If
A Traveller in Time by Alison Uttley was the favourite book of my early childhood; my favourite book of later years was
The Moon Stallion by Brian Hayles.
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| My Actual Childhood Copy dated 1979 |
I read it so many times I know it off by heart. Since the arrival of DVDs I looked for a DVD. The only one I found was this, by BBC Germany. It's alright because all you do is go to the
Sprachen menu, select
Englisch, then go back to
Hauptmenu, and watch it in it's original BBC form. If you do, you're best to ignore the first five minutes, they're pretty cringeworthy (false railway carriage, very crude introductory conversation).
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| Der Mondschimmel |
It's a brilliant story, with some beautiful imagery, totally recommended if you like Fleams. You may have noticed from these two covers, the main character, a young girl called Diana is played by Sarah Sutton, who went on to play Nyssa in Doctor Who, in the classic Tom Baker Years. I loved it then, it was heavily Art Nouveau styled. Apparently Tom Baker was styled as a Toulouse Lautrec poster. Nyssa had a velvet fitted jacket, and, to start with, a puffy, tutu-type skirt, little Victorian boots. The style was great. It's kinda mixed up in my mind with The Moon Stallion and a play of Maria Marten in the Red Barn. I'm not sure if Sarah Sutton was in the play, or whether it was an actress called Julia Proctor, who I thought looked like Sarah Sutton. It's all mixed together in a brilliant Fleamsy dark folk mix.
Brian Hayles used the work of George Ewart Evans, especially his oral history work with horsemen as his inspiration. I have some of his books, like:
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| A Good Book |
More Fleamsy dark folk brilliance. Who could ask for more on a blustery Autumn afternoon by the fire. Not me. Unless you added a snifter of sloe gin.
I remember Lyssa. Phwoar. Sorrry...
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