Hmmph!

I couldn't keep you waiting any longer readers; while I got around to making more 2010 pages. I'm just snowed-under with work at present so I've decided to plough-ahead with the important old pages of the site and slot in any new ones at some later date.

Background Notes

Today's is from sometime in 1978, when I was 9 or 10 years old - this then is one of my favourites. I suppose it's impossible to convey the magical sense of nostalgia I feel when I see these earliest pages. I'm reminded of the excitement of something like Star Wars in a grey, depressing and depressed Ireland of the late '70s. This is the place that Star Wars hit in 1977 - without much of a ripple for most ordinary country folk.

Ballymore Eustace 1966: Catholic Church centre, Davis' shop would be left - where we bought SW bubble gum cards. The oft-mentioned newsagent was further up the road.

It was a small country village into which I was suddenly dropped from Scotland*. I went to the miserable, smelly little local 'National School'. The previous award-winning non-fee-paying non-fee-paying Robert Douglas Memorial School in Scone, Perthshire was grand and interesting. We moved from room to room during the day, depending on the activities; faced each other at hexagonally arranged desks in some sort of progressive fashion; enjoyed a large gym with drama, dance, crafts, projected films and even - gasp - ART classes. But that was in Scotland.

Typical old Irish National School. Our one (not shown) had a tall tower beside it that we imagined was a torture building - or guard tower with MG-55 machine gun.

The one in Ireland was a Dickensian, row-upon-row of oak desks arrangement. The classroom smelled like vomit, was dirty, and you stayed there all day. The big old radiators were on full blast on the hottest summer days, with the sun roasting us through the huge windows. In winter the heating broke down and we froze, having to go outside and do star jumps to warm up. The emphasis was on teaching Irish children the skills to get get jobs: Reading, Riting and Rithmetic. With Irish, Geography, History and Religion. NO Art class, NO crafts, no gym. Sod all.

No wonder Niall and I dedicated so much time and effort drawing all over those oak desks.

Art Notes

Shockingly bad drawing opens our second chapter. I can't believe the lack of effort that went into that night sky in the top panel.

Threepio is either doing that 'Shielding the eyes' gesture that people do when trying to spot something - or scratching his head. Either way, they're nice human touches.

Luke has the Kirk Douglas style dimple in the chin. In my young drawings, chin dimples always featured - by default. I think there might have been a fashion for them in the '70s when comic artists drew heroic types, and when TV and movie people cast them. After Star Wars, I certainly wished I had one. In olden times you could buy a device that clamped around your head, and by means of a thumb-screw it would press a dimple into the chin!

The discovery of Artoo here is pretty comical looking. Luke hands on hips, taps his foot in irritation. Note the way the ground obligingly dips to accommodate the landspeeder engine in the composition. Sir Anthony Blunt said something similarly sarcastic about a painting by Fra Angelico (I think it was...)

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NOTES

(* We moved from Scotland in 1977 and stayed in Bessbrook, Northern Ireland for a few months before moving down to the South when I was to start in my new school. But we had to live for a time in a Gate-Lodge near the 'blink-and-you'll-miss-it village' of Sallins, County Kildare; while waited for our very own Irish cowboy-builder to finish our new house.

The Gate lodge was creepy. In a dark wood, in the middle of nowhere - odd things happened while we were there. Later we discovered the whole area was notoriously haunted!)

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