“You’ve had a heart attack, haven’t you?” said Dr Calm.
I didn’t say anything for what seemed a long time but was only seconds.
“Have I,” was my reply in a subdued pitiful voice.
“Yes…” added Dr Calm, then: “…do you know when that was?”
He was the bloody doctor, shouldn’t he be telling me?
“Let’s have another look at your blood pressure…”
He fitted the device, pumped away, and I felt as though my upper arm was being sliced in half. He frowned, sighed, frowned again.
“Oh dear,” he sighed.
I opened my mouth but no sound came out so he didn’t hear what I wasn’t saying.
“Hmm,” he muttered, frowning.
He wrote down on his blotter 200/150. I don’t know whether I was supposed to see what he’d written but I did.
The average blood pressure reading for a healthy person is 120/80.
“I think it would be a good idea if you go to the hospital to get checked out as soon as you can…” said Dr Calm.
I was still in panic mode. I’d had a heart attack. Not even fifty yet. Was this the slippery slope to meeting Mr Death?
I thought back to how it all started. Back in January of that year, 2006, a friend died suddenly. He was only forty-six. It made me think about my own health and how I’d got unfit and overweight over the last half-dozen or so years. I was nowhere as healthy as I though the friend was, so how much trouble was I in?
“Hardly knew him,” Neatentidy admitted, “only met him the once but he seemed such a nice bloke. Can’t believe it. He looked healthy…I’d have been less surprised if it’d been you…”
I stared at him. “Thanks.”
“Well, I mean you’re a bloody lot unhealthier than him. You’re overweight, not all that fit anymore…”
“Alright, I’m not fit.. and know I’ve got a little portly over the years…”
Neatentidy snickered.
“Alright, fat,” I admitted, reluctantly.
“Perhaps you ought to see the doctor, maybe he can put you on a diet…”
“I’ll have you know I’ve lost half a stone since Christmas,” I told him.
Neatentidy frowned. “How much do you weigh now?”
“Twenty-two stone….”
“Bloody hell. You still having the late night Indian takeaways, the ones that fill a casserole dish?”
“Might be,” I replied, “might not be
Neatentidy exhaled breath, then grinned. I didn’t really see the humour. Neatentidy raised a doubtful eyebrow. “No more takeaways?”
“Given up takeaway curries.”
“That’s good, I suppose…so no more takeaways..”
“Well, sort of.”
“Sort of?” responded Neatentidy, suspiciously.
“Yeah, Chinese takeaways now, they’re less fattening.”
Neatentidy looked at me suspiciously. “What Chinese.”
“The mega-meals.”
“Three different dishes, plus rice or noodles with five free spring rolls.”
“Well, yes. But they’re mini spring rolls…”
“Mrs Neatentidy and myself sometimes have those and we have difficulty finishing them and there’s two of us.”
He was making me feel guilty. I’d thought Chinese takeaways would help. After all, you don’t see that many fat Chinese?
I drank more beer and thought how much a good takeaway curry would go down later.
I got back onto the subject of the doctor’s.
“Trouble is, I want to go, so that if there’s some problem, then it can be caught quick. But I’m not sure I want to know if there’s anything wrong, especially if it’s bad…” I said.
Neatentidy shrugged. We drank more beer and I put thoughts of the doctor and my health behind me as I sank the sixth pint of the evening.
I didn’t think much about getting a doctor’s appointment for another two hours; not until after the last of my casserole dish of curry was wiped away by the remains of a Nan bread…a touch of indigestion or something worse giving me pains across my chest?
Sleep never came easily that night…
I couldn’t put it off forever so I made an appointment, late March, about six weeks after Niceman died.
It was a woman doctor I saw first. I talked through with her about the possibility of having what could be termed a human MOT…I mentioned about how I felt lately, the overweight, lack of fitness. We talked diets, that there were pills on the market that she’d consider prescribing that could help me lose weight. It all sounded a bit off to me.
Finally, she agreed a blood test might be in order. So I booked a nurse’s appointment to have a blood test the following Tuesday…
Tuesday came and I managed to live through the previous evening to the 10am appointment without allowing anything but water to pass my lips…oh the pain…
The nurse was friendly. She took my blood pressure, then the blood sample was taken.
