juice and a digestive and waited for this mysterious program.

Two hours later I was excited, giddy and just plain happy. A cartoon that was not really a cartoon. My favourite book brought to the screen. Yes its incomplete but Ray Bakshi’s version of The Lord of The Rings was the first time I saw my imagination and Tolkiens amazing words in motion!

And this is why I felt ten years old again, finding it in one of the charity shops mentioned at the start of the post was like finding gold. Sitting with a dilute orange juice and a digestive biscuit I relived one of the happiest memories of my childhood and the stresses of my adult world just disappeared, for two hours I was a kid again. It might not be the greatest film ever, it’s not even the full story but that’s not the point (at least for me). It’s a reminder of why I play these games, paint models and read everything I can find. It’s a memory cue, much like the smell of home baking or freshly cut grass and it takes me back to a simpler time. I won’t say happier because I am happy with my life, but it was a period of my life that was free(er) and when something triggers that memory it makes my adult worries fade, just for a while and sometimes that’s all you need.