Summer Special 2026

Last week was badd...very bad for the super hot drying up conditions we endured as we went over 30 degrees and felt by Thursday night really off so Friday's cooler temperatures, fresh breeze and even some thunder was welcome.

And that was Spring!

Now this month we enter Summer officially where you might it expect it to be warm, where in the past we looked to Summer Vacations and no school for seven or so weeks before we got crazy, stomping our feet saying "I'm bored!" 

We didn't bother with the Dandy Summer Special as like last years it another set of Jamie Smart era Desperate Dan reprints from 2007-2010 not a proper Dandy Summer edition that we've had since 2013 and the ending of the weekly print edition.

Okay, you could play with your Chromebook, Tablet or Smartphone all day which isn't that good for for other reasons, run about like crazy playing weird games which is what I did with mates or read a comic or book.

That's where summer special comic editions with more pages came in coupled with puzzle books that remain big with modern children.

While the world of children's comics and magazines has changed a lot in forty odd years - and not necessarily for the better - The Beano Summer Special, today styled as a Summer Activity Special remains available and is out...NOW!

This years plot revolves around the notion the Beanotown children think they’ve bagged the perfect getaway, a dream holiday to a seaside caravan park in Beanotown-on-Sea. 

However this is Beanotown so of course nothing is what it seems! Their hoped for R & R (rest and recreation) turns out to be more like run-down and rotten - and the weirdness doesn’t stop there. Something fishy is happening both at the seaside and back home… and the kids are determined to uncover the truth!

Packed with mysteries, mayhem, jokes and puzzles it takes you back to those times even if the world is very much the modern one with enough to keep you occupied indoors or out and doesn't require a connection nor recharging.

With this weeks weather recharging is what I need!

I loved rope climbing and exploring back then so that kind of adventure is so so relatable.

The Viewmaster

Being away last week lead to talking quite a bit with others around childhood experiences, the things we did, the toys we had and all that and really that's what I feel like talking a bit about this week.

One thing I remember having in the 1970's and I'm sure my brothers had one a little before I did was a Viewmaster viewer which is something all those born this century probably have not got a clue about.

Over the decades they came made in plastic or bakelite in variety of colours with some having even a character shaped front such as Mickey Mouse or Hello Kitty.

It was like the one above with two pieces at the front that took in natural light although I think there was a powered model with a mains unit and a pair of eye pieces at the back.

The one I used to have was a beige coloured one that I think left sometime in the 2000's I think and you could get a projector too

What did you use them with I hear you cry?

Actually a card disc with seven pairs of stereo images per disc that you slotted into the viewer  and to which there was a frame advance lever on the side that took them around a pair at a time.

This is one I rebought. from the 70's. A gurl craves what she loved and all that but it was complete which was all I needed.

See the thing was most of us didn't have any kind of video recorder until the early 80's even if your school like mine did have a few, your dad might of had a Super 8 Projector that played film highlights that lasted about 5 minutes before a reel had to changed so this gave us stereo images - some from our favourite cartoons - we could watch anywhere for hours on end.

Anyway Paddington Bear was and is still most cool!

Now those "reels" shown were included in the original set and to which you might of added others from disney cartoons, Hanna-Barbara tv shows, hello kitty or gasp! educational sets about space or different places you could buy with your pocket money.

You soon could build up a good collection and major child interest films nearly always had a Viewmaster release tie-in you bought from the local toyshop or Argos the catalogue shop and today you can find many available used if like some of us you suffered excessive parental tossing out as you got a bit older and would like to buy back your favourites.

Pasts

A week back to the usual routines and in some ways a look a bit at pasts and past conversations in lots of ways as after all nothing started from nowhere and most of us who've battled with identity know it's never really that straightforward.

For many of us, our girl friends (not girfriends!) are a bitter-sweet bit of our past, the ones we looked up to the ones whose take on being a girl whither you came to the Ts mode or Sissy mode like me we took the model of feminity and expressing in part at least from. 

