Half-Remembering
May 27th, 2010
While I try and find the time to do some new writing I hope you’ll find this little diversion as interesting as I did. James Cargill of Broadcast talking about English children’s TV shows of the 1970s and how disturbing they often were. I like what he says at the end about preferring to half-remember them rather than knowing the whole thing, I’m not sure I’d really want to see The Owl Service or Children of The Stones again as I might be disappointed and I’d rather remember the effect they had on me as a kid and keep the creepy sights and sounds from them I still have in my head, they’re much more powerful as dream-like fragments.
You’re so right; these things are always better dimly remembered than re-watched. That said, I don’t recall much of The Owl Service on TV at all, but I did love the book, and another of Alan Garner’s called Elidor. I’ve been banging on about them to my eldest girly for ages, to (so far) little avail.
I live just down the road from Avebury, and it’s surprising how much I get a chill from seeing it and remembering Children Of The Stones.
Meanwhile we spent a year in English lessons studying Alan Garner’s things, which annoyed most of the class, as the teacher, Miss Croft, picked them just for a handful of us who were big fantasy fans!
Children of the stone wasnt shown on anglia tv but was shown on midland. Luckily my friend down the street had midland tv so i used to watchit at his house. This did mean that on winter nights i would have to run home in the dark – I don’t think I’ve ever been as scared than in that weekly sprint home
I saw Children of the stones for the first time a couple of years ago and was pleasantly surprised at how good it was. You can’t beat the weird atmosphere created by shows that have little or no soundtrack music – Sapphire And Steel being a great example of this too.
I got a couple of DVDs off of E bay a while back, an imported Australian programme shown here in 1960 ,”The terrific adventures of the terrible ten”
I loved it when I was a nipper, & I had a big stupid grin on my face when I watched it 45 years+ later, havent watched it since though.