Autobiography Read Free Page A

in a world where adults are understanding and have time to explain and to sympathize with the peach-cheeked kids – none of whom resemble anyone that I know. Quicksand and rattle-snakes are passing dangers, but both boys in these shows never remain at the same point for very long, and are rarely discontented or fenced in. Where, I wonder, can such stylishly fitted jeans be found? Not in Manchester Play Streets, where children can only encumber. Where are there such boys who are fully and entirely content with simply being ? Not in Manchester by-streets, which are exactly what they sound like. Schoolboy misadventures with Just Jimmy are the British version of boy-prank subterfuge, as Jimmy Clitheroe apple-raids, catapults, conkers and water-pistols his mother’s nerves to blustering fussiness. These, though, are giant leaps on from the slapstick of Mr Pastry’s Pet Shop , Deputy Dawg , and the pop puppet piglets Pinky and Perky. Fireball XL5 calls my bluff, and each day brings five full minutes of Captain Pugwash , where paper characters shift across a screen of painted backgrounds, and where only left-to-right eye movements signify reactions aboard the sea-faring Black Pig. The French Belle and Sebastia n once again shows the world beyond England as a better place for kids, and I am already ripe for disappearance. Funniest of all is Batman , so glamorous against our homegrown Ask the Family stodge or Candid Camera humiliations. Television is black and white, so therefore life itself is black and white. Gasps of color can be found only at the Odeon, the Gaumont, the New Oxford, the Trocadero or the Imperial, where the cinema screen gives you the hope of other people’s happiness. Television flickers and fleets, and must be watched closely lest what you see is never seen again. Whatever you see you will never forget. I know so little compared to Canada’s The Forest Rangers , whose lead boy is unleashed and free and stylish in his manly kindness. I sit on a stool by the fire and I watch the kids called the Forest Rangers who moralize and are never accountable, and who are too self-assured to ever think cruel thoughts. They heartily shake the hands of adults – something I have never once been called upon to do. Turn and look at me – in affectionate childhood distress, the last in the asylum, by a frosty Manchester fire. Could there be hope? Animal Magic offers none at all, and conjuror David Nixon smiles an honest half-smile. Orlando is played by Sam Kydd, a boat-builder on London’s docklands where kids run wild and are given credit for being funny. It’s a Knockout offers international games in madcap costumes, and Honey Lane is the damp bed-sit drama of East End market traders – our squatty England against America’s The Big Valley , where, even in the Old West of 1870, Victoria Barkley has no trouble kitting herself out in Christian Dior. An annual flash of glamor is the Eurovision Song Contest ,whose voting system is heart-stopping, as is the Grand National turf accountant’s dream of Miss World , as all of England places their bets on the beauty of young women whose full human potential is limited to one frozen expression; their bodies are for others, but not for themselves. Live from the Lyceum Ballroom (could I possibly know that, several lifetimes hence, I would one day become a someone on that very stage?), Miss World is unmissable high drama, a spectacle of heaven in Eva Reuber-Staier (Miss Austria 1969), and Marjorie Wallace (Miss USA 1973), never-to-be-forgotten world rulers. Breathing lulls throughout Miss World transmissions as British families ram into chocolate-strewn settees for a genuine glimmer of glamor, where cabaret battles the convent as the finalists huddle together backstage awaiting the announcement of the juicy winner in a severed condition of meaningless tragedy. The seconds prior to this announcement cause wet heaps of tension throughout Britain. It is magnificent, and its results are