Imagine just what it might of been like to have been able to say "I want to be like you and hang out with your friends" just walking to and around school but we knew that wasn't going to happen.

Either we'd bottle out or we'd fear she'd say "Don't be silly, you're just a boy and anyway I have my girlfriends all sorted".

We did the best we could. Jacqueline and I would skip games to chat together and maybe play the odd game in those gender gated days together adoring her.

Others might of thought you wanted to be her boyfriend but you knew it wasn't and she knew you weren't like the boys.

Sometimes all this comes flooding back to you over the years.

Hobbies and the gender police

Not quite on trend as the last two entries but in some ways connected with that and a casual and rather unexpected response on another non sissy site but perhaps worth exploring.

The problem for most of us growing up was the mis-mash between what we liked, what we might do under the radar and the fear of what might happen if this was to be revealed to our peers.

For some unexplained reason gender - the more social side of being ones sex - starts to become a major issue from five upwards although really geta hold from around seven when boy and girls start to compare each other to mysterious check lists of what appropriate social behaviour based on your sex is and this often extends into likes and interests.

So while we typically experience issues around wishing to wear dresses, frilly socks and the like compared to anyone else with a male body, other things over time become issues too.

Girls until recently were ridiculed for wanting to play football or do physical feats of strength while boys it could be simple things like showing empathy while most others showed little, preferring the games girls played, maybe collecting and playing dolls.

It did get rather daft when nature study or liking one pop group - often one seen as "for girls" - over another or liking books over war comics which aren't really limited to one gender or another but more just beliefs that change over time.

That's where the inspiration for this post came in where person said how upon a male friend as a boy had come in to play  in his bedroom and verbally abused him for liking a group popular with girls just because he spotted their record, he followed it up by smashing it, thinking this would preventing him being girlish but really it was gender based intolerance  that in the end had no influence on his future life as an adult. Just anger about the times.

2024 Comic Summer Specials

 The good thing about being a little sissy gurl is you get to enjoy little life all over again as you really were

What's that Temptations song?

It's Summer.

As sure as eggs are eggs Summer comes around after things like year Exams and things like GCSE's (or O levels in my day) and your A's we work through before the six weeks or more before the start of the next term.

Unless your folks are the sort that pulled you out school for a week before, which happened then, and sure enough does today but soon what started of as "Yay freedom" soon turns to "I'm bored" and then if you were away the day you wanted to go to the beach, it was raining over Bill's mothers too so that was off.*

You needed something that didn't just occupy the time, you needed a good laff to bring a smile back on your face after that disappointment and for many of us it was the special Comic Specials.

Specials that had exclusive new stories were it and back then their were loads such as Tammy, Jinty and The Dandy which you might of taken with you or bought as soon as you got to that resort or camp site.

We lost the Dandy way back at the end of 2012 as weekly comic but an experimental Summer issue in 2013 proved successful and today we get one a year and an annual.

Thing is, us old-young at heart readers are slowly reducing so it's not enough to just cater for the retro adult market, you need to reach out to actual modern children so you can't just keep old cartoon strip series in, you need to add new ones that exist more in the modern world and so we continue with last years Dandytown Scouts, modern but easy for us older readers to relate to as much as todays youngsters.

Then D C Thompson have reimagined Dina Mite  as Dinah Mo as a ecological activist caring about the environment (and we should) and had Lew Stringer draw her with both new strips with a more diverse range of children from we had in 1977 or even 88 reflecting how society has changed.

This is being cross promoted by another long standing comic - The Beano.

Unlike the Dandy despite both having a trouble identity crisis driven period around 2007 to 2010, this still continues and is last man standing of the old school weekly comics although the revived monthly Monster Fun can join it.

There's no denying it has changed, somethings such as more inclusion, more ethically diverse characters more welcome for reflecting the world and addressing poor representation of girls, disabled children (something that irritated me back then) and so on.

Being a weekly the setting needs more to reflect the world as it is now with internet and smartphones in it even if grown ups rightly are debating how much of children's time should be spent with such things.