I asked about the blood pressure but she didn’t tell me the reading. It wouldn’t have made sense to me then anyway.
“It’s a bit high…”
“And that means?” I asked.
“The doctor might put you on tablets…I’m going to suggest you have an ECG…is this Friday ok?”
“I’m on leave this Friday, so yeah, not a problem.”
It wasn’t, Friday marked the start of just over two weeks leave.
Friday I was packed by about 11am and put a Tesco’s bag in each coat pocket and bounded down to the doctor’s surgery. I was feeling quite good. Another few pounds in weight lost and I walking a lot more…
Once I was called in, the nurse smiled at me, we exchanged pleasantries about the weather, like you do…
“Right, Mr Fitrambler, if you’d like to strip to the waist.”
A few minutes later the nurse sighed and shook her head at me.
“From the waist upwards, Mr Fitrambler.”
“Oh, right,” I said and put my trousers and pants on, then took off my jacket and shirt.
“Lay down on the bed, please.”
I did. She began to put sticky pads over my chest, arms and ankles. After that, she attached wires to the pads and then the wires to this oblong box thing.
Within a few minutes she was fiddling and shaking the device. She couldn’t get a reading. She tried eight times, then excused herself. She came back a few minutes later.
“Let’s try this one,” she told me.
She tried three more times and got a reading. I got dressed and was about to go when I got a touch of the Columbo’s. I’d been watching a lot of DVDs from my Columbo – The Complete Series which I’d got from Amazon.
“Just one more thing,” I said, “The nurse I saw Tuesday said I should have my blood pressure taken.”
She smiled, and took my blood pressure, then frowned: “Oh dear.”
Oh dear? Huh? I hadn’t got to grips with complex medical language. She got me to wait another five minutes, then took it again.
“Oh dear,” she said again. Then: “I’m just going to see the emergency doctor. If you’d just wait…”
So I waited and ten minutes later I was taken through to the emergency doctor, Dr Calm. He got me to sit down in a chair near to him, then looked up from the ECG graph and told me about the heart attack…
So there I was, waiting for Dr Calm to finish the letter I was to take to the hospital…
Heart attack? Me? Surely not. I didn’t want to believe it but why would Dr Calm lie?
Dr Calm interrupted my thoughts. “You need to take this letter and hand it over to the Doctor at the Acute Assessment Unit .”
I took the letter, mumbled a thank you and shuffled off to the hospital like an old man.
When I got to the hospital I found that the AAU was closed so I’d have to go to A&E.
I was there for a couple of hours before being seen. When I was it was by a nurse who got me to lay down on a bed, then attached a blood pressure monitor on me.
It was about another hour before the staff seemed to pile in.
“Strip to the waist.”
“Take deep breaths…”
“This won’t hurt…” It did!
“Do you see spots in front of your eyes?”
“No.” At least not until they shoved flashlights into my eyes.
“Get breathless when exercising.”
“I don’t exercise…”
“When you walk for lengths of time; going upstairs..”
“Yes.”
“Need to do an ECG.”
“Had one at the doctor’s practise…”
“We need to do one here..”
“Move to the left…”
“Move to the right.”
“Any pains in the chest.”
“No.”
“Get headaches?”
“Not often. Rarely get headaches…”
This went on for half an hour. Then everyone left…silence…all those questions but no answers…
A couple of hours later the nurse showed up again. I told her I need the toilet.
“Do you want me to show you?” she asked.
“Not really, I know how, I’ve been to the toilet many times..”
“No, show you the way..”
“Thanks.”
Twenty minutes later I was back. An hour later the nurse was back again.
“They should call for you soon for your x-ray….”
When the x-ray was over and I was back in my curtained cubical it was another hour before the nurse came back and this time with a wheelchair.
“We’re taking you to the ward now.”
“The ward?”
“Yes, you’re being admitted.”
“Admitted…” I was doing a Parrott impression.
“Yes.”
