The Restless Bones - a bit of nostalgia

Back in the day, when I was at Junior school, we had a thing called The Bookworm Club.  It must have been a nationwide organisation (I vaguely remember a catalogue, though I can’t find any info about it on the Net) but what happened at Rothwell Juniors was that a stall was set up in the hall and you went in and bought any books that took your fancy (there was also something with collecting vouchers and saving them on a card).  I enjoyed it because it was aimed towards me (bookshops in those days weren’t, particularly, kid friendly), I could pick what I wanted and they had some great titles to choose from.

One of my first purchases was The Restless Bones, edited by the great Peter Haining.

cover scan of my copy

The Restless Bones & Other True Mysteries, edited by Peter Haining, is a slim Armada paperback that has no copyright/publishers information in it at all, though I believe it was published in 1978.  The cover was painted by Alun Hood, whilst the interior illustrations were the work of Ellis Nadler.

(left - "The Restless Bones" are discovered - right - "The Thing From Outer Space")

Peter Haining (1940-2007) was a journalist, author and anthologist from Suffolk, who was Editorial Director at New English Library before becoming a full-time writer in the early 70s.  He edited a large number of anthologies, predominantly of horror and fantasy short stories and wrote non-fiction books on a variety of topics, sometimes using the pen names ‘Ric Alexander’ and ‘Richard Peyton’ for crime anthologies.  He won the British Fantasy Society Karl Edward Wagner Award in 2001.

The Restless Bones contains ten stories:
The Restless Bones, The Winged Monster of the Desert, The Terror Of The Dragon, The Mystery of the Loup-Garou, Old Roger’s Vengeance, The Witch’s Familiars, The Call of Darke’s Drum, The Trail of the Devil’s Fooprints, The Thing From Outer Space and The Voice In The Graveyward.  “I have drawn on the large file of material I have collected over the years about events and experiences which are fantastic - but factual” is Haining’s comment on their origins, as he writes in his introduction.

The killer story for me was “The Voice in the Graveyard”, wherein teenaged Richard, in 1964 Wisconsin, accepts a challenge to spend the night in a graveyard, all on his own.  As I write this - a grown man far removed from the nine-year-old me reading it over the 1978 summer holidays, I can still remember the frisson of fear that ran through me when Richard hears a whispering voice plead, “…help us…”

Well presented, with a good range of mysteries, this kept my attention well and steered me further into the path of horror and the supernatural (the devil's footprints being backed up by Arthur C. Clarke, of course).

I'm also proud to say that this book still stands on my bookshelf - it looks a little beaten up around the edges, but it's holdings its own.

Nostalgic For My Childhood - Christmas Annuals (part 6)

"Christmas is coming!"

Me & Tracy, Christmas 1977 - look at how chuffed I am, I've got the new Look-In annual AND the Starsky & Hutch Gran Torino!

Welcome to the sixth post (you can find the others on these links here - 2017, 2018, 2019, 2020 and 2021) showcasing one of the Christmas highlights from when I was a kid (beyond the catalogues I wrote about in 2016), seeing which annual I got that particular year.  For those who don't remember them, annuals were (and still are) large size hardback books, designed for children and based on existing properties, generally comics and popular TV shows, as well as the occasional film and sport and pop round-ups.

The ones based on comics featured the same cast as the weekly editions, while the TV and film ones had comic strips, the occasional short story, fact files and interviews and - brilliantly - in the case of The Fall Guy, behind the scenes information on stunts and how they were filmed.

Published towards the end of the year, annuals are cover-dated as the following year to ensure shops don't take them off the shelves immediately after the new year (though, by then, unsold copies are often heavily reduced).  Still as popular now, though kids today don't have the choice of comics we did, the only real difference seems to be that they're skinnier (and that's not me being all nostalgically misty - my ones from the late 70s and early 80s are substantially chunkier than the ones I’ve bought for Dude over the past few years).

Here, then, is another selection of old favourites, ones I received and ones I remember my sister Tracy having.  I hope some of them inspire a warm, nostalgic trip down memory lane for you...