Because Rodger, Minnie, Dennis and the Class of 2B are still ten they're still around but in that world and they go on super summer adventure that has a common theme - pranks and pranking - and they guest in each others comic strip series in the summer edition with a common story.

They are joined by newer strips that have none of the baggage older comic strips have some of which tend to work a bit better than others so it's a little less of a retro experience but if you enter the headspace  of a ten your old  today it makes lots of sense and is quite funny.

It just isn't 1974 but this isn't typewritten then but posted online in 2024!

Out now at major newsagents, Amazon and thank god this year D C Thomson's own website.

Displaying our models

Making models was something we did as boys and girls back in the day from popular plastic kits, carefully following the instructions joining a group of parts together at a time using plastic cement.

The other sort were made from lightweight balsa wood fitted by grooved slots or plastic couplers.

It was unusual for girls to join in and as fur us gurls, well forget it but at least in today's more enlightened times the rest of us would be bought and encouraged to join in, learning new skills and STEM knowledge.

We then would apply the decals on sheet cutting of the one we needed one by one so all the markings were neatly done before showing to our friends, teachers and other adults we knew.

I loved this part of childhood heaps.

Righting misconceptions

In what is the last post of this month  there are things I feel are worth talking about and one of them is how people tend to see you within our allied communities.

This came into focus last week when after responding to a post I got a rather length and given the site in question's messaging system with poor punctuation a little hard to fully make out but it read as a scenario they had involved me in.

Then there was another that read as an apology for including references to adult scenes as they had read later on posts that talked about being a LITTLE sissy gurl which was a very BIG thing for them to do  but it does show how in the wider sissy world there is this blind presumption that ignores us.

I am majorly a Little and for me it's all about being or re-enactment of the life of a younger child me who was a Sissy but who didn't get the opportunities then to let hur sissy gurl self out who loves play, dress ups, colouring, music and reading. 

Basically I am like an Adult Little Girl other than my gender is Gurl, too feminine for boys and more girlier than most girls who presents as that gurl of around nine or  ten and loves that uncomplicated non sexualized world which ought to be protected.

A gurl like me is purposely dressed in a child-like and marginally more childish for a girl of that age in things like hardwearing corduroy skirts ankle socks and converse trainers.

You'll have me in girls character knickers and tops for playing in and girls school uniform for learning while in all occasions if I'm a bit cheeky or naughty you'll put me over a lap for a spanking just like gurls of my era had.

That's the thing, it would be like things were back then but all happening right now so have a new-old happier sissy gurl life being able to be myself which was what I wanted then and this thing is all about now

Biddy Baxter: The Woman Who Made Blue Peter

Hello there Boys and Girls!

Christmas is over as the tree has been taken down together with the nativity scene and the cards as we've passed the twelve days of Christmas getting set for the New Year but somethings don't always just go and that applies to this.

I sometimes sound rather like a stuck record but the one tv show that for my whole life has towered over others is the Children's BBC magazine show Blue Peter currently in its sixty-fifth year so not surprisingly there are things connected with the show I've had over the years such as my original books (many call them annuals but that was never the original term) from Book 4 published in 1967 to the early 1990's my regular and Gold Badge, a number of special assignments series books to books about the program some of which I have written about.

For Christmas I had "The Woman That Made Blue Peter: Biddy Baxter" written by Richard Marston  who work on the show as well as a number of other BBC Children's shows who interviewed past presenters, people in the various BBC units she worked with apart from herself fo this biography.

From 1962 to the Summer of 1988, Biddy was the editor of the show that came in in the very early days and set the tone of the show not just while she was in charge but for subsequent producers when it came to relentless dedication to making the best possible program, never talking down to children covering historical events, popular science, arts, adventure and lost of makes showcasing creativity.

This book is very much about how she got to be that person and looks into how the show was put together such as differert sorts of people who worked in the studio and behind the scenes, the way the BBC worked internally as they affected the show.

It tells of her childhood and education in Leicestershire in the East Midlands.