I felt like snivelling. Yes, I know, snivelling isn’t good a 48 years old but I felt I’d a right to snivel…
A bed, what was wrong with me, was I in danger of another heart attack? This was it, this was the end. I didn’t have long to go. They were going to make me as comfortable as possible to just wait for the end…
Oh brilliant, I’ve just ordered the Full Colour series of Roger Moore as the Saint and I’m not going to see one bloody episode! No this couldn’t be. I refused to go. Besides, I hadn’t seen the second series of the new Doctor Who. It started in sixteen days’ time.
At the ward, top floor, I’m wheeled to a bed. The rows on either side are occupied by old people – wrinklies; mostly women. No disrespect, but being put in a ward with people who should be nearer to God than me added to my already highly developed sense of doom.
Curtains were drawn over one bed and I thought the worst for whoever was behind the curtains. Well, I did until I heard three short farts, then one almighty rip-snorter of a fart from behind the curtains.
“We have lift off,” I muttered to myself.
A minute or two later an old woman was helped back to her seat.
I thought that after six pints and a curry old Blameworthy and myself would’ve given her a run for her money in a farting contest…
The only positive I noticed was I’d got a window seat – well, bed – overlooking sparsely developed countryside. Shortly afterwards a nurse came by and gave me a pair of very washed and worn pyjamas. I wondered how many people had died in them?
I put them to one side and sat in the seat next to my bed. I thought about Mum and Dad Fitrambler. They were expecting me in Devon tomorrow.
I decided I needed to call someone so I rang my sister.
She trained as a pharmacist and worked as one for a number of years.
I told her about my day.
“Oh dear,” she said.
See, I was right, it’s a medical term. She’s got medical experience so she can use it too!
“I’ve had a heart attack and my blood pressure being very high.”
“So what are they doing?”
“A lot of tests. I’m supposed to be seeing the doctor soon. I think I’m here for the weekend.”
“Oh, told mum and dad?”
“No, not yet, didn’t want to worry them. Not until I know what it’s all about…”
It wasn’t too long after that little chat that the doctor turned up.
The doctor looked like the actor Richard Griffiths, the bloke who played the detective, Henry Crabbe, in “Pie In The Sky” TV series, except the doctor had a goatee beard.
For a second or two I thought the whole of the day was a dream…no heart attack, no health warnings…
“Sorry to keep you waiting, Mr Fitrambler,” said the doctor. “We’ve run tests and discovered a few things. Firstly, your blood pressure is way too high. This has caused a problem with your heart…”
“You mean the heart attack?” I said.
“Actually I’m talking about the long-term effects of having extremely high blood pressure. By having high blood pressure you’re making the heart work harder than it should. This has caused an enlarged heart…” Dr Pie paused, to let what he said sink in. “…although the heart is a muscle, getting bigger doesn’t make it more efficient…”
“Ok.”
“If the heart enlarges too much, gets too big, then there’s every chance it will burst…for want of a better expression…”
I stared, I would’ve liked a better expression but it wasn’t forthcoming. So I asked: “What do I need to do?”
“The first thing is to get your blood pressure back down to normal, this will drop the workload of the heart, help it towards returning to its normal size…hence we need to get you onto tablets. We’ve ordered a supply from the pharmacy but will have to keep you in if they can’t fill the prescription before they close…”
Part of me felt a little better. Being kept in wasn’t for as a bad a reason as I’d begun to think it was.
“You’re very overweight and from what I can gather very unfit…”
Coming from someone the size of Richard Griffiths, I felt there was more than a little irony in his comments. As is only natural, I tried to defend myself.
“Well, I was 22.5 stone at the beginning of the year, I’m down to 21.5 stone now…”
Dr Pie seemed to ignore this. “You need to lose weight and get more exercise. Perhaps join a Gym…take up cycling…”
I frowned. Was he bloody mad? I’d had a heart attack, for Christ’s sake, surely the last thing I needed was to overdo it by going to a Gym or getting on a bike. I wasn’t far off 50, getting on a bike at my age surely would be fatal. I almost felt like asking to see his certificates!
“…anyway that would help your condition,” he continued. “Do you smoke?”
“No for 15 years,” I replied.
“Drink?”
“Well, about six or seven pints a week on average…” I told him…
“Hmm,” Dr Pie said, a slight disbelief in his tone.