1968

One of my favourite TV shows as a kid and this was a favourite annual (though I'm not sure either when Mum or Dad bought it - I wasn't born until 1969 - or I was given it).  Cracking book though.

1977

My sister Tracy (who I wrote about here) loved horses for as long as I can remember and went on to be an accomplished rider and tutor.

1977

 That theme music!  Gambit!  Purdey!

1978

1978

1979

1979

Sing it - underground, overground, Wombling free...

1980

1980

If we were out on bikes around this time - my friends, or me and TJ - we'd ride two-abreast and pretend we were Jon and Poncho.

1980

1981

1981

1981

My favourite "funny" comic when I was growing up, Cheeky Weekly actually finished in 1980 (it was incorporated - "great news for all readers!" - into Whoopee in February)

1981

 Sir Roger Moore as James Bond.  Do you need any more reason to own this?

1984

I'd moved on from annuals by this time, though I was a huge fan of The A-Team (and still am, as I wrote about here and here).  I didn't pick this up until much later.


Happy Christmas!


scans from my collection, aside from the girls titles (thanks to the Internet for those)

You can read more of my nostalgia posts here

The Back Garden Play In 1982

Back in November 2020, I blogged about the photo-stories I used to produce (which you can read here).  As well as writing and directing those, I was also one of those annoying "hey, let's put on a play!" kids and, for two summers with friends, forty years ago, I did just that.

The Rasgdale Street Players (from left) - Steven Corton, Claire Gibson, me, Tracy, Caroline Gibson
(from the Kettering Evening Telegraph, August 1982)

The Ragsdale Street Players (we weren't actually called that but, with hindsight and since we lived there, we really should have been) was formed by me and my friend Claire Gibson (who had been in my class during junior school), along with my sister, Tracy and Claire's sister, Caroline.

Our first play, The Evil Of Dr Frankenstein, was performed in the Gibson's back garden during summer 1981.  My friend Nick was going to play the monster but, at the last moment, wasn't able to so he was replaced by a cardboard box robot (as I recall) who thankfully didn't have any lines.  The play was successful with its audience (friends, neighbours and relatives who weren't told what was happening when they were invited over) and I loved it.

After that, I read a book (Graphic Violence On The Screen, by Thomas R. Atkins, which I still have in my library) that included a picture of Warren Beatty and Faye Dunaway in Bonnie And Clyde (1967).  I was really taken with it, got other books out of the library about the duo and decided that would be the basis for the 1982 play.

Everyone agreed, I did the research and Claire & I began writing the script on 3rd August (I only know this because 1982 was the first year I kept a diary).  Later entries record us rehearsing (though not every day) and the "for one night only" performance was Wednesday 11th August (we rehearsed morning and afternoon that day).  My diary entry reads:

"The play went down quite well and lots of people came.  

We raised £3.40 for the church tower appeal fund"

Smith & Jones, our play, was in two acts and we even had a singalong in the interval - Steve Corton could play the keyboard and knew the tune to We Are The Champions, which helped because Claire had the lyrics in her Smash Hits and we wrote them on boards for the audience to see.

We took the funds to the church the next day and that, I thought, was going to be it - the play had done well, I basked in the glory, that was us done for another year.  Except, on the Friday, I got a phone call from the local Evening Telegraph and dutifully recorded it in my diary:

"This morning, a lady from the Evening Telegraph phoned me up to say that Canon Cox had contacted them to tell them how much we raised etc.  She is sending a photographer at 2.30pm.  He came earlier and took 5 scenes [I presume I meant poses] but 20 shots.  There were two men."

The picture appeared in the Monday 16th August edition, 40 years ago.  I'm wearing my Indiana Jones fedora (bought the previous summer in Great Yarmouth), Steve is wearing my dad's St John's ambulance hat and we're all holding toy guns.  And seriously, how fantastic is that?

My diary says £3.40 and I stand by that...

