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So. In December I turned 60 - which I admit came as a bit of a surprise since, up until recently, I'd always considered that I was still somewhere in my 30's!

Seriously, time seems to have flown, but then looking at all the things that have changed in those 60 years and I realise, yeah, it’s been a while, so I figured it might be interesting to share a few details about my childhood that have shaped my

When I was a kid back in the 60’s, we watched tv in good old black and white - two BBC channels, (and later a massive 3 whole channels when ITV came to our region), with no reruns or recording options - you watched it when it was on or you missed it. (I think we must have had our first colour TV in the mid 70’s as I distinctly remember my mother dragging me around to a friend’s house who had a colour TV to watch the wedding of princess Anne and Mark Phillips which was in 1973?). You truly don’t appreciate how much the TV viewing experience has changed since then unless you were a child of the 60’s and 70’s, (our first video recorder, a Betamax - good choice there dad - was a revelation, and also the size of a small house).

My first memory of Doctor Who was an episode of ‘Fury from the Deep’ with Patrick Troughton, although ‘my’ Doctor was always Jon Pertwee. Sarah Jane Smith may have been my first real celebrity crush. I think my childhood self would have jumped for joy at the thought that his older self would one day end up working on the show.

Beyond Doctor Who, my childhood viewing consisted of, (in no particular order), The Magic Roundabout, Vision On and The Double Deckers, The Clangers, Monkey and Blue. My favourite shows were things like Sapphire and Steel, The Tomorrow People and The Man From Uncle, and I loved all the old Irwin Allen shows like Lost in Space, Land of the Giants and Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea, (all very cheesy but I loved them nonetheless). I also watched loads of Gerry Anderson shows - Thunderbirds, Space 1999 and UFO were all must-see tv for me, (Gerry Anderson was a big part of my childhood, but you can probably tell that I grew up with a LOT of ‘genre’ shows in general). My cartoons were The Flintstones, Whacky Races and Scooby Doo, (I loved classic Scooby Doo, still doo). I have a vague memory of the Apollo 11 moon landing, but it is only a vague one, I was only 7 at the time.

I watched classic Universal and Hammer horror double bills, along with films like Them! and Forbidden Planet on a Friday night, (once my parents gave up trying to send me to bed but kept catching me sitting on the stairs watching the films through the partially ajar living room door), and therein probably lie the roots of my enduring love of rubber monsters and classic genre films to this day.

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I saw Star Wars at the age of 15 when it first came out. I was the perfect target market and it blew my mind, none of us had ever seen anything like it, it was everything a teenage geek could have wished for, (and remember this was at a time when there were no endless trailers to spoil the surprises). My first 18+ film in the cinema was Alien, (again, no trailers to spoil it, again - mind blown).

I was never a particularly good pupil or student either at school or later at college, I was the skinny, asthmatic nerd who was no good at sports, (but oddly ok at the javelin and discus for some reason). My mind always wandered in lessons, and having to do essays or maths just turned my attention span into mush, (my old school books were filled with doodles of monsters in the margins). However, I was always pretty good at art from an early age and I made a reasonable sideline at school painting album covers on rucksacks - I lost count of the times I painted Motörhead, (about 10 years ago I went back to Crypt School during an open day and they had one of my A-level paintings framed on the wall which was weird).

I always enjoyed the sorts of toys like LEGO and Meccano that enabled me to make things - I also loved my collection of old Aurora model kits featuring The Creature from the Black Lagoon, Frankenstein and all the other classic monsters - and I have fond memories of my Dad sitting at the side of my bed in the evening, not reading me a bedtime story, but instead making model kits of the Cutty Sark or HMS Victory; the smell of turpentine is still a nostalgic one for me.

My childhood reading consisted of things like ‘Alfred Hitchcock and The Three Investigators’, (Jupiter Jones, Pete Crenshaw & Bob Andrews unravelling spooky mysteries that always had a logical solution in the end - a bit like Scooby Doo without the dog), and the Willard Price ‘Adventure’ series, (young brothers Hal and Roger Hunt having amazing adventures around the world). I also loved ghost stories and I have fond memories of discovering Elliot O’Donnell’s ‘A Casebook of Ghosts’ at the local library for the first time, (‘true’ ghost stories from a famed ghost hunter, I still have a copy of that book - not the library’s copy

though ).

I read the usual comics as a British kid - The Beano and Whizzer and Chips etc, (and I loved the artwork of artists like Ken Reid) - but I also read a lot of US import reprints like ‘Tales from the Crypt’ and ‘Eerie’ along with UK reprints of classic Marvel comics featuring the likes of Spiderman and The Fantastic Four, (and I admit, as a 60yr old man, I’m indecently excited at the prospect of the FF finally making it into the MCU in a couple of years time, they were always my favourite Marvel characters).

I remember the roads in the 70’s being virtually empty by comparison to today’s, (2020 felt like a real flashback to those times during lockdown), and how our neighbour had a new car with those pop-out indicators which fascinated me.

I remember listening to new releases from the likes of The Beatles and Elvis on the radio, but the 70’s were really where I discovered an interest in music - there was a lot of prog and classic rock, for which I make no apologies, (bands like Pink Floyd, Led Zep, Yes and Rush are still some of my favourites to this day). My first live concert was Mike Oldfield on the Platinum tour.

I’ve watched computers come from nothing but chunky calculators to them taking over the world, and seen computer games evolve from Pong, through milestones like Doom and Alone in the Dark, to the likes of Horizon Zero Dawn and The Last of Us. My first computer was a second-hand Amiga 500 (3.5” floppy discs with an average of 1.5mb!),

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and phones were things that just plugged into the wall and had circular dials. Now mobile phones are just a part of everyday life, but for us as kids, walkie talkies, (with a range of about 50ft on a clear day with the wind in the right direction if you were lucky), were about as exciting as it got back then, it was generally easier to just shout.

Right from early childhood I also enjoyed playing games, and I still do, (although after seemingly endless childhood hours spent playing Monopoly with my parents I’ll be happy if I never see that game again). I discovered Dungeons & Dragons in the mid 1970’s and still play it to this day. I found LARP, (or LRP as it was back then), in 1982 and fell in love with the possibilities of the hobby, and anyone who knows me will know how that worked out… (although I’m pretty certain my swashbuckling days are probably behind me now).

I’ve never seen attack ships on fire off the shoulder of Orion, or C- beams glitter in the dark near the Tannhäuser Gate, but I have had some fun adventures. I’ve stalked Orcs and demons through castle dungeons, raised a tankard with pirates in taverns and fought off hordes of zombies in the depths of the forest. I’ve partied at the end of the world in the Mojave desert and raised a glass with friends in the ruins of civilisation in the UK and Poland. All thanks to my work and my hobbies. If my body’s willing, I definitely plan to have more adventures while I can, because that stuff’s fun!

I’ve had some truly awful haircuts over the years, (but I figure if you don’t have regrets then you’ve played it too safe). I’ve done lots of dumb stuff and have the scars to show for it.

So yes, it’s been longer than I think since I was ‘young’, but at heart I still feel like I’m in my 30’s, (even though my body definitely tells me otherwise), and I still firmly believe in the saying that ‘You don’t stop playing because you get old, you get old because you stop playing’ - so here’s to more years of playing.

Anyway, I guess I'm officially 'old' now, but I don't have any plans to give up creating stuff for the foreseeable future, (artists rarely retire, we just gradually fall apart as the glue gives up, although at some point I guess I will have to consider cutting back on the number of commissions I take on).

So there you go - that's a little insight into the childhood that created me.

https://markcordory.comMark Cordory (1973-80)

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