There was a horrendously long fart from behind the curtains opposite me again. Both Dr Pie and I looked in that direction for a second or two then we both looked back at each other again as though nothing had happened.
“If the supply of tablets arrive tonight then you can go home. But make sure you get your blood pressure checked before you go…” he said and then walked away.
At around 9pm, I got my medication and was released. I got some fruit and least fattening sandwiches from the Hospital Shop and then got the next bus home feeling a lot happier…
What I didn’t know at that point was that in thirteen days I’d be back in hospital again….
TELLING TALES 
I didn’t actually polish off anyone else’s meals but the impulse to do so was difficult to fight. My meal was chicken Malayan. Not what I wanted to order but I pointed to the wrong thing when my attention was caught by something else. A chicken Dansak was what I really wanted.
Miss Penguin had the same as me. Lamb Madras & no rice for Captain Chaos, Software was suffering from a bad stomach so just had a few pompadoms. Loudenclear had a chicken byriani, Putapon a prawn curry, but not exactly sure what style.
There was a tree nearby, a Christmas one but I think it ate with the lot who had the table before us
Almost rhymes with tomatoes Sir William, except for the last syllable, which makes you almost a fruit rather than a near-vegetable.
My mistake; I believe we have until Tuesday to post our pointless comments, so reaching the half-century milestone should be a walk in the park…where there are lots of trees incidentaly.
I’m not suggesting that the Indian owners would have decorated a tree to celebrate Christmas but that someone amongst the Fitrambler party would have invited a tree along for their Christmas meal. A Hawthorn or Silver Birch would have looked out of place during the festive season, even though they provide excellent company during the summer months at picnics and garden parties.
I would not go to a dinner dance in Oxford involving an overnight stay for any reason or, come to that, any person. Fitrambler’s acquiescant attitude to the social whirl disappoints me rather. And to allegations that I am nothing more than a sociopathic Billy No Mates, I aver that the correct name is Sir William Nomates, the surname to pronounced in the Latin style.
Sorry, I meant yes.
No.
Being an Indian restaurant, there would not necessarily have been a Christmas Tree. The Jewel in the Crown is, I note, open on Christmas Day and I for one would have dinner there if I could be guaranteed no festive atmosphere. John Humphreys (of Today, Mastermind and book about death fame) use to holiday in Islamic countries every Christmas for just this reason. And then 9/11 happened and relations soured, preventing him going.
Not long now before we will be allowed no further comments on this post. I get quite nostalgic about the old days when, on occasion, we would get past the 100 comment mark, once falling just short of 200. Sadly, without Mrs. Gowithit to stir things up a bit, these days the responsibility seems to lie almost entirely with GloomLaden and me to keep the drivel flowing. We do, at least, achieve a high words to comment ratio. But can we pass the 50 comment benchmark before close of play tomorrow?
Presumably it was a Christas meal, so you would expect there to have been at least one tree in attendance, preferably decorated, and with robins tweeting in the branches. I wonder if Fitrambler is back on form and, having recovered from his heart scare, is now able to polish off the remains of everyone elses meals again. Not just on his own table but throughout the restaurant. Bombay Duck and lime pickle anyone?
I’d rather know what everybody ordered – especially Fitrambler – than see the seating plan, interesting as that would be. But then, I have no skill at spacial realations and would struggle to comprehend even the most basic of seating plans. So many questions: can you tweet a searing plan? Did any trees attend?
I hadn’t forgotten the trees on Liddington hill but I mentioned them again for the benefit of those blog readers who aren’t fortunate enough to hear our real life conversations. The trees may have been brought up in jest before but, while looking out from the warmth of a hospital ward, I really did feel for them out there in the snow. I cannot help but admire the tenacity with which they upheld their duty, remaining in post despite the severe weather.
I found Fitrambler’s choice of DVDs quite surprising but I was more fascinated by his determination to inform us of the exact positions at table of everyone who attended the meal at the Jewel in the Crown. Perhaps a sketch of the seating plan would have made things clearer. I was disappointed that we weren’t told what everyone ordered though.
Two things: first, the trees at Liddington. I don’t know how U can have forgotten them in our earlier exchange about clumps of trees you’d like to have a drink with. But they are old friends of mine and I should like to go see them right now.
