The Boy Least Likely To

"suppose, if you will, that i am part of a silent martian invasion and that my intention is slowly to destroy the whole culture of the human race. where would i start? i would naturally start where thought first grows. i would start with children's television. my policy would be to give the children only the sort of thing that they 'already know they enjoy' like a fizzing diet of manic jelly babies. this would no doubt be exciting,
but their hearts and their minds would receive no nourishment, they would come to know nothing of the richness of human life, love and knowledge, and slowly whole generations
would grow up knowing nothing about anything but violence and personal supremacy."

- oliver postgate

postman pat has been promoted. he's not just a lovable local postman anymore. he's been rebranded. moved up into management to take a position as the head of the special delivery service. i don't suppose i should really care, but i do. he's had to relocate too. he doesn't live in the countryside, in the little village of greendale anymore. now he lives and works in a nearby town called pencaster. and he doesn't use the same van anymore either, he drives a larger van now with sat nav. as well as a motorbike and a gyrocopter, if there even is such a thing. and he has a blackberry too.

this is how entertainment rights, the company that makes the show, described the revamped pat:

"he is more heroic. previously, pat was everybody's friend, everybody's local postman. he is now everybody's local hero because he has so many more challenges in his job. he delivers everything and anything and he has a mission every episode. there is a lot more action; children are used to seeing a lot of fast paced programmes now."

i watched an episode of it this morning. it ended with pat flying down in a helicopter to deliver a bouncy castle to a school, but then jess the cat tore the castle with his claws. so pat jumped to the rescue, fixing the holes in the castle with some sticking plasters and inflating it with a reconfigured leaf blower. it was pretty weird. it was like watching macgyver. even pat seemed a bit bemused by the whole thing. he was always a bit bumbling, but that didn't seem to matter when he was just a village postman. now he seems completely lost. like someone on a government restart scheme for the unemployed, desperately trying to make sense of an unsuitable office job when he's spent the last thirty years wobbling along country lanes with his pet cat on the passenger seat delivering letters around the same village to the same people every day. the programme makers have been making him out to be some sort of action hero, but i think pat knows that he can never live up to it. i'm not sure if he even wanted any new challenges, he was probably quite happy in greendale. he always seemed very happy there. i don't remember him having any ambitions of moving into management or ever mentioning moving away from the village. it all seems quite sudden. i hope he's okay.

he doesn't deliver letters anymore either. he delivers parcels now. it's even been written into the theme tune, which has been distastefully rerecorded, so now there'll be a knock and a ring and parcels will be delivered to your door instead of letters. i don't understand why anyone would think the theme tune needed recording again, there was nothing wrong with the original version, it sounded like glen campbell, but perhaps a bit jollier. it's as if the programme makers had it rerecorded because they thought that children wouldn't like the production values of the original version. it's idiotic.

postman pat was first made in 1981 by ivor wood, who had previously animated the magic roundabout with serge danot in france before coming over to england to direct and animate the wombles, the herbs, and paddington bear. his woodland animations company produced the first two series of postman pat, about twenty eight episodes in all, and three or four films. and then in 2001 ivor wood sold woodland animations to entertainment rights, who got cosgrove hall to make series three, four and five. i don't know if cosgrove hall were involved in the most recent series, but i didn't really like a lot of the changes they'd already made in the three series before. everything seemed to have been tidied up with cgi. the new postman pat has been cleaned up even more and the scenery looks really really shit. i guess programme makers use cgi because they've been forced to stop being creative and innovative, because television stations won't commission programmes for children that children aren't already familiar with and that don't fit into already proven formats. i suppose if the programme makers aren't allowed to be creative and innovative with the content then the only way they can compete with each other is over the technical quality of it. i can't think of any other way to explain using cgi in programmes for children. it's just weird. i really don't think that children care about the technical quality of television programmes. if you stick a couple of buttons on a sock they think it's a snake.

the same thing happened with thomas the tank engine, and even though i always thought the trains were a bit creepy, i thought the first two series were filmed really beautifully. watching it still makes me feel like i did when i was young and i used to lie down on the floor with my face pressed into the carpet and i'd get so close to my playmobil people that i would feel like i was the same size as them. it was like that with the first two series of thomas the tank engine, but over time the programme makers began cleaning it up and making it look less and less three dimensional and slowly it lost all the magic that it had. and then everything else in it was simplified and reduced down until it just became completely banal. the later episodes are almost moronic. if i watch it it makes me think i've got learning disabilities.

this isn't me being nostalgic. i'm not looking back at all the things i watched when i was young with more fondness, because i don't think at all. a lot of it was rubbish. i just don't understand why so many of the programmes made for children have such high production values now, and i wonder where all the charm and subtlety has gone. it's as if the programme makers don't think children are interested in anything quiet or considered or intelligent. there isn't anyone making programmes with the same tone and feeling that oliver postgate and peter firmin used to use, and i think it would be nice if there was. although there are a few programmes being made at the moment that i do like. i saw an episode of the little princess where there was a funeral for a snail, and it was one of the saddest and sweetest things i've seen on television for ages.