The Ragsdale Street Players (I really wish I'd thought to tell the reporter from the ET that) bowed out at the top of their game and Smith & Jones proved to be our final show.  I can't remember much at all of the play, or the performance, but looking at that grainy photograph from the paper always makes me smile.  Claire and Caroline are both still doing very well, you'll be pleased to hear and I went on to appear in several Youth Club pantomimes with Claire as we moved into our teens.  I haven't done much acting since then but, on occasion, I've been known to write the odd thing or two...

Yet More Look-In Cover Art

In 2016 I wrote a Nostalgic post about Look-In (which you can read here), a much loved magazine (‘the junior TV Times’) of my childhood.  Designed and written for kids, it featured the major film stars, pop acts, sports people and TV stars of the day with comic strips, posters (most of the Six Million Dollar Man ones ended up on my bedroom wall) and behind the scenes articles.  It also had, through the late 70s and into the early 80s, painted covers by Arnaldo Putzu, an Italian artist working in London who made his name creating cinema posters in the 1960’s for the likes of Morecombe & Wise, Hammer (Creatures the World Forgot and The Legend of the Seven Golden Vampires), the Carry On series and Get Carter (which I wrote about here).  Though other artists sometimes contributed artwork (including Arthur Ranson), his cover reign from 1973 through to 1981 still looks glorious today.

I’ve posted about the covers before (you can read previous posts here, here and here) and so, with a focus on those from 1981 (all of forty one years ago), here’s another small selection of that wonderful artwork.

Enjoy.

It was clearly a big deal for Bond to be on TV then (Dr No was released in 1962, 13 years prior to this edition.  As of today, we're 47 years after this edition, which doesn't feel right at all...)

Steve Austin, the Six Million Dollar Man, a major hero of my childhood

I didn't realise Just William was this old, to be honest - my sister-in-law still jokes about 'scweaming until she maketh herself sick...'

"Heeeyy"

At the time I didn't realise The Latchkey Children was based on the novel by Eric Allen, but I discovered and read it in 2013 (and blogged about it here)

My favourite film of 1981, I blogged about Raiders Of The Lost Ark here

for more, there's a great Look-In archive on Facebook here

Nostalgic For My Childhood - Some More Summer Specials

A couple of years ago I had a conversation with Dude where he expressed amusement over what I had to put up with when I was his age, namely (but not limited to) very few video games, cameras that were only cameras and phones that were wired to the walls in your house.  This led to me blogging about one terrific thing I had that he didn't, the Summer Special!

As I explained then (you can read the 2018 entry here, the 2020 one here and the 2021 one here), children’s comics now aren’t a patch on what they were back in the 70s and 80s (and before that, even).  Modern titles, sealed in plastic bags and littered with free gifts, have very little in the way of comic strips or stories (in fact, most seem to consist of quizzes) but back in the day the likes of IPC and DC Thomson produced a raft of weeklies that catered for most tastes (published on newsprint with a splash of colour).

Those weeklies, in turn, gave us the Summer Special to look forward to.  A one-off edition of our favourite title, it was thicker and more colourful and the perfect reading accompaniment to a long car journey or a lazy afternoon in the back garden.

Comics historian Lew Stringer suggests (on his blog) that “today’s retailers dislike them because they occupy valuable shelf space for too many months” which didn’t bother newsagents in the 70s - Summer Specials were especially popular at seaside towns because they were pretty much guaranteed sellers, with a new batch of kids every week who’d need entertaining.

Here are a few more from my golden-era of reading them (the late 70s into the early 80s) - what were your favourites?

1976

1977

1977

1978

1979

1979 - a team-up between Spidey & The Punisher sees people disintegrate in a poisonous gas.  Even read now, the imagery is cheerfully gruesome!

1979 - a real favourite of mine, I wrote a retrospective of Look-In which you can read here

1980

1980

1980

1982

1982

1983

1983

1983

see the other Summer Special posts on this link

Thanks to Lew Stringer for the history and comicvine for some of the scans.  See also David Barnett’s excellent blog piece at The Guardian.