SUSIE MALLETT

My visitors today

Tuesday 6 December 2011

A trip down a book-lined memory lane

   Lanterns in Hong Kong, last year

A few of my books from years-gone-by


Making lanterns with Grandma!

I was Google Imaging Andy Pandy. I wanted to know if his blue and white all-in-one suit had a bit of red bric-a-brac trim on the hat. I questioned, while googling, how I actually knew at all that his suit was blue and white because I only ever saw him on Watch with Mother in different tones of grey on a black-and-white TV!

I expect that he featured in a comic book at some time, or that there was an Andy Pandy Christmas Annual. We always got a heap of annuals for Christmas, perhaps we had that one too.

I found an Andy Pandy picture and discovered that there was no red to be seen, and at the same time I discovered lots of other Watch with Mother You Tube clips to watch.

A while back I watched Tales of the River Bank and The Wooden Tops, but today I discovered another, Picture Book:


I have the Picture Book book that is shown at the very end of this clip but I had not realized before that it accompanied this programme.

As I watched this show with the proper BBC lady, with her sausage-dog, showing us so precisely how to make paper lanterns, I was suddenly six years old again. I realized that I had watched this very programme with my grandmother at her house. The only place where my sister and I were able to watch Watch with Mother was in the private living-room of my Grandparent’s public house, the Pineapple Hotel.

I also realized that it was because of this programme that garlands of pretty wallpaper-paper lanterns were brought out annually to decorate the front and the back smoke-rooms of the pub.

Not only did my sister and I watch the lovely BBC Picture Book lady with Grandma but went on to produce strings of paper lanterns to decorate her home and ours. I found one of said lanterns lurking in the box-room at my Dad’s house the last time I was home!

Guess what we will be making at work next week!

No comments: