the rag-and-bone shop of the head

[devi]

I've been watching the second series of Look Around You. Among all the retro-spoof fun, they keep referring to another programme called "Tlentifini Maarhaysu". As in "Now let's go on another enchanting visit to...". It's never explained what Tlentifini Maarhaysu is. The most you see is some Spirograph-like spinning graphics. And yes, exactly, they've put their finger on something I've never managed to articulate before, because it really was like that.

Before they had Dempsey's Den, a chunk of the afternoon dedicated to kids and featuring children's presenters and puppets and the Birthday Roller, there was Good Afternoon With Thelma Mansfield on RTE 1, and whoa boy was it random. They would put on five- or ten-minute animated shorts in the gaps between the programmes, surreal little films and cartoons often in foreign languages and with no explanations attached. These things seemed deeply disconcerting to five- or six-year-old me, watching after school in a brown and orange sittingroom, cross-legged on the brown carpet in my brown cord dungarees, some time in the early 80s. Every so often since then a memory of one of them will pop up and take me by surprise, and I'll wonder if they really were that weird or if it's just that everything seems strange when you're that young and don't know how anything connects to anything else.

But now we have the internet, and I've been on a trawl through YouTube, and some of these things are out there. Yes, they're still freaky. Especially this one:

"" (Watch on YouTube)

Animated video for Kraftwerk's Autobahn. Spinning women with flames for heads! Hovering mouths! Aaaa!

And this one won't let you embed it in a post, but: The Butterfly Ball. Three minutes of utter colour-saturated hippiedom. Frogs that turn into plants. And, apparently, some guy from Deep Purple on vocals.

If you're reading this and a memory of something you saw or read as a kid comes up, maybe something you haven't thought about for years or decades, I challenge you to try and find it again, and then come back and tell me about it. I want to hear about things that don't get an immediate groan of nostalgic recognition round the table when you mention them in the pub; stuff you think no one else remembers. Bring me the fossils in your brain.

Comments

[dyddgu.livejournal.com]

No videos, but what I remember some of is on here -
http://www.hhg.org.uk/progs.html

Ffalabalam, and Miri Mawr. They were very, very odd.
Mostly we had dubbed foreign cartoons. Mr. Rossi was Mr. Mostyn (Welsh for Mr Nobody). Smurfs were "Y Smyrffs", and the evil man was called Craca Hyll with a cat called Mursen....

[dyddgu.livejournal.com]

Also, OMG I remember the Butterfly Ball as well!!!

[nja.livejournal.com]

I remember the book, which Wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Butterfly_Ball_and_the_Grasshopper_Feast) says was published when I was nine. Very 1970s illustrations - a glossy airbrushed Beatlesy feel - not the sort of artwork the Beatles had while they were going, but the style of some of the post-split artwork.

And lo and behold, the artist of the 1973 book (http://mindbrix.co.uk/alanaldridge/aldridge.php/Books) also illustrated the Beatles ' Lyrics (http://mindbrix.co.uk/alanaldridge/aldridge.php/Gallery/The%20Beatles) (I had a book of the music with some of these illustrations, probably bought by my parents in the forlorn hope that I'd progress beyond playing the recorder).

[leathellin.livejournal.com]

I used to watch the Smurfs in German. I don't really remember any details though.

[bluedevi.livejournal.com]

I love that Miri Mawr means Big Fun...

[burkesworks.livejournal.com]

and, apparently, some guy from Deep Purple on vocals

Close, but no cigar. It's credited to Roger Glover, but the lead singer on this track is Ronnie James Dio, ex-Rainbow and Black Sabbath. Good to see this again; I still have the LP and the Alan Aldridge book lying around!

[cliph.livejournal.com]

Remember when RTE would sometimes play The Frog Chorus (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2UMTnWft744) when they had nothing else to play? No explanation or excuse needed.

[bluedevi.livejournal.com]

Yes! And do you remember the daffodil blowing in the wind, with tinkly music and the word "Interlude"?

Or maybe it was a snowdrop.

