Going back to 1980

As we make our way through the month it is usually the case the final preparations are made for the production of  this years Beano and Dandy Summer Specials ready to go to the shops or today be ordered online from around late May.

Last year I did write a bit around Dandy and Beano Comic Library editions and Summer Specials and as it happens it's what would be the third anniversary of the Traditional School Boy (TSB) on Tumblr.

Recently I repurchased this, the 1980 Summer Special which was something I bought while away in what was in hindsight to be quite a significant year.

1980 was year where exams loomed across this month and May and with it the widening age dysphoria gap between how I was on the inside and how chronological aged me was being seen by others.

It was across this period that I started to wear much of my older clothes not least shorts, long socks and having discovered it, my younger brothers former cub scout uniform.

This was the summer I refused to wear long trousers while away on hols wearing either an old denim pair or some ultra short blue shorts that Messrs Jonty and James might of approved off so every single family picture shows what on the surface was a young boy, a slightly more mature looking ten or eleven year old as I was less developed physically and rather thin.

Thus it was him that read things like that years summer special Pup Parade, the strip based on the lives of the Bash Street Kid's dogs on the beach and in our accommodation.

Around this time I was still reading comics so issues like April 26th's was a memorable one and an indication of how things were across this period was the fifteen year old going on ten was still playing now having moved on a year (by chronological age) played with that glove puppet even if I could talk about The Jam and Mrs Thatcher's government going on to have afternoon tea with the latter at No. 10. 

I had decided by that point in my life I was not a "young man" nor associated with the term "teenager" but really still that boy in Juniors even if I went to "big school" and started to study for a few more examinations the next year.

So it was as got to the tail end of 1980 that what was now a boy in law who could leave school was still living in most respects as a ten year old with the same house rules, dressed the same would get things like that years Beano Book (it wasn't an annual until later) even if he studied the Constitution and system of Government at school getting the best exam result of the group the next year.

As far as that year book went Gnasher and Dennis were as football mad as us sticking our PE shorts on during midday recess for game on the school fields and Gnasher's teeth dead set on biting the bums of Dennis's opponents as we has in the Summer Special.

1980 was the year the short-lived  spin off Bash Street Kids annual  started as many of us were into Adam Ant and Grange Hill.

Cuthbert was forever the class swat and teachers pet as much as teacher was like mine that year still legally able to swing that cane in our direction and boys like me who got to sit outside the form teachers office were often teased about just what might happen later.  

You took stuff like that in your stride and I was more than capable of dishing it back later!

That was 1980 and why revisiting the Summer Special brought everything back.