Saturdays were a better day for me as a boy, I played football for Epsom Eagles in the morning and went home for lunch; usually sausages, beans and chips. This is significant because it was in such sharp contrast to the liver, faggots, belly of park and all the other disgusting food we were served up during week days. This reality of “Dinner Time!” disturbed me so much that my knees would nervously knock together under the table. So on Saturdays I generally had a sense of calm about my person and eagerly looked forward to early evening television. It was also a distraction on the weekends that I was at home and not vising my Mum which happened each fortnight.
At about 5pm the television screen was filled with the teleprompter that would give out the football results. The ominous tone of the voice would announce; ‘League Division One. Liverpool 1, Arsenal 0… Manchester United 3, Derby County 2… Tottenham Hotspurs 1, West Ham United 1… endless lists of match results.
I was only ever interested in Crystal Palace; that was my team and one more occasions than most they had lost.
This however, was all just adding to the anticipation of what was coming up next – Dr Who. At some point in everyone’s life, they have seen Dr Who; that haunting electronic theme tune that would stop you in your tracks and make to rush to the living room and fixate you to the television.
When I was watching it, John Pertwee was the Dr. Disappointingly at one stage he died… well didn’t die… transformed into Tom Baker… and after that it all just seemed a bit pants. However, I have two fond memories of this televisual feast; one episode involving giant spiders and then of course there were the Daleks.
Having recently reviewed DR WHO AND THE DALEKS and DALEKS-INVASION EARTH 2150 AD, I always remember the Daleks as being much bigger. In my collages, I have made them taller than the average man to make them more menacing and add to their sense of presence. The humour in these images is not only in the locations in which our chosen Dalek finds itself, but also in the surfaces upon which it travels. Everyone knows that the easiest way to outsmart a Dalek is to run up some stairs. Somewhere that a Dalek just can’t follow and something that the protagonists of those early movies never quite worked out for themselves.
We witness our ‘star’ attempting to get on the bus, sunbathing on the pebbled beach at Brighton, enjoying the water slide at Chessington World of Adventures, exercising on the treadmill, drunk outside the pub, laying on the sofa discussing ‘issues’ with the psychiatrist and waking up as Dumbo does, in that Walt Disney classic, to find itself perched precariously on a rock in the elephant pen at Bristol Zoo.
Somewhere deep in my consciousness I cannot but make a link between the cries of ‘Naughty, Naughty, Naughty’, from the Punch and Judy man and the cries of ‘Exterminate, Exterminate, Exterminate’, from the Daleks. Perhaps it is just one of those childhood splinters that will always remain lodged deep in the psyche, or by some prognosis reveal itself and lead me to a clearer sense of serendipity.