Secondly, Fitrambler’s list of festive viewing (see tweets passim)would surely take longer to view than the twenty-four hours of the dreaded day itself. Is he planning to watch films from Christmas Eve to New Year’s Day
We couldn’t go back to Slad without having Old Rosie again, and I’m not sure she will have forgiven us for the last time. Age is a terrible thing; she was a fine looking woman when she was young and reminded me a lot of Mrs.Sunshine. We should invite the Soup Dragon along for the Christmas session, he would surely be excellent company as long as we stay out of the Quiet Carriage. While looking out of a fourth floor window at the hospital the other day I spotted the group of trees on top of Liddington Hill. All covered in snow and looking as if they might freeze to death, I was tempted to take them to the pub for a pint of strong ale by the fire.
Watch with Mother and Mark E Smith are not so far apart as you might think. Who did the voice of the Soup Dragon in The Clangers?? It was Mark W Smith gargling vodka and his own false teeth, I reckon,
At least now I know why Blameworthy reacted so coolly to my suggestion that we return to Slad: the local PTA has obviously been complaining to him. Makes a change to their complaining of him.
Christmas is coming and it’s time to look forward to the GloomLaden/Blameworthy festive session. We are unlikely to be blessed with the opportunity to look back on the event, because it almost certainly won’t happen, but the joy is in the planning. This year we may be going to Bath to sample a selection of Christmas beers in the Old Green Tree and the Star. Then again we might not. Nearer to home the winter beers festival at the Carter’s Rest, Wroughton over the weekend before Christmas would be one to remember if only we could summon up the enthusiasm to hike out beyond the boundaries of Swindon. Most of all I shall enjoy listening to GloomLaden’s perfectly justifiable reasons for not going.
That’s rich coming from a man who, earlier this year, was seen stumbling through the streets of Stroud impersonating a drunken Mark E. Smith and barging his way through groups of mothers waiting for their young children to be allowed out of school.
Watch With Mutthhaaaagggghhhhh !!!
Yes, that wistful music. You don’t get an awful lot of wistfulness in kids TV shows nowadays and the world is the poorer for it.
I think we all know enough about your psyche to realise that, had you been one of ‘the lads’, neither the weed nor anyone else could have enticed you away from the security of your pot. Shame really; she would have made you an excellent wife. Should you have felt the need to escape from her clutches for a few hours you could easily have left the garden secure in the knowledge that she would remain, literally, rooted to the spot. I watched a few of those YouTube clips earlier and realised that the deep melancholy of my personality in later life may have been the result of listening, time and time again, to that wonderfully wistful piano music played as an introduction to The Woodentops and Rag, Tag & Bobtail.
Is it not obvious that Weed is femals and that ‘the lads’ therefor have no need of Flowerpot Women, contending as they do for her favour? Of course, the bitch invariably betrays them when they behave childishly or do wrong (often indistinguishable events) giving all of us good cause for mysoginy. Weed it is that calls them our of their embryo substitute pots in the first place, wanting to play and talk with them only to betray their good nature. Hang on, this is all getting a little too revealing of MY psyche.
I feel I may have sunk into a despondent depression of disillusionment and despair before making that last comment which may have resulted in me missing the point somewhat. The fact that you feel sullied by the whole experience of watching Bill & Ben, GloomLaden, may be the result of having watched it as an adult. Not only do you, as the viewer, feel complicit in the superior snooping of the house but I suspect you may share a similar grown-up, joyless, authoritarian view. With your upper-class, right-wing moralising and self-righteous posturing you would deny Bill & Ben the very activities that might give some meaning to their pointless flowerpot existence. Lighten up a little; let them have their moment in the sun.
Having viewed all the Bill & Ben episodes, did you happen to notice if any flowerpot women appeared in the stories? I can understand Bill & Ben sticking together if they are the only flowerpot people in existence, but surely one or the other of them would have been tempted away by the lure of an attractive flowerpot woman, if such a creature existed? Also why was Weed the only weed in the garden? Generally if you let one weed live you end up with thousands within a few hours, so this particular one must have been spared for a reason.