[http://users.livejournal.com/_kent/]

This is something that my neurons barely cling to:

http://www.thechestnut.com/noah-nelly.htm

Noah and Nelly. Cartoon from the same stable as Roobarb, but which evidently ceased transmission at about the same time that I was first able to form memories and stuff. Very seventies. Rather than pairs of animals, it was a bunch of two headed animals on board this acid trip of an ark. I can remember barely anything about it, and were it not for the rise of the internet, it would just be a ghost of a recollection with practically nothing connected to it.

[bluedevi.livejournal.com]

Crikey. That cast list! "Cynthia the snakes"... "Ahmed the camels"... something about the single name and the plural noun is doing my head in.

So is that where "All aboard the Skylark" comes from? That phrase cropped up in other programmes and even, I think, on story tapes, and didn't make much sense in the context.

[http://users.livejournal.com/_kent/]

I guess that's where it comes from. "All aboard the Skylark" is one of the fragments of it left in my head, looking for something to connect to, and conjures up an image of the deeply weird ark thing.

I guess there's other things from the era, but most of it ended up being repeated ad infinitum, so it all made sense in the end. There are weird artifacts in my head, though. There's this episode of Bagpuss where there's a little straw elephant with no ears, and so they give it a hat with ears on it. That episode always makes me feel like crying, and I believe it's because when I was about 4, I thought it was a terrible terrible thing that there was this poor little toy elephant that someone had abandoned because it had no ears anymore. Throughout my childhood I always had trouble throwing out broken things, and these days I'll always try and think of a use for something before I throw it out. I have drawers full of crap I'll never use, that doesn't even work anymore. Maybe it all stems from that.

Kids TV, it really stays in your head more than you think.

[bluedevi.livejournal.com]

I hear you. I was incapable of throwing out anything with a face on it. Even if it was just a badly drawn face on a piece of paper, it'd still be looking at me reproachfully, damnit.

[nja.livejournal.com]

Something I remember: a book borrowed from the library which made a deep impression and I can't remember the author, the plot, or anything much about it. Some sort of paranormal ability, possibly, and microbes were involved, but the memory has faded over the years. The impression was made because it was unlike anything I'd ever read before.

I used to love the Robber Hotzenplotz books, and J P Martin's "Uncle" stories - some of the latter were republished recently, but Preussler's books are selling for silly money according to Amazon. Judging by my delving in Waterstones' children's section today, all kids want to read now is Horrible Henry, Jacqueline Wilson, and books about bloody pink fairies which I refuse to buy even for my "god"daughter who loves pink fairies.

[nja.livejournal.com]

Und auch: Joe (http://www.thechestnut.com/joe.htm). This is a very early memory, pre-school so about 1967-8. The BBC "Watch with Mother" slot had a bunch of still-famous programmes (the Woodentops, Andy Pandy, Bill and Ben, the Herbs), but Joe seems to have been almost completely forgotten. Joe used to make me cry - I had one of those really strong irrational aversions to it that young children often do. I think it's because he would occasionally do something mildly naughty or wrong, and they had some dismal music to indicate he was sad, and I ended up with a kind of phobia - if Joe was that day's programme, I wouldn't watch it.

[verlaine.livejournal.com]

Some sort of paranormal ability, possibly, and microbes were involved

Madeleine L'Engle, A Wrinkle in Time/A Wind in the Door?

[anam-uk.livejournal.com]

Boris the boy from 2 beta

A stulifyingly dull russian multi-part serial in black & white, I mainly remeber it for not being flash gordon or buck rogers or anything useful or intresting of that nature.

A quick google thinks the internet has forgotten it. That is surely for the best. If I'm wrong (and I probably am, there has been a lot of whiskey tonight) some misguided lunatic will post a link, I hope to all that anyone holds holy its not a youtube link

[amuchmoreexotic.livejournal.com]

I swear I turned on BBC2 during the day once and saw a man wrapping twine round his head to the accompaniment of shrieking violins. I even think there might have been a knife involved. It shat me right up but I have no idea what it was.

[bluedevi.livejournal.com]

I don't know what it really looked like, but the mental image is hilarious.

[leathellin.livejournal.com]

I read a book with a cat that wants to be a tiger which only a few people seem to remember. There was also the wide mouth frog which doesn't seem to be widely remembered by metame does which is great.
It also took me ages to find another copy of the book which contains the a poem. a sory and a set of illustrations which all match but mostly because I couldn't remember any of the names just what the pictures looked like. The icon i've used is one and it turns out the story is The Princess Nobody.

