They Live In Your TV

Sundays, eh?  Funny things.  They start so well, no matter whether one gets up early, lies in bed smiling contentedly or, rather like myself last Sunday, wakes up in a sitting position on someone else's sofa wearing a mysterious parka.  Anyway, one has a lazy breakfast, sometimes involving actual food, and then the day is your own.  There's a slight malaise that drifts in around tea time, or just before; formerly associated with Dads falling asleep in front of Bonanza.  Those days are gone, but a younger generation needs merely to think of the sound of Formula One.  And Dads falling asleep in front of it.

So there we go - into what Saint Douglas* once called The Long Dark Teatime Of The Soul.  Then the crawling chaos of not having done your homework for tomorrow, a feeling which one never, ever truly grows out of.  God's sake, I'm a teacher and I still suffer from it.

But let us not muse on these matters.  Going to get regionalist here, dear readers; this is one for those of us who grew up beneath the yoke of the notoriously evil Yorkshire Television Logo (Stan Lee says: see last issue, true believers!)

For those of us who were small in God's Own County (blah blah blah, Ilkley Moor baht at etc), Sunday afternoons were, of course, a time of worship.  A time when we communed with our god.  Well, it was a Sunday, after all.  A day of religion, a time of spirituality.

Yeah, but sorry, Arch Deacon.  Unfortunately, this is what we sat awed by and terrified of:

Night Night.  Most of you will never get this joke.  Sigh.

Yep.  It's the Crystal Skull and it makes Indiana Jones look like an aging Hollywood star what goes out with Ally McBeale.  I've no idea if this is still the case, by the way, I've not read Heat for years.

This is, for those of you untouched by its awesome crystalline skulliness, the opening sequence to, um, Arthur C Clarke's Mysterious World.  Every week, Arthur would walk down a beach in Sri Lanka whilst the voice over told us that he invented the idea of communication satellites.  He also wrote 2001: A Space Odyssey, but with a lot more long-winded explanations and UFOs than Kubrick made use of.  Anyhow, Arthur introduces the theme for the week and we go off to a series of films largely made in locations a lot less glam than Arthur's beachfront backyard.  A small yellow caption would tell us that we were in ENFIELD, SOUTH LONDON and then some small Shining-esque girls would scare the shit out of us with their poltergeist.  Sometimes they'd go to Barbados, for that one with the coffins that moved by themselves.  Sometimes, a bloke with funny eyes would tell us about the aliens. 

But none of that mattered.  Because people were scared, scared, scared.  Of. The. Skull.

I mean, really!  Quiet Sunday afternoon, round tea-time, and suddenly there's a bloody great skull spinning slowly round whilst some Brian Eno-lite plays in the background.  Just enough to give us a hint of a horrible shudder.  Got to say though, the biggest reaction?  Mixed in with that fear, a hint of...awe.  Worship, as I said.  Adoration perhaps? 

Need we be concerned?  Was there a movement to bring Yorkshire back to an era of pre-Aztec belief?  Did no-one spot the graven idol being paraded for us?  Personally, I must admit, I did consider tearing the heart out of a Perfect Victim at dawn atop a ziggurat.  But I forgot about it, till bedtime on Sunday night.  It was terrible, I knew I'd get detention the next day.

Honestly, this one perhaps isn't the scariest childhood thingy that I've 'written' about; it's too pretty.  It doesn't do very much.  It is meant to inspire religious devotion, after all.  But primarily, it wasn't scary because every week, Arthur would finish his show by explaining that the supernatural was a load of old cobblers and we could all fuck off back to Leeds now. 

However, ACC, if that was the case, why then did that ghostly shiny skull return at the end, to catch the light and leave us looking nervously up the stairs to bed?  Reminded, no doubt, that there are worse things than not handing your History project in.

It's called the Skull of Doom.  The clue is in the name.

EXTRA!  Oh go on, then.  Follow this link for the Goodies version.  Sadly missing what I thought was the funniest dialogue in the world when I was nine:

"There was this man standing there.  He said his name was Arthur C Clarke."
"What happened then?"
"I fell asleep.  No-one believes me and the wife thinks I'm mad."
"Why does she think that?"
"I eat spiders."


Pleasant screams.



*If you don't know who I'm talking about, I'm not sure I want you reading this blog.  Go and look it up AT ONCE.