These tended to include battles for studio room, budgets, internal reorganizations, technical staff and some of the on set issues given as brilliant as Biddy was, she wasn't terribly tactful driven by her desire to make the best show come what may.

I found it a very interesting book, knowing of good number of the presenters from that period and some of the BBC  key people running things in that era, showing just how she made that show a must see children's show even when faced from ITV's very  me too Magpie competition for twelve years.

What she achieved enabled the show to continue without a break, adjusting a little as times changed  but remaining what she set it out to be.

The last few weeks on the show have been reviews of Twenty-twenty three on the show looking at challenges, visits to places, competitions such as the Dr Who one and guests.

In the more modern era interactivity has been extended to include an online fan club with games, extra bits of programming and the BP V.I.P.  scheme where people apply stating why they wish to go behind the scenes and meet their heroes.

They then spend a day with them which is filmed and televised within one weeks show.

Comics past and present

 This week's post is a kind of a follow on from last weeks entry.

Friday's mean comic day with me as I catch up with the Phoenix and Beano, the two weekly comics I get.

Phoenix seldom has any school based stories although a number have involved school age children but the Beano for a very long time has stories that at least reference school if not being set in a school of which The Bash Street Kids is the most famous one.

School today is very different at some levels than it was when this edition from June 16, 1962 was around with much less cricket being played, that chilling reminder of a Tawse at the top of strip being long gone although it reminds us that D C Thomson was very much a Scottish publisher and elements of scottish life do creep in to what were UK wide titles and this was the first strip drawn by the late David Sutherland who was scottish.

Given these changes and indeed even I could tell in the mid 1970's it was different to what things were even then never mind today, although the strip still runs, everything around has change because the children's world who read that comic has itself changed.

Today it is full colour, back when I read it originally only the front and rear was in colour, the reminder just used red and black in the main so for us annuals and the summer specials where when we saw our comic heroes in full colour and unlike then when we had newsprint, today the paper is better quality.

I do wonder sometimes if given the number that must go to recycling after a week or two if perhaps using modern newsprint might not be cheaper and better for the environment as todays newspaper too use colour pictures unlike the primitive black and white dots of the 70's and 80's.

The Phoenix does softback reprints of cartoon strip series which are more for collectors and fans of the likes of Looshkin and the Beano does a kind of illustrated "boomic" series of Dennis and Gnasher ones around a extended storyline.

Boomic is a brand that means Book but comic mash up really.

The D C Thomson fan books that have reprints of older classic strips around  a topic are popular - I have them every christmas - for bring back memories  of strips we no longer see such as Lord  Snooty and Pals, Little Plum and the like.

Comics are still a thing children do look forward to even in age of tie in weekly or monthly magazines to things in popular culture such as tv shows and films.

Emotions and why they're screwed up

Development has been a theme of this blog between the pages, intellectual, language but the emotional and psychological angles matter to in understanding why I'm me.

Part of the reason I'm shut down is because in my family to articulate why and that your are feeling is to unleash a cycle of emotional abuse with shouting, threats to withdraw thing, to put the house for sale and so on rather than to discuss them and look at solutions.

Faced with a threat to go out and kill a cat who was chasing a bird I screamed hysterically at the very thought of seeing a blood spattered cat before my eyes and all I get was being told if I carried on like this I'd have to leave.

Let's recap this: My dad threatens to murder an animal which is an offence and I am the problem for screaming hysterically???

No apology, nothing.

The lesson I learned was supress all emotions and feel nothing.

Plus Do I really care about your goddam feelings?

No he really didn't care about how I felt.

He'd slam doors turn up his stereo loud when he knew I had severe migraines and complain as if this was pity party act to just defy him and HOW EFFING DARE YOU?

Dont'cha know its all about me, me,me.

 And they wonder why you never became an adult emotionally?

