GOGSoc Episode V: The GOG Strikes Back

Elidor was incredible, thanks so much for reminding me of its title! I've often remembered snippets of it, but was at a loss to its actual name. My grandmother was genuinely scared of it. A few years later, the BBC adaptation of Gormenghast helped fill the gap Elidor left.

The Borrowers, also - yes. It's nice to think of these disparate children all over the country, loving these stories, and then in adulthood remembering them with people you only know as adults. As lonely as childhood can feel, a child is seldom alone with these programmes. I have no idea what children watch now, but I hope it's a little bit as good as the stuff we had.

Also, Five Children and It, on CBBC. Awesome.

I have Gormenghast on DVD. I read the Elidor stories quite young as my grandmother often holidayed in Cornwall. The wierdstone of brisangamen is a great one too. Amazing to move from the Famous Five and Secret Seven to those kinds of stories. Alan Garner is a genius! The programme I was thinking of was Earthfasts

I haven't spent much time around classicists. Are beards to classicists what porsches are to investment bankers?? (You know ..."yes, but did you see The Lyceum's? I want to get one like that one day"...)

Meh, I tend to find that it just makes me angrier and my life less tolerable, when some of the people who get jobs over me can't even name a favourite author, or hold a conversation about literature.

I'm about to watch Earthfasts and see if I remember it. But also, apart from Five Children and It and the rest, Robin Hood and Maid Marian, or whatever it was called. The children's Robin Hood comedy, starring a young Baldrick. I loved it!

I know that kids have the Horrible Histories on TV now, and I'm sure I would have liked them too.

PS though, I'll always hold onto my Famous Five and Secret Seven. Did you ever read the Alfred Hitchcock Three Investigators series? As a tomboy, I probably never noticed or just ignored the fact that they were boys books, starring boys, for boys. They were clever and fun.

http://youtu.be/_MaFL84DwqM

Never really got into that. I got my niece a copy of the Magic Faraway Tree though!

Best cartoons, Lyceum, were Prince Valiant, Inspector Gadget, and Bucky O'Hare. Possibly followed by the Real Ghostbusters and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles.

http://youtu.be/_MaFL84DwqM

I watched Bucky O'Hare, but never really cared for it. Inspector Gadget same. preferred Banana Man, Superted, Count Duckula, Talespin. I loved Ghostbusters. I also loved the Turtles, but later learned that one of the creators is the worst, most narcisistic poet in history, so have gone of it somewhat. I also remember never being able to get past level 2 on the Nintendo game.

My mam used to call me duckipoos as a result of Count Duckula. Thinking about it in more recent years, it's one of the few things from which I can actually remember what her voice sounded like.

It is wonderful but unfortunately they teach children to read phonetically these days and her reading - as with the rest of her class - isn't where it should be. I cannot but get angry at the farce that is teaching in schools at the minute. Before she started on phonetics, I'd got her reading quite well.

Oh my God, yes! I had Farthing Wood comics and everything.

Me too! And the summer and winter special editions!

That is really sweet, if I don't sound idiotic for saying that. My partner's mother still sometimes calls him 'Daithi Lacha' (Davey Duck), after a similar cartoon character.

The problem here is that Cymraeg is a phonetic language so we have a generation of administrators who come from Y Fro (the Welsh-speaking parts) insisting on a certain way of doing things. Apparently, though, it's buggered up the teaching of maths in Welsh-medium schools and it's having a detrimental effect on the teaching of basic literacy in English-medium primary schools. Given we're quite far behind much of the rest of the developed world in terms of literacy (ironic when Wales was the first fully literate society in the world) it's futile to carry on like this. You cannot teach English as a phonetic language because it isn't one. Cuh ah tuh works but you then have guh ah tuh uh which has to become gate. They get really confused.