TERM 2 The birth of the 1980s - Blake’s 7, Blondie and battles in space

Ward’s 7 John Ward and his band of rebels fight the evil Federation

< School Rules

Captain Carnivore Gary Shepherd is hunted down by a deadly flying meteor

Super Jesus A special pin-up of your favourite Nazarene webslinger

Optical Illusion Time Amazing visual tricks that will boggle your mind!

The Return of Supersilver >

Football

Monday March 24th, 1980

You might have noticed I hated drawing margins. It felt unnatural to me so most times I probably just forgot. But I often left a space for them, as you can see here, which suggests it wasn’t margins I hated as much as rulers. Even in my Topic books, where a margin was never requested, I seemed to have a serious problem drawing straight lines. But I wonder, looking at this - did I mean to draw them in later? Did I just not have a ruler? I left a gap while waiting for someone to pass the school ruler to me? Because we only had one ruler between forty of us? I wouldn’t be surprised. If you’ve read any of my other work, you’ll know I definitely wouldn’t have chosen to write about football if I could help it. This is another TV write-up for an episode of Merry-Go-Round, which aired at 11 am. So I suppose we went straight back to the classroom at 11.20 and wrote this immediately afterwards. Then lunch at 12. The title this week was ‘When We Won the Cup’ - the blurb on the BBC Programme Index says ‘Supporters of the FA Cup Final Teams told Merry-Go-Round about the contest in their own words, pictures and music.’ But that particular angle on the programme seems to have escaped my synopsis. As discussed before, I wasn’t much of a football fan, but I did regularly play it now, because that’s what boys were supposed to do here. I had a favourite team now as well - Leeds United - as you can probably tell here from the way I have to qualify it was Manchester United, not Leeds United, that the girl wanted to throw in the bin. Because how could anyone hate Leeds United? The very idea! The main draw here though is the picture on Page 2. I seem to have taken a bit more time over this than I’d usually bother with - enough to draw individual heads in the crowd (but heads without faces) and brand names on the advertising banners at the side of the pitch (not necessarily all spelt correctly). I like how emotional it is for the players - their fixed grimaces both displaying slightly different mood states: one (Flash Shepherd) in steely, vicious determination, laughing as he boots the football right at the other player’s shin, while the other (Flash Jordan) winces and cries in pain, unable to cope, even as a professional football player, with having a football kicked at him. Wimp. I also like the way the last line plays out. ‘They even made some football players out of cloth!’ I announce, aghast, as if it’s the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard in my life. This from the little boy who used to make his own Doctor Who action figures out of toilet paper.

Grobschnitt’s Page Meet Grobschnitt, the dome-headed Harbinger of Mischief

Apeth (from Ota Sbees) Ritern ov thu perpal geriller

Exploring the Underworld Eight boys go exploring in a dangerous cave

TERM 3 1980 continues with the embassy siege and The Empire Strikes Back