It seemed like a long time since the last Collins and Herring 6Music show, but we slipped back into it quite nicely - my favourite bit being the slight implication that Andrew Collins made knob cheese in Northampton. I am 43 years old.
Afterwards I met up with my girlfriend to have an afternoon mooching around London. We had no particular plans, but ended up being tourists in our home town and headed to Bloomsbury to visit museums. We took a punt on
the Cartoon Museum without knowing too much about it. It's a small exhibition space, but worth a look. We were enjoying the cartoons in the entrance and then I stepped into the main room where I was suddenly rather surprised, star struck and slightly giddy when I saw a display case filled with the original Clangers from the children's TV show of the early 70s. I think my mouth probably dropped open. I was taken back 40 years in an instant. I have never, ever been as impressed to meet someone off of the telly. I had loved the Clangers as a child and my grandmother had knitted me one of my own (the originals were also knitted, which rather handily meant that thrifty family members could make them themselves, very cheaply - commercialism hadn't conquered the world back then). We had a black and white TV back then and so my Clanger was a dark grey or blue, but the originals are pink. I was enchanted to see them, not even really knowing exactly why, but these strange woolly space creatures and the soup dragon and the trees made from musical notes and the dustbin lids on the craters were some of the earliest symbols I knew about and it was akin to discovering a holy relic. If I was a Christian I had just unearthed Jesus' foreskin. I got my photo taken alongside them. I tried to look as nonchalant as possible. I didn't want the Clangers thinking I was a prick.
This is a temporary exhibit as it turns out and will soon be gone, but around another corner was the actual Bagpuss - who I never liked as much to be honest. I always thought he was a bit of a cunt and didn't want to stoke his huge ego by having my photo taken with him. If Madeleine had been there I might have had to have quickly pleasured myself over her perspex case - which is presumably why she can't be put in any exhibition. The original Basil Brush (also made as it turned out by the multi-talented Peter Firmin) was round the next bend and although he doesn't quite have the religious hold over me that the Clangers do (and I also find them a bit eerie and scary - that show properly fucked with my brain) I was excited (not in a Madeleine the rag doll way) to be in his presence and also wanted my photo taken with him. What power these childhood heroes have over us. But those early Basil Brush shows seemed genuinely subversive and hilarious to the five year old me.
They also had a load of stuff from Peppa Pig. But I don't like that. I find it childish.
We then popped into the British Museum, which I really must spend a proper day in soon. On my third visit since I turned 40 I this time managed to see the Lewis chessmen (well the ones that aren't in Edinburgh, but I had seen them while I was up there), which interestingly were the inspiration for that other great Firmin/Postgate classic "Noggin the Nog" and the Sutton Hoo treasures. Though illness and laziness have prevented me from getting to the actual site, it was great to finally see all the amazing stuff that they found in that ship burial. Not as amazing as seeing the Clangers, but you have to get this shit in perspective.
My girlfriend had been told that the milk shakes in Harrods were the most amazing things of all time, so we went there next and once we'd found the diner on the 4th floor ordered fries and two shakes, which cost as £22 and to be honest were not all that we had been led to believe. Or perhaps no milk shake can live up to that kind of billing. Or price.
We'd managed to pack a lot into our afternoon and by the time we got home were very tired. We stayed in eating curry and watching films. We saw "The Missionary" which was disappointingly slow and not as good as I had hoped. I think I hadn't liked it as a teenager either, but had thought that maybe I was cross that it was too grown up and not Pythony enough. But it's just a bit disjointed and the pace is all off. I still love Michael Palin more than any living human being though. Almost as much as the Clangers. More maybe.
We then watched Tim Burton's Alice in Wonderland, which I actually fell asleep during. That might have been me rather than the film.
No, it was both.
Though I had started the day with what might laughably be called work, it seemed like a long time since we'd spent some time just having fun. Exhausting though. Though I had probably got overexcited at the Cartoon Museum. If my mum and dad had been there they would have probably said, "Well, he'll sleep tonight."
And I did.