Switch off and sit on the floor reading your comics

There is more to this life than merely uniforms and attire and I said the other day no it's nowt to do with "humiliations"

It is more about being in the headspace of and positioned socially as that little that you feel most comfortable as cos in the inside that is, that was always you as much as people tried pushing you to faked adolescence and adulthood because that suited their ideas of what you were and should be.

l am reading comics much more now than I did because really that is much better for my mental well-being as a actual child on the inside who struggles to cope with the adult world and even couldn't keep up with early adolescent peers.

These are aimed nominally at seven to fourteen year olds established in 2012 with lots of weekly series that mix comic strips with older illustrated text stories in the manner comics in the earlier part of the last century did.

It wasn't when I was ten that all I read was comics, I read the Guardian and Observer newspapers for the headlines, filling in the gaps on John Craven's Newsround but the point was I just read what I needed to knew like things about the Royal Wedding, the Three Day Week and IRA Terrorism and then moved on to reading comics, playing with Action Man, lego, and toy cars if not playing in the street with other boys.

That balance is the best one for me and why it happens, you having caught up with what you need to know move on and take a total break in another world pf your own from all of that.

The boy in short trousers then knew what the little now needed which is why I'm doing it as the little sissy gurl in their dress open about your real gender today.

Just reading and playing in your pretty dress.

The Tammy and Jinty Special 2020

With you know what about you really need some child-like escapism which we use back then.

Unfortunately as a feminine boy I didn't get Jinty first time around but Rebellion Publishing who have acquired the rights to the old Oldhams and IPC comic title rights and a good number of the cartoon series featured have seen fit to not just own them but issue specials.

Last year we had one that I loved and today a two story special came out.

This is one of two stories opening pages which goes to a staple of comics of my era and especially both girls comics and books, boarding schools.

Naturally most readers of Jinty and other girls publications rather as with boys stories such as Winker Watson in the Dandy had not actually been to one unlike me but knew enough about  the rules, regime and intrigues that applied.

As a schoolgirl or a schoolboy such as myself something about a core part of life was most relatable and lent itself to discussion at playtimes or when with friends outside school hours about what had happened and what we'd of done.

I'm glad Rebellion care to bring back titles like Jinty with a more updated but kept in the past feel.

Summer holiday time edition

 As I'm typing this I'm on the umpteenth glass of pop trying to stay both cool and hydrated this warm weekend.

 Naturally school is off even if sadly it was only half on at best since Spring as I struggle to recall anything like this from my own childhood as more or less everything isn't what it was since the word Covid-19 entered the daily news reports.

It's really rather more the outdoors that I've clung onto, watching birds and insects going about their business, enjoying the tree blossoms and flowers growing  and even looking after this.

 I've also been reading a fair bit from comics and comic annuals to the books I adored as a child probably cos in this messed up world I have the same needs for escaping what's around me.

These two books are quite intriguing not least The Mystery of the Co-ed School which is unusual as most fiction of this sort is normally set in all girl schools and that illustration is rather puzzling.

I mean just what is that boy doing sneaking around by that door as a girl is running away toward the school gate with him in pursuit pursued by a Headmaster?

 It seems the same needs for repetition, routines and security I had then apply now and in odd sense never really being fully adult seems to aid it as inevitably we have to try to work our way through this one day at a time.

Because this month I may not be away with friends due to you know what doesn't mean I cannot look back at those moments and some of the views I saw such as walking around this lake in East Anglia enjoying the tranquility of it all.

It's the memories we make that help us get through difficult times such as those we are all facing presently.

Age Dysphoria

I did not realize it it until this week there is a specific term to describe how somebody like me feels  and that word is similar to a word I do know that some people tried to use on me and which I have commented earlier on about.

The word is Age Dysphoric. Basically it means you are deeply ill at ease with you chronological age to the point you feel you cannot function as that person of that age, that you feel the pressure to be the age you haven't reached you may feel suicidal or at the very least really stressed by and you cannot relate to others in your peer group because you're really that much younger.

The emphasis placed upon being Adult, especially Adult at eighteen when it wasn't long after I was born that actually the legal age of adulthood was brought down from 21 by which point you could vote, stand in an election and would of finished a under graduate degree course is intense and it doesn't even actually start at eighteen.

