Fellow blogger Wingfall has written a beautiful account of his own Project SWORD Annual and he has given me kind permission to re-blog his festive post here. Enjoy!
Book: Century 21
(1968) Project Sword. London: Century 21 Publishing and City Magazines
Ltd
Given to me by my Uncle and Aunt, Denham, Middlesex, Christmas Eve
1968.
Details:
- Hardback with slightly stubbed corners
- Spine still (surprisingly) intact
- A cover designed to captivate the heart of a small boy
- Thick, slightly rough cartridge-paper pages that make the sound of thunder when you turn them
- Smells of the future and bedtimes and hot water-bottles
- Original price marked on inside front page: 12/6d (or 62.5 New Pence)
- Filled with memories and excitement and snows of distant winters
Family Christmases
had a European flavour to them. Each Christmas Eve my mother's brother and
sister (with their families) would meet up and give out our gifts. In some ways,
this was better even than Christmas; it was like having Christmas with the
knowledge that Christmas was still to come. Best of all my uncle worked in
publishing with Gerry Anderson's TV Century 21 and that meant, a brand new
annual each Christmas filled with colour and energy and the mysteries that had
something to do with television. We did not have a television and so there was
an aura of mystique about the books we would be getting. The glossy hardboard
covers and the lavish primary colour also gave them an air of extravagance -
like a glass of pineapple juice or finding your very own box of chocolate
fingers at the bottom of your Christmas pillowcase.
The white Christmas
of 1968 is tattooed upon my memories as the archetype of all Christmases. It was
how Christmas should be (and now never will be again). I can remember walking up
our garden path in that muffled stillness of a snowy night, half asleep,
clutching this book with my other presents (soaps and sweets and forgotten
toys). Soft rolling drifts of snow glowed blue under a crystal night. It was to
be the first year that I knew what was meant by the phrase, 'took your breath
away.' It was how snow flared with tiny colours; a rainbow of pixie lamps in the
wash of our kitchen light. It is the first year I recall my hands burning with
cold from playing in the snow, of repeatedly falling on the hallway floorboards
because of the impacted snow under my wellingtons, of being aware of the
future... and being electrified by it.
It was the Christmas
that Apollo 8 orbited the moon. I watched it on my aunt and uncle's (the same
one who gave me this book) new colour television. It was before anyone had
landed on the moon, but the impossible was reachable. I fell in love with
science - the words, the beauty of formulae, the worlds it disclosed. I ached to
be an astronaut.
I had not heard of
'Project Sword' (an attempt at a spin-off by Century 21), but was instantly
captivated. Commander Bill Janson (a photo of my uncle was used in the annual
for his 'data file') was my hero and I faced the playground walking in his
shoes. I was fast thinking, I was compassionate and strong. I was a man to whom
men looked in times of crisis.
It is only on re-reading them as an adult
that I can identify a disturbingly dark subtext in the comic strip stories that
is so utterly at odds with my philosophy on life. It seems strange and out of
step with even the values of those times; a sinister conservatism that views all
outside 'the system' with suspicion and violence. My eight year old eyes were
totally unaware of it. The future of my universe was much bigger than
that.
Perhaps, just as the world seemed to lose nerve while teetering on
the edge of a future that held no barriers, it is fitting that I should find
cracks and the shadows of adults' nightmares in the book that inspired me so
much and made me look up in wonder at the moon on those lost snowy
nights.
The stories may have lost their thrill, but the memories still
fire in me an enthusiasm that goes beyond simple nostalgia. An awkward friend
perhaps, but a friend nonetheless.