[bluedevi.livejournal.com]

Not the Maltesers wide-mouth frog? And that's a lovely icon.

[leathellin.livejournal.com]

Apparently it is the Malteasers frog but I don't remember that at all. Just the frog. How odd.

[bluedevi.livejournal.com]

"I love honeycomb centre surrounded by chocolate!" - Frog.
"I love honeycomb centre surrounded by chocolate surrounded by... wide-mouth frog." - Random Predator

...right?

[leathellin.livejournal.com]

No - I don't remember that, I remember a less honeycomb centered version. I wonder where the non-maltesers frog is..?

[undyingking.livejournal.com]

If it's the same one I'm thinking of (which, given the unlikelihood of there being more than one, I suspect it probably is), it's called "The Cat Who Wanted to Be a Tiger", and I think it was written by Joyce Gourfain.

[undyingking.livejournal.com]

Although, aha, hmm, actually I now think I was thinking of "The Cat Who Thought He Was a Tiger", by Polly Cameron. Confusion!

[philipstorry.livejournal.com]

I have the Butterfly Ball on CD around here somewhere - it's part of my "fringes of Deep Purple" collection of stuff that's related to the band.

Roger Glover, by the way, is their bassist. As has been pointed out by others, Ronnie James Dio is the vocalist for that track.

Actually, I just found the CD in my collection - neatly nestled between Aloce Cooper's Dragontown (one to avoid) and Thin Lizzy's Whisky In The Jar (not too shabby!).

That clip is probably the Quicktime bonus video on this album - it being the digitally remastered version released in 2001 or thereabouts. I haven't MP3'd this particular album as yet, but could do so if you're interested in owning a copy for - um - review purposes. ;-)

[philipstorry.livejournal.com]

Oh, and I have very few fossil memories.

I have snippets of memories from before I was seven. After that, many more. It's to do with moving from one town to another, which was somewhat traumatic for me I think.

One thing I remember reading once I'd moved to Beckenham was some books featuring a green-eyed cat and a boy. Can't remember the title for the life of me, though. The cat was in a painting, if I recall correctly. Come night, his eyes would twinkle and he'd come to life, jumping out of the painting in typical catlike manner... He could talk to the boy, and the two would go on nighttime adventures.

I don't remember the adventures, y'know. Just the very cool idea of a painting coming to life, and a talking cat. Well, I thought it was cool when I was seven, anyway!

[stiofan.livejournal.com]

Hmm, some stuff has already been mentioned (like the Frog Chorus on RTE), however...
For some reason 'The Burbles' off Vision On I found disturbing (the frog they had was odd enough in itself as well), but the most bizarre thing that I think I've ever seen on TV was catching The Muppet Show, as Gaelige no less, on TG4. Needless to say the voices were just plain wrong when dubbed into Gaelic, and whilst Wladorf and Stadler were funny, when Sam the Eagle came on that was enough for me.

[bluedevi.livejournal.com]

Wow. The tunnels... wow.

Swap you something slowed down (http://video.google.co.uk/videoplay?docid=-5707822603294858920) for something speeded up...

[hairyears.livejournal.com]

I have memories of a cloth book (!) about a helicopter who wants to be a big, fast aeroplane, until someone shows him that hovering is quite nifty and its good to be what you are...* This is pre-school, when I had started giving my own names to letters, and could just write my own name with my finger on the stair-cupbard, even with the difficult bendy line after the fuffs in the middle of the surname. I distinctly remember the word 'surname' and knowing that it was a word for something, and that this was when people used it.

Reading - with a few visual cues - has been part of my life since the age of three or four. Writing, then as now, takes a bit more thought and can be rather hit-and-miss.

As for children's programmes, very few of them leave a lasting memory: I can remember watching them, but nothing of what they actually were about, except for a few of the Blue Peter features about interesting places and machines. This implies that either they all had very poor content, and were just light entertainment without educational value, or that - even then - I was more influenced by the written word.


* I believe that this was later plagiarised by some or other divorced member of the Royal Family.

[shewho.livejournal.com]

oooooh, i have the butterfly ball album! because i loved the book as a child. i haven't listened to it in YEARS tho.....