Some example of the Age Dysphoria include such things as chewing at the emerging hairs on my arms frequently because I couldn't stand the sight and feel of adult arms growing on me and cutting my pubic hair off.

I can remember a painful experience when I was ganged up on and bullied by health professionals at a school because they felt at seventeen I should of known a pre-prepared meal for me was as I was late returning to school looked like and distinguished that from one put aside for a diabetic child when I did not know what the meal was and in any event I had asked a grown up to get it for me and had said I wasn't a diabetic.

If it was anyone's fault I had the "wrong" meal it was the person who worked in the kitchen but they kept going on and one about it, how I'd deprived a child for a meal, that at My age I should of known so much it triggered my sensory overload and thanks to my audible processing disorder I just froze over and all they could do is then berate me publicly for ignoring them ignoring my known and documented disabilities just cos they weren't physical.

See age had nothing to do with my problems in that sense as it wasn't a matter of age so much as they felt I should of had the expectations of a child who did not have my conditions which include brain damage and almost certainly autism. 

A child was was actually no where no the cusp of adulthood and NEVER could of been.

It was just a stick the able bodied staff used to beat me with.

Learning from the past

 

Every day starts out pretty much as any other for most of us unless we're planning on going somewhere special we follow routines feeling confident that today will be like yesterday and no doubt tomorrow with a change here or there but otherwise of itself uneventful.

So it's hardly a surprise we become accustomed to the idea that everything will remain 'just so' which to be honest is one thing I sure loved when I was younger, the whole certainty with its sense of well-being from repeating that pattern week after week.

Every so often though, something comes along and knocks it over. You feel lost if not numb and bewildered too as it seemed to going along so well.

It is okay to feel that way, sad things happen, we hurt and a good number of us are hurting right now. 

I can't speak for all of you but things often seem to go in cycles and my last lot of cycles have seen me  do different things, learn and improve on skills that I've struggled with, form new and more helpful friendships and understand more about myself and others too.

All those things can and are helping me deal with this because they've given not only ears to listen and understand how I may feel but also the strength to carry on when I just feel like lying there crying (and I know that feeling so well).

You know, those we miss so much would never of wanted us to stay like that forever and you might imagine this friendly nudge coming out urging you on, reminding you can start again, even if we find it hard.

Personally, I feel it's helpful to think about those things that I have reason to be thankful for over the years from the situations that just appeared from nowhere and to which I had no real plan for. 

Just thinking about it, my life has changed quite a lot in the last ten years for the better and much of that isn't down to some super medical recovery on my part but more because I've been working on dealing with more how it's handed out to me, making the most of it smiling even through some of the Meh moments.

It is easy to get into a cycle of beating yourself up when things aren't going to plan, thinking we are useless (been there and done it) or feeling guilty over things that maybe we didn't have that much of a say over but I'm going to try to get on with life the best I can from now on.

That's a much of lesson from my childhood that I can use today and maybe it's of some use to you.

Taking advantage of the opportunity

 

Sissies like me may be an anomaly but it is our individual traits that makes us the person we are, that we are selves and not just a uniform mass, as if we'd been all cloned. 

It may be lockdown but that's a good time to read about female movements some of our closest friends belong to and why it mattered to them at that time as much as I was more for Cubs.

It's also a time to read the girls comics I never got around to because of the gender bias and even bullying that happened when I grew up because I wanted to read them too being drawn to them.

There's no reason why I shouldn't use this period to have a better childhood if it helps and I think it will.

Comic memories

 We're looking back at the past this time.

You all know I loved the Dandy and looked forward to the Summer Specials and this was one I had back in 1972 which I recently bought a new copy in pretty decent condition given we ready them cover to cover several times over that featured many of my favourite characters and cartoon strip series.

The essential Winker Watson featured wrangling out of things and as befitted that era Form Master Creepy had his cane out at Greytowers awaiting Boodle and in another strip no less than three canings are featured in one story!

