Now we’re getting desperate. After several weeks of flipping between dinosaurs, space travel, trains and boats, now we’re really scraping the bottom of the barrel. Speaking as an adult, I have nothing against sport, though it’s never particularly interested me. But the child me actively avoided it. I wasn’t any good at it for a start. “Two left feet” is a generous way of describing my soccer skills. I’m not much of a team player and I’ve always been a bit cack- handed. I didn’t hate all sport - I was quite fond of watching tennis and snooker with my Gran - but I didn’t follow it and never thought about it if it wasn’t happening right in front of me. So this is desperation. The only reasons I can possibly think I might write about sport in my Topic book are: 1. Someone made me do it 2. There weren’t any other books on the bookshelf for me to copy anything out from It didn’t last long. It’s just one page, then we’re back to dinosaurs again. It seems to be the beginning of an A-Z of some kind, but if it is, it’s a bit rubbish. Athletics is a Greek word, is it? What does it mean then? Are there any examples of “field and track sports” that might explain what athletics means, or are we just going to go on assuming I’ve already got an Ancient Greek A-Level? I’d say it was an American book because there’s twice as much info about baseball than there is about athletics. But I’m not sure Americans play “rounders”. Oh and now I think about it, they’re not that fond of “athletics” either. Or “sport”. It wouldn’t be the last time I wrote about sport in Fairburn. Or even the last time I wrote about it in my Topic books. But thankfully it is the last time I copied anything out of this particular book. Not long now. Things get better soon…

January 1980

Sport

< Ships

Dinosaurs 1 Space Travel Ships Sport Dinosaurs 2 Judge Dredd: The Blood of Satanus Captain Carnivore A-Maze-Ing! Star Poster: Super Jesus The Micronauts: Giant Karza The Origin of Electro Optical Illusion Time Frantic Thingies Men in Space Topic Book Word Find Puzzleman Evel Knievel: Fury Falls More Puzzlers Star Poster: The Hulk 1 Grobschnitt’s Page Captain Starlight Star Poster: The Hulk 2 The Yellyog Gang The Adventures of Puzzlemaster Jupe Woman Line Pin-Up: Doctor Doom Lazer Lash The Human Maze Three Squares Raven Mad Marvel Sketches Robschnitt’s Age: 1 Snotty Notty Space Battles Metalorian Man Robschnitt’s Age: 2 The Superhero Sports Day Captain Kirk & Pywal Carbo-Catalogue How Dumb Are You? The Space Invaders: 1 Pin-Up: The Empire Strikes Back The Space Invaders: 2 Gi-Gant-Ic! Index

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

TOPIC 1 He knows the names of all the dinosaurs

ENGLISH 1 A few tentative steps into a world of terrible writing

Dinosaurs: 2 >