and the silly thing is, children's television programmes don't even need to change. their audiences are children so they get into them and then grow out of them naturally. no one is ever going to watch postman pat for more than a few years between the ages of two and five anyway, so television stations might as well just show the same episodes over and over again.

i know it probably doesn't matter, and there are children that'll watch the new postman pat all over the world and enjoy it, but when i watched it this morning i couldn't help feeling that something magical had gone out of it. pat had been one of the quiet ones, and now he's been made to be like everything else. i just hope that pat still feels he's a really happy man, because he looked a little bit sad and lost to me.

x

i picked up the new j-lew album this week. by which i mean i went to the shops and bought a copy of the new album by jenny lewis on monday, just in case anyone wasn't familiar with her j-lo and li-lo style nickname.

i've given the album three or four listens, and i quite like it. i absolutely loved the first album, i think it was my second favourite of the year when it came out, but i haven't warmed to this new one as quickly. the production is a lot more grand, but it feels a little bit cold. it sounds more like a rilo kiley record. and i guess i liked rabbit fur coat because it didn't. not that i don't like rilo kiley, i do. but j-lew seemed more comfortable and natural doing country, and it seemed to suit the personal nature of the songs. my favourite song on acid tongue is the title track, probably because it could have fitted quite happily on rabbit fur coat. maybe it's something to do with the lyrical themes of this record, j-lew doesn't seem to cast herself in these new songs as much as she did in rabbit fur coat. it kind of reminds me of 'cassadaga' by bright eyes in that way, and also because the production seems a little bit more classic and refined. and weirdly, it was the album before 'cassadaga', 'i'm wide awake it's morning', when bright eyes seemed to have finally found a comfortable place for his songs and his subjects too. and then it was only really 'lime tree' off 'cassadaga' that carried it on. maybe i just want everything to stay the same and nothing to ever change or move on, and maybe it just didn't move in the direction i wanted it to, and it isn't up to me which direction someone takes their songs. but i wish acid tongue was more like rabbit fur coat, because i was so excited about it coming out. saying all that, i love 'carpetbaggers' and 'see fernando' off the new j-lew album. i just wish it was full of songs like that. perhaps i'll make it into a little ep on my ipod.

and perhaps it should be spelt j-loo not j-lew just because it looks nicer, but i suppose she would have to spell her name jenny loowis for that to make sense.

x

"the moment a little boy is concerned with which is a jay and which is a sparrow, he can no longer see the birds
or hear them sing."
- eric berne

i went to the end of the road festival at the weekend. i stopped at fleet services on the way down. great services. it must have rained on the friday, because when i turned up at the festival on saturday there wasn't much grass left. there was just a lot of mud. i didn't really see many bands while i was there, but i had a lovely time. i went to see let's wrestle in the big top tent. i'd been really excited about seeing them all week. i remember reading the description of them on the rough trade shop website a while ago and it said that "let's wrestle are the most miserable and hateful band in north london" and that their songs were written "at the back of wpg's garden in his wooden pub", and that was enough for me. i love the mini album they did and the 'let's wrestle' single is definitely my favourite single of the year. anyway, i really enjoyed their set at the end of the road. it was brilliant and funny and slightly shambolic. and i think joe reddington came on to deliver a beer to mike lightning during the set. which makes me think that joe reddington is also joe the roadie, the unofficial fourth member that's mentioned on the stolen recordings website. not that i'm obsessed or anything, it's just exciting that there's a band i actually like.

i only saw bits of other things. nothing else i saw seemed to hold my attention for very long. i missed absentee because i had to stop in sixpenny handley, which was annoying. i stopped around for a bit to watch mercury rev but jonathan donahue seemed to be sitting on a stool, and i wasn't in the mood for watching someone sitting down to sing. i was quite a long way away from the stage though, so he might not have been sitting down at all. and i went to hear some ghost stories at midnight, but they weren't at all scary.

and there was a weird moment at the poster stall when a woman accused me of stealing her can of strongbow, and even though i was certain that i'd walked in there with it, she was so convincing that in the end she persuaded me that it actually was hers and i let her take it off me. and then she came back two minutes later and gave me the can back saying that she'd been mistaken and that her boyfriend had told her she'd actually been drinking beer from a plastic cup all afternoon. it's obviously very easy to convince me that my drinks aren't mine.

we haven't really done much since i last wrote anything. we played one show for the fistful of fandango mini indoor festival. we only had half an hour so it was a bit of a squeeze trying to get all the songs we wanted to play in. i wish we'd had a bit longer. i can't wait til we start doing our own shows again and we can play for two or three hours. i went a bit mental in 'when life gives me lemons i make lemonade' and i got all the clapping parts wrong at the end of the choruses, and then i started uncontrollably yelping and whooping at inappropriate moments. i hope no one noticed.

and then for the rest of the month i've just been sitting around watching tennessee williams films and listening to crass. we can't really do anything else. my life at the moment reminds me of the end of the film baby doll when baby doll says to aunt rose "well, we got nothing to do but wait for tomorrow and see if we're remembered or forgotten."

x