While technology can enable us to read the Herculaneum Scrolls, despite their c2000 years of antiquity and the fact that they were burnt to a crisp…some elements of my juvenile diaries are beyond redemption.
No idea what sort of cheap pencil I was using at the end of 1975, but very little of it survived on the page. The headline picture is the best that photoshop can do with it – the image below is what it really looks like.
Fortunately, judging by the readable entries around it, we can surmise that I was enjoying Christmas at home with my parents very much and watching lots of TV.
Trawling the TV listings for Christmas Day, I’m pretty sure I will have watched:
- the start of Harold Lloyd’s World Of Comedy in the morning, probably switching to…
- Pack up Your Troubles (Laurel & Hardy) before lunch.
- Morcombe & Wise Christmas Show – which was compulsory viewing in the UK back then if I remember correctly. Failing to watch it was deemed to be treason which was still technically punishable by death.
- Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid
On Boxing Day, dad and I would have gone for a walk together after lunch, but not before I’d watched Let It Be in the morning. Almost certainly I’d have watched Disney Time in the afternoon and we’d all have watched the Mike Yarwood Christmas Show together in the evening. Almost compulsory, was the Mike Yarwood Christmas Show.
The following day I think I can make out the words “Played With Andy”, which means I probably went to the Levinson’s house. I can also just about decipher “Carry On Don’t Lose Your Head” as the TV viewing that evening.
I’m Camembert! I’m the big cheese!…
…as Kenneth William’s character, Citizen Camembert, put it. Well the jokes most certainly were cheesy.