Looking back it seems that I spent my childhood worrying
about things in a time when there was far less to worry about than for hundreds
of years previously or since. No wars, no plagues, no workhouse; just times
tables, not being good at football, other boys, the vague threat of nuclear
holocaust, and home.
I wasn’t alone. There was a lot of worrying in my house. It
seems in retrospect that there was a grey miasma hanging over us, maybe that’s
what caused the constant arguments. It couldn’t have been the booze because
neither of my parents drank. The pressures must have been bad though. I grew up
believing that all parents took prescribed Librium and Valium, and it wasn’t
until I discovered Lou Reed and learnt what these drugs were for that I
realised that there must be some parents that didn’t.
To help me through whatever it was I was trying to get
through I didn’t take calming tablets. Instead I took comfort from television.
It was always on and back then there was Children’s Hour at five o’clock sharpish
which I never, ever missed.
It’s Friday. It’s Five o’clock. So it must be Crackerjack!
My Children’s Hour habit stuck with me for years - way into
my twenties. It was almost as though I was reluctant to let go of this peaceful
part of my childhood and who knows, perhaps I was. I think that in some ways the
boy in me didn’t want to go give up in a Peter Pan kind of way, although God knows
what it was I trying to hang on to.
Along with my not-so-inner-child, that undefined worry stuck
with me for years as well. Ill-formed, nagging, constantly at the back of my
mind, through university into work and on into an unexpected married life.
Television remained with me too, and I continued to watch children’s TV,
pretending to watch it for the three young girl children that surrounded me,
but really watching it for myself and comfort.
My anxiety was at its height in the autumn; for some reason
the dark damp evenings making me worry even more. Was I trapped? Did anyone
really care? Where was I going? Was I wasting my life? What should I do?
It was only when the evening came with pre-news Magic
Roundabout, or Crystal Tipps & Allister, Ivor the Engine, Nogin the Nog,
and my favourite The Herbs, that I could lose myself in childish absorption, my
worries dumbed-down by the silliness of the adventures of Sir Basil,
Lady Rosemary, Constable Knapweed, Bayleaf the Gardener,
Mr and Mrs Onion, The Chives (the Onions' children) and that clumsy
Tarragon the Dragon.
We’d sit there, the four of us, in the dim light of the flickering
television as Hector the Dog, Madame Zsazsa the Cat, and Kiki the Frog acted out
tales that had no real story, not having to think about anything but the glove
puppets in their beautiful house and garden. It was all very comforting for ten
minutes or so and then the six o’clock news would come on and my worry would
start up once more.
It’s years ago, but still I have no real idea what I was
worrying about, why I worried, where I was trying to run to, or why I wanted to
run away but never did.
I’m older now, and most of the worries that seemed so sharp
when I was a child and a young man have long since disappeared. Things aren’t
so pressing, winning not so important – maybe I have nothing left to prove. But
sometimes when the autumn evenings come I feel a twinge of that old underlying
worry and wish Dougal, or Noggin, even Roobard and Custard were still around to
distract me into safety.
Yes, sometimes I’m still a silly old Hector.
