The BBC kindly reminded me of a memory I had repressed for years. And with good reason. For I lived in fear for years.
The release of the classic public-service films has allowed us all the nostalgia of Charly miaowing his way to tell us to tell our mummies before we go anywhere. But today, the beeb put on the slightly less friendly Protect and Survive, possibly the most specious and ridiculous of all the films. And the scariest...
Watch and cower in fear...
Way back in the 70s and 80s, while he still lived with us, my father was an active supporter of CND. Which is, of course, a noble and correct thing. The thing to remember is that, at the time, nuclear war was just a button push away. The insane and truly foul Reagan was in charge of enough nukes to kill us all many times over, and was just about stupid enough to use them. We weren't to know that the USSR was so poor that it's collection of weapons was held together by sticky tape and powered by vinegar and baking powder. So Armageddon was going to happen, and it was going to happen to us.
And my home was filled with leaflets containing pictures of burnt corpses and images of people reminiscent of the nuclear bomb scene in Terminator 2. I was taken on marches, where we were all made to lie down and pretend to be dead, presumably to shock the lovable softy Thatcher into destroying all our Tridents. People marched in gas masks, officially the scariest looking things in the world. More leaflets were handed out, with even more mutilated and charred corpses on them. I lived within a couple of miles of an Air Force base, which periodically - when there were no low-flying jets thundering overhead - would let of the air raid siren. Just to test them, I imagine.
And I was seven years old. Seven.
Now the BBC brings all these memories flooding back. Fortunately, of course, it seems a little less scary now. Mostly because the narrator is now doing the LOUD COMEDY TRAILERS FOR CHANNEL 4 in a Tommy Vance-esque voice. And for the fact that the instructions were so ridiculous, you can't help but laugh. But inside, I'm scarred...
Monday, February 27, 2006
Thursday, February 02, 2006
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