School’s Out For Summer

My kids finished school for the summer two weeks ago. The little buggers get nearly three months break here which is just insane, that’s a quarter of the year. We “only” got two months in England when I was a kid and even that felt too long. We pay for ours to go to a camp for most of the summer which keeps them busy and entertained. When I was their age our mum left me and my sister with a woman who lived around the corner that “took in” kids during the holidays and after school. We spent all our time playing in her back yard and tiny kitchen and weren’t allowed in the rest of the house. All I remember her doing is reading the paper and smoking, but I assume she must have fed us at some point.

When we were a few a years older — around 11 and 12 I think — our mum let us stay home and fend for ourselves while she went to work which was pretty bloody magic as you can imagine. As is usually the case with nostalgia I remember it being hot and sunny all the time though, this being England, it can’t have been. Great though the summer holiday was, we did get a bit bored and restless by the end of August. Not that we wanted to go back to school but we were definitely running out of things to do, even in London. There’s only so many times you can play football, go to the adventure playground, the swimming baths, the museums, or get shouted at by a scary old person.

But at least we had some good telly to watch in the mornings when the BBC would show old serial dramas like Hergé’s Adventures of Tintin, Robinson Crusoe, and Champion The Wonder Horse which riveted us all summer. Then the good old paternal Beeb would encourage us to get off our behinds by ending the morning with an episode of Why Don’t You Just Switch Off Your Television Set and Go and Do Something Less Boring Instead? which was all about creative things you could do with your spare time.

I used to love Why Don’t You? and think I actually wrote a letter to them once. Now it looks so innocent and the kids are so charmingly awkward with their stamp collections, pet ants, and terrible jokes. Hard to imagine a show these days telling kids to turn off their televisions, but we didn’t have a lot of choice back then because kid’s programs were only on at certain limited times and the BBC would often close down completely for periods during the day. We didn’t care though because we could always catch a bus, go to the pictures, buy a Jubbly on the way home and still have change out of 50p. Try telling kids today that and they won’t believe you.

Not going with the obvious Alice Cooper track, instead here’s the famous theme music to the aforementioned Robinson Crusoe. This tune might not mean much to some, but all over the world there are English people of a certain age clicking on this link and having a massive flashback.

Download: Theme From Robinson Crusoe (mp3)