"Pow !" "Zapp !" and "Clunk !"

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When I was ten, my 'pocket money' was ten old pennies (10d = 4p in 'funny' money).

When I was eleven I got a penny rise!

In those days, us boys didn't have worry about inflation and rising prices.

That extra penny meant an extra gob-stopper or the ability to buy the 'Eagle'.

Comics in my early days were nearly always the 'Dandy' or the 'Beano'. Sometimes I would buy 'Film Fun' for a laugh at Laurel & Hardy. These only cost 2d, and there was more left over for sweets.

Now the 'Eagle' which I preferred cost 3d.....it was a comic for big boys with real money!

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Was it Dan Dare that interested me?

No, it was those cut-away pictures in the centre fold.

They were cut away to show how things worked, trains, planes and boats.

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I just loved them. I now have a book which contains about fifty of these fascinating drawings.

Above are just two.

I loved science and mechanics and as I got into my teens I left comics behind and bought magazines like Railway Modeller and Practical Mechanics (re: another post).

Last week I was watching those programs on the history of the chemical elements and this week tried to watch a program about photography, and capturing very fast movements with cameras.

I said ‘tried’ there for the whole program was a constant swirl of epilepsy inducing flashes, fast lights and pop-ups.

I gave up half way through!

Why does every programme have to have all those fast-forwarded bits and pieces, bursting and fissing?

It's very annoying, it drives me mad!

It reminds me of those days of Comics, where every movement was accompanied by a ’Wizzz’, ‘Pow!’, ’Zapp!’ or ’Clunk’.

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Even ‘Gardener’s World’ had succumbed by flashing up a blank white screen between views and attaching a sound resembling a ‘Fissst’! (Sorry, don’t do sounds).

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And as if that was not bad enough someone at the beeb has decided to abolish silence. You will be extremely lucky to go for longer than 10 seconds without some so-called music in the background. Except that it's not even in the background. It's in the foreground, because more often than not it's louder than the narrator's voice. And it's got absolutely sweet FA to do with the content of the programme.

Every single British programme is now being shot in the style of a 2-minute promo for the next edition of The News of the World.

The world went a good fifty years with cameras being held steady, nice and horizontal for longer than a second. Memorable films, programmes and documentaries were made. I'm not saying that everything should look like the Weather Forecast. They can still experiment, like many film directors did for decades without turning everything into something resembling a rock festival.

OK, so I am a Grumpy Old Man.

I hope you all have a quiet and peaceful day

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