Who am I to question your exhaustive investigations? But in my mind the stick man remains as real as GloomLaden and Fitrambler. Otherwise, am I to doubt the whole of my past existence? Are all foreign countries merely arid, dusty, featureless deserts? Are all birds dull and brownish? Is life itself just trickery and illusion? Is love merely a state of mind with no basis in reality?
My research has been extensive and academic: no Stick Man in Bill and Ben. I have not (yet) explored Rag, Tag and Bobtail or sundry other chilren’s TV shows, but I will.
I’m curious to know what you mean by ‘a little research’. Have you really trawled through every known episode of Bill & Ben just to prove that the stick man was merely a figment of my overactive imagination? Although he remains etched on my memory, I have to confess that he may have appeared in an episode of Rag, Tag & Bobtail so perhaps you could search back through the archives for me in order to track him down. On the other hand it may be that I actually saw him much later in life during a drunken ramble through the woods.
I think our discussions on the Stick Man in Bill and Ben have been based on what we philosphers call a false predicate. In other words, there never was a Stick Man in Bill and Ban. A little research shows that the Flowerpot Men’s adventures were circumscribed by the suburban garden in which they lived. Either Blameworthy is conflated incidents and characters from two unrelated yet contemporaneous shows or, more interestingly, he imagined the whole episiode in some sort of Fruedian epiphany. Looking at an old episode of Bill and Ben on YouTube, I am surprised by how much of the show was about guilt. Bill and Ben only come out when the unseen gardener is off having his lunch, when Bill and Ben misbehave, Weed tells on them, and at the end of the show it is stated that the house ‘knows something about it’, implying that the smiling house is somehow auditing procedings,malevolently so in my opinion. And if the house ‘knows’, having seen the action of the episode as we viewers have done, we viewers have been made complicity in this culture of assumed superiority through spying. I feel sullied by the whole experience, frankly.
With the inevitability of approaching death, I can sense a predictable response from the Deaf Stick Bloke coming our way. Walls have ears, you know.
If a stick man falls in a forest, do the trees hear? And vice versa.
Andy Pandy was all about death as well you know. I used to quite fancy Looby Loo but I never invited her out for a drink because she had this terrible habit of reciting Wilfred Owen in public.
An admission: in choosing Goober of Goober and the Ghost Chasers, I was being wilfully obscure rather than nominating an animated chaaracter I wold like to go drinking with. I toyed with Barbapapa, but he was little more than a shapeless blob; drinking with him would have too much lile looking in a mirror.
As for Weed, surely the allusion here was to Lucky in Beckett’s Waiting for Godot; Bill and Ben are Vladimir and Estragon. They didn’t just throw those shows together, you know.
I’d never heard of Goober before but I think it unfair to label him a drunk based on such scant evidence. The red nose may have been caused by blocked sinuses or from all that running about chasing ghosts. I would have liked a good session with the Headmaster from the Bash Street Kids. Not because I would expect to get on well with him, but if ever a man needed a drink, it was him.
Bill & Ben couldn’t have been entirely obsessed with death, otherwise why would they have allowed the weed to live for so long. Surely in any decent garden the weed would have been first in line for the chop? Perhaps my fear of the stick man was not so much about it being the living, breathing, and possibly thinking, offspring of the trees, but that it might lead me to a place beyond the woods from whence I could not return. Physically, of course, I would have been safely perched in front of the TV munching on a waggon wheel or something, but my mind would have been drifting away to far more terrifying places. I may have to take up residence behind the sofa again after this. I’ll take my collection of Christmas beers with me this time though.
I suppose death had to be beyond the wood because Bill and Ben could go to the wood and come back; something they could not do in the case of death.
Bill and Ben was a programme obsessed with death. The disappearing . appeating again games they went in for suggest Freud’s theory of the ‘fort da’ game in which patents withdraw then replace an infants loved toy in a bid to have the child learn to experience loss in s small way so as to prepare for the loss of the parent later on.
Oh, and I wouldn’t mind going to the pub with Goober from Goober and the Ghost Chasers – he had a red nose, so mucst have been a drunk.
So what was it beyond the woods that represented unresting death? A run down council estate perhaps. I must have missed the episode where Bill & Ben emerged from the trees on the other side. Flob-a-lob-a-lob-a-lob…..aarrgghh…thud.
