the pointless weblog

This is yet another Ladybird World Cup guide (and the last one I ever got).It was written by Lorraine Horsley. Scandalously, the price of this was £1.20, a 45p rise over the previous one, and a whole 70p more than the 1982 one. Inflation in the children’s book market (and also The Beano) was pretty much completely out of control in the 1980s. 

By 1990, at long last, I was finally old enough and competent enough to fill a book in on my own with my beautiful flowing script, complimented perfectly with the wonderful writing style of a Parker Vector fountain pen (the height of sophistication, and much better than the standard issue fountain pen that our school provided). I wish I still had such a wonderful writing tool. Now all I’ve got is a hundred thousand biros from Essex Business Link and BAE Systems infesting the corners of my room.

Talking about pens is much more important than talking about football.

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This pack of cards was given away free with 90 minutes magazine in 1993. 90 minutes ws a weekly football magazine, aimed at the more discerning reader (13 year olds, instead of the 10 year olds that read Shoot). At some point in the mid 90s (probably around 1996 or so) it became desperately laddish in an attempt to fit in with Loaded and FHM. Then it was quitely closed down forever.

One of the most depressing thing about these cards is the reminders it provides of the horrors of the “mystery guest” round on Question of Sport. Poor Peter Beardsley. Poor everyone.

I think they must have come without a box, or else my sister fashioned a box out of card and stuck a Gary Lineker Pro-Set card on the front for no other reason than love.

The inside of the box contains the faded remnants of some ancient pencil sketch one of us must have done just before. It looks like it could be the back of a monstrous ogre, rolls of fat  pushing out on the back of its neck as he looks up at the sky. It probably isn’t that at all, but I want it to be.

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Space Mobiles by Brian Knight (published in 1984 by The Halesworth press) contained the plans necessary to create five or so beautifully cumbersome spaceships.

My little brother had the big blue spaceship in his room for years, so the plans for that have already been used up, but the book still contains the plans for the two spaceships on the back cover, so it’s not completely useless. I might spend this afternoon making them, ruining them forever with my ineptitude.

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This is another Ladybird World Cup guide, written by John P. Baker and published in 1986. The results were filled in by my grandad again, mainly (the ones all in capitals). The other handwriting might well be mine. It looks a bit like mine. It’s probably my older brother’s again, though.

My main memory of this World Cup is, unsurprisingly, England losing to Argentina. When Maradona scored his second goal my mother became so furious she stormed off to her bedroom and refused to watch the rest of the game. In an attempt to cheer her up, I took my Pac-Man board game upstairs and we played it on her bed. The Pac-Man boardgame is the greatest of all diplomatic tools.

The other thing I remember is my sister bursting into tears when France beat Brazil on penalties in the quarter finals. I have never forgiven Michel Platini for this and I never will. My poor sister and her anguish.

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Naranjito: World Cup Final In Danger was published in 1982 by Ladybird Books and was written by Lynne Bradbury and illustrated by Graham Marlow.

I might not remember any of the football from World Cup 82, but I was absolutely obsessed with this book. The book is all drawn in felt-tip pens, which seemed to be the fashion at the time (Ladybird’s excellent Garden Gang books from around then were also drawn like this). I assume that was also why I scribbled all over the cover. I always desperately wanted to fit in.

The story is all about Naranjito - the greatest mascot in world cup history - and his friends saving the world cup from the evil Doctor Mantis and his robot assistants, who have been blowing up cities in an fit of misanthropic disgust.

Naranjito and the rest get captured by Mantis eventually, and he has them brought to the underground bunker in the middle of the desert where he lives, and Naranjito blows it up.

On their return to Spain, a rosy-cheeked Hitler greets them as the heroes they are.

The one bit of this that always haunted me was when Pedro, the muscle-bound lemon, gets stuck in some lift doors. With this, and the bit in Krull when the cyclops gets crushed to death by a stone doorway closing on him, I was frightened of lifts for most of my life, terrified that eventually the doors would close on me and never open again.

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