What a funny way to travel. In the company of Billy Bunter and his chums and adversaries at Greyfriars school As I was reading this on a train to Dundalk just reading, laughing and basking in a world that may never really have existed beyond the pages of Frank Richard's books but I hope in the very marrow of whatever makes me me that it did. and possibly that it still does somewhere.
(From my sketchbook.)
Back in the day this Armada paperback for boys and girls would have cost one 2/6! "Oh crikey" I hear you gasp. And it would have been money well spent. Mine was even better value, it was gifted to me by Jim Mc Kevitt of Atomic Comics. That much missed collectable shop from Lower North Street. It is not so long gone but it feels like a different world in the time since he pulled his scribbled over shutter down for the last time. One of the remaining bright lights on that street going out. And it used to be a lively and varied street. Anyway, he gave it to me in order to counter the daily bombardment of grim news through the mainstream media. "Stop watching the news, it contrives to frighten you" Saint Stephen Morrissey warned us and like all heavenly observations we listened without really hearing.
Jim described this book as laugh out loud funny and ,you know,he was laugh out loud right. It was the only book I took with me on my family Christmas visit in December past, one I started reading on the train to Dundalk. And it turned me into the funny old fellow sitting on his own laughing to himself. I must have looked like the ghost of Christmas Past. I know I feel most Dickensian these days. Not that anyone in my carriage would have noticed. They all looked pretty wiped out, slumped in their seats or sleeping across their table. Probably all post party so near to Christmas day.
Billy Bunter is a very funny very likable character, constantly on the look out for his next feast. Using every ounce of his considerable wits to fill his belly. He lies, steals and cheats and yet is constantly dumbfounded when his plans and schemes go awry, which they invariably do. The other boys of Greyfriars School and even the teachers are on to him and all his myriad ways. Yet they expansive genorosity of spirit and good humour will always allow him enough room to pursue the moveable feast which is his life. Harry Wharton, Bob Cherry, Johny Bull, Frank Nugent and Hurre Jamset Singh are as rounded as Bunter ( actually no one is as rounded as Billy Bunter.) feel real and with minimum description come alive in the skillful hands of the Mercurially talented Frank Richards who brought to life as real as anything born and created in print and on paper. Warm, witty and timeless.