The good thing about going for a drink with a group of friendly trees is that, during this current cold spell, you could break off a few limbs and lob them on the fire to keep warm.
There’s a stand of trees at Needle Point, the racing gallops of Roger Charlton (he took over the place from the much better named trainer Jeremy Tree)near Beckhampto, that I wouldn’t mind having a drink with. Not because they know anything much about horseflesh, but because I liked walking through and about them as a child. What I really liked was seeing them from a distance, dark and ever so slightly forbidding, then walking in amongst them to find that cool, whispery atmosphere you always get among trees. Their leaves seemed unusually dark, I recall.
As for Bill and Ben, they were clearly children. There is something about their living near a wood which is in itself disturbing. The house and garden they usually occupy clearly represents a prelapsaeian haven, the woods hard by reprsent the waiting terrors of adult life – and behind these, unresting death.
One of the difficulties with animated characters is that you can never be sure of their age. I always assumed that Bill & Ben were young grown ups, but I’m not sure about the stick man. I have no fear of grown up trees in the woods as long as they behave themselves and remain where they belong. The stick man, being smaller then your average tree, struck me as being a mere stripling – or possibly a sapling – and of course, being young, would also be unruly and not do as he was told. The same problem arises with human children in chain pubs such as Wetherspoons. So I would be quite happy to have a drink with some of the trees in the woods. Not with all of them you understand, as I’ve never liked drinking in large groups, but perhaps a reasonable sized copse gathered in the public bar where no small trees would be allowed. If they were fir trees I wouldn’t even object to them being decorated for the festive season, but I’d feel more at home with a bunch of good old, English Oaks.
Blameworthy, you said that you were only frightened of the stick man from Bill and Ben because he was in the woods. In other contexts, you would not have been frightened of him at all. I contend that you were / are frightened of the woods and not really the stick man at all. For you, the stick man represents the woods, or is at least a crystalisation of your anxieties about the woods. So would you, I wonder, go for a drink with the woods? You doubt they would or could come, but Burnham Wood came to Dunsinane in Macbeth so I don’t see why not. If you could be assured they would not invite the stick man along, perhaps – . But no, you would never believe any promise they gave to that effect, believing that the stick man would emerge from them like a child being born notwithstanding the will of its mother. Besides, the venue would be a problem. The large pub required by the woods is not liable to have the sort of characterful atmosphere you favour.
Professor Yaffle: I’d have a drink with him any day.
An inspired piece of writing Gloomladen! Nice to see you have kept up the tradition of homing in on any insignificant, throwaway comments in the original blog post and analyzing them to death. The white silhouette children from the 70s would of course be old enough to drink by now but having advertised Protect and Survive would be unlikely to risk joining you for a session. Their parents are likely to be resident in a care home for former TV animated characters. Knowing how particular you are about where you drink, and with whom, I wonder which animated characters you would most enjoy sharing a few pints with. Bob the Builder doesn’t strike me as a great conversationalist but I suspect Great Uncle Bulgaria could tell a tale or two. The Fat Controller has the look of a man who could sink a few pints of stout. Personally there’s nothing I would like better than a small glass of barley wine in the snug with Penelope Pitstop.
Return of the Saint was made in 1977/78. Originally they were going to call it Son of the Saint and Sir Rog would’ve introduced Ian O as his son early on. But after filming got underway the idea was dropped.
Leslie Charteris, creator of the Saint had a great deal to saw about the scripts and wasn’t always best pleased with what was produced.
He especially got heated in the Sir Rog era at what they did to mangle his stories to get them to fit the TV format. A clause in his contract meant they could, when they ran out of suitable stories from Charteris’s books, create their own story lines. However, Charteris turned the tables on them by getting the rights to using some these original scripts and ‘mangling’ them to suit his own literary tastes with the character.
He was very……(sees everyone staring at me) ….I’ll get me coat….
