BURNT

(Set in Christmas 1986....)
(Original Blog Posting: Dec 2004)
(Part 1 of 2)

Hmmmm.... I don’t know how to start my 1986 Christmas Flashback but here goes. This year marked the introduction of Thundercats, Modulok and even more Transformers and oh yeah my baby sister too.

This was the first Flatt Family Christmas Holiday with my new sister Helen. Helen was born shortly after my Granddad passed away. If we were a Hindu family we'd put it down to reincarnation. Mum told me that Granddad was now living with God in Heaven and we will see him again someday.

I believe it was Live Aid or Ferry Aid or something that was Christmas number 1 that year. 1986 marked lots of well known songs in the charts from the likes of Berlin, The Bangles, Spitting Image puppets (we were allowed to sing a edited version of 'The Chicken Song' in a school assembly), and page 3 girl Samantha Fox. I wasn’t much into pop around then but everyone at school loved the chicken song and there was so much fuss about it more than any other song in all my years in schools and educational institutes. Top Gun was also that year’s no.1 movie.

Back onto Christmas. We taped lots of films and cartoons that year. Dumbo, Watership Down, He Men and She Ra Enriched, The Animalypics and some Australian monster film called Monsters Christmas or something. We still have these somewhere on Betamax tape somewhere (and yes! I acquired a Betamax last year from a workmate and when I get the right leads I will capture and make some 80's clips for kenflatt.com). We watched Watership Down almost everyday. Bigwig was the man, err bunny!

Dad made a huge blazing fire on Christmas Eve (we had one really cool huge fireplace at our Bungalow in Brentry). Michael and I took the opportunity to make a sacrifice for the fire. We chose an old C3P0 toy we had (1 of 5 second hand C3P0 figs we had and back then SW toys were going VERY cheap) and when Dad wasn’t looking C3P0 with some help from your's truly took dive into the fire. He hit the guard and missed. Oh dear..... Dad could be back any second and do us for action figure murder. I reached into the fireplace and grabbed a slightly charred 3P0 and burned the inner part of my index finger. I ran quickly into the bathroom and watered it down.

By the time I came out I was in trouble. Dad found out (thanks to Michael for squealing on me) and I was sent to bed early. Now as a 9 year old and excited about Christmas Day the most torturous thing that could happen is being sent to bed early. And yep that happened to me. It was like a solitary confinement scene from a prison movie.

On top of that Santa was going to be told about what I did.

TO BE CONTINUED…