That was so relatable to our generation

Every year D C Thomson do a compilation of past strips from the Beano and Dandy and this one from 2007 was all from the 1970's where they like Tiger were essential boy comic reading.

Re-reading this brought back a lot of memories not least where they tied into the current affairs of the day such as space missions and the advent of Punk. 

Summer comic fun

It is that time of year some of us look forward, the recreation of a ritual we observed as boys religiously and don't tell me rituals don't play a part on LG life as I haven't met one that didn't try to recreate a few.

The Dandy Summer Special is special for different reasons than we had as boys in that it is the only print edition of the comic we get since closure in December 2012  where as for most of us before then it was the bigger more colourful edition that had quizzes and the like counterpart to the weekly edition.

The Summer Special is aimed more at those of us who remember it as it was rather than being more like its stablemate The Beano very much in the present and so for most of the current period we've been treated to reprints from the older Summer Specials, albeit those we loved to revisit. 

This years is a bit different in that the compilers have gone to pick a selection over a set of twenty years starting from 1940's making their way through 1960's, 1980's and the 2000's in chronological order.

This means we start to see such legends as Keyhole Kate, Korky the cat, Desperate Dan and Corporal Clott which was discontinued in the comic July 25, 1970 plus Owen Goal from the 80's as they emerged which compared with the Beano makes for a more retro, regressive, reliving the past feel when you read it as inevitably you recall those days.

For that feeling I would say the Dandy Summer Special is better.

What is great about this years is we have some newly drawn strips of Postman Prat originally drawn by Lew Stringer from October 30, 2010 by the man himself that survived the misstep that was DandyXtreme in 2007 to October 2010 when they tried to add Viz style "attitude" to push sales in a fortnightly form plus new Winker Watson for 2020.

The new strips are funny, not departing from the world those characters come from but showing where they would of been in a regular comic so Winker Watson remains in Greytowers in the third form but he can use a computer and printer while being the Blazer and Shorts clad boy whose wanglers we loved in much the same way the modern prep school mixes modern technology and the old (and true) ways.

Do yourself a favour and get a copy!

Winnie the pooh

I have always loved the Winnie The Pooh stories from childhood.

There are many inspiring lines to be found within the stories that have a real benefit to boys and girls.

Christopher Robin is a childhood hero of mine.

You were always warned about the fair weathered friends who wanted to be in with you and those who perhaps less pushy were more minded to stick with through the thick and the thin, sticking up for you even if it may not be popular.

Real friendship is based on mutual respect for one another, knowing when things are best done together but respecting when we need to be alone with our thoughts but prepared to come in and comfort us as needed.

Thoughts on leaving Junior school

This is being written while I recover from a damaged ankle which is very painful but this time of year often sees me thinking back in time to past events not least my past boyhood.

I recently saw this picture one presumes taken late summer last year of a "Year Six) or to me J4 leavers service of the sort we had as part of the process of transition that had included visiting for a day a secondary school the majority of the year group would transfer to, writing up about the subjects we'd taken in Junior school and a service.

Actually, to tell you the truth when I saw this picture I did feel a bit sad actually because for me, Jacqueline and a few others it was the point we realized  we would be at the margins of the group because we wouldn't transfer with them and as you countless know, daytime school groups transfer over to things like sports groups, the "Youth Club" and so on resulting us being marginalized.

For me it was near total because I was going to boarding school so daily after school contact in a pre-internet age was non existent so the few I did manage to keep in contact with through things like the Methodist Chapel do matter and some those contacts have been maintained through 'adult' positions in the community like being a Council Chairman or involved in other groups that paradoxically put me in positions of some real stature in this community that the others didn't get around to.

On Monday, I was about when I called over a friend l know who was living at his fathers old house here and to which I'd know backward from the days we'd call on each other to play and we got talking about how each other was and that.

He was one of six I had regular contact with over the years and that was when I realized that as unfortunate as that break was as a J4 leaver, actually I hadn't really lost anything of value because those friendships still remain right now. It is a part of how we relate to each other.