So, Blameworthy, the thing that really frightened you about the stick man in the woods on Bill and Ben was not that it was a stick man per se, but that it was a stick man composed of the very woods it inhabited, as if the envionmrnt had malevolently manifested itself in the shape of the stick man, or as if the woods were nothing more than a collection of stick men, each rendered invisible in the crowd. Whereas the stick man on The Saint didn’t frighten anyone, although I always sensed it had a sly intelligence about it, which was odd given that it was meant merely to be a representation of the idea of The Saint. Was the sly intelligence falsely inferred only by me or did others sense it? I mean, I’d be happy to go down the pub with Sir Rog or Ian Ogilvie but wouldn’t keep any such appointment with the stick man from The Saint, not just because, being mute, he couldn’t buy a round or hold up his end of a conversation about the stick man in Bill and Ben, but because I would suspect his motivation. Doubtless I should not be so choosy about the company I keep as it could be worse, I could go for a drink with that family of featureless white silhouettes from the 1970s Protect & Survive public information films, though the children in this case would have had to confine themselves to soft drinks.
It was something about a stick man in the woods; as if the very trees had given birth. A stick man strolling down the High Street or waiting to get served in Wetherspoon’s would hold no such fear for me. Whilst hacking through the woods on my way back from the Tucker’s Grave recently I believe I saw a stick man running on ahead, in fear for its life, and wondering what fearsome creature had stumbled in upon its solitude. So it works both ways.
The Ian Ogilvie Saint episodes must have been on in about 1980 when I was, alas, far from foetal. The Sir Rog ones were before my time. I imagine the stick man kept his job throughout, rather upstaging, or at least outlasting, the flesh and blood actors. I can think of few TV dramas that would not be enlivened by the constant presence of an animated stick man. The prospect is even better now we know that such a thing would give Mr Blameworthy the willies.
Having never got beyond the opening credits, I continued to believe that the animated stick man actually was the Saint. You must have still been a small foetus when those early episodes were shown Gloomers. I can still remember, at the age of four, being terrified by a stick man in the woods in an episode of Bill & Ben. I have a clear recollection of hiding behind the sofa and refusing to come out until I was almost twenty-three.
To be honest, it’s Sir Rog in the Bond films I most object to. Have not seen the black and white episodes of The Saint and only the colour ones with Ian Ogilvie. As a very small child, I used to be diaappointed that the animated stick man in the credits didn’t stay to do the whole show. Oh, come off it, I’m STILL disappointed it didn’t. Or doesn’t, if you have them on DVD.
Funny you should say near death. It was how I felt at the time although it was really my overactive imagination that made me think that. But then when the doctors aren’t saying anythiing a chap like me will get the feeling he’s going to be told the worse.
In the end it was essential hypertential – albeit at an alarmingly high level – and a heart-attack that was very, very minor; it shut down a minor blood vessell, no bigger than a rather large hair (head variety, not the floppy eared type) but until I was told that I feared the worse.
But back to the contest. If it had come about, the building we held it in would’ve been condemned afterwards. Years to get rid of the stench….
If only you hadn’t been so preoccupied with your near-death experience you might have had the presence of mind to get her name and address. I would have relished the opportunity to get together for a real contest. With one other member we could have formed a flatulent foursome. Without wishing to blow my own trumpet I feel confident that I could have taken the wind out of her sails in the semi-finals and thundered my way to victory, hopefully avoiding the necessity of extra time and the inevitable penalty shoot out.
Is one not a Saint fan or is it old Sir Rog you object to?
Funnily enough, after all my worries about not living to watch them, I’ve watched all 71 monochrome episodes but haven’t yet got round to watching the colour ones…
Love the comment.
Wish I’d known about the old lady and her noisy ability. I wasn’t surprised she came out from behind the curtains pale.
I always meant to go back and say hello but weather they would’ve remembered the whimpering chap in the corner is doubtful…
You are very fortunate Gloomladen. By ensuring that you could never be fit enough to run up and down the stairs, even if you should wish to, you have inadvertently provided yourself with ample insurance against a deliberately self-induced heart attack, thus protecting yourself from yourself, so to speak.
An excellent post. Personally, the prospect of those Roger Moore DVD’s would have had me running up and down stairs in a bid to bring on a heart attack all the quicker, but it’s amatter of taste.
Why didn’t you tell me there was a farting contest in the offing? I would have been there like the wind.