![\"SnoopyCard2\"](\"http:\/\/tim-dawson.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/SnoopyCard2-300x289.jpg\")
<\/p>\nJune 1976<\/p>\n
What I enjoyed about \u2018Peanuts\u2019 is hard now to say.\u00a0 Charles Shultz\u2019 strip cartoon appeared in The Observer\u2019s colour magazine, which my parents bought on Sundays, and each week, I devoured the four-panel tale.<\/p>\n
Snoopy\u2019s fantasy\u2019s life as a pilot, Peppermint Pattie\u2019s obdurate athleticism, and Charlie Brown\u2019s fruitless quest to kick a football or hook up with the Little Red-Haired Girl clearly spoke to me at some level.\u00a0 Perhaps it was as an oblique meditation on navigating the social order at the cusp between child and adulthood.\u00a0 Its allusions to Vietnam, Watergate and the Russian space program certainly went over my head.<\/p>\n
I was 11 in the year of the driest summer for 200 years.\u00a0 By the end of May, even the Yorkshire moors surrounding our town were parched.\u00a0 The heather was brittle and brown, grassed public parks turned to dust and the stone walls and buildings radiated a baking haze.\u00a0 For months, it seemed, the air was uncomfortably hot before I rose from bed and was roasting by the time I settled for the night.<\/p>\n
A half-term trip to Scarborough with my parents ought to have provided welcome relief from the searing weather.\u00a0 The long drive there and back, however, was an ordeal, with short-trousered legs sticking to the plastic seats as my father\u2019s car rarely got out of second gear on the traffic-clogged roads.<\/p>\n
My two memories of being in the seaside town, however, are happy ones.\u00a0 We visited a \u2018Dayville\u2019 ice-cream parlour – my first.\u00a0 Its American-diner decor affected film-set glamour, and the galaxy of possible ices contrasted starkly with Britain\u2019s usual vanilla-only offering.<\/p>\n
Earlier in the day, I had been allowed to make a solo exploration of the sea-front shops.\u00a0 These crammed emporia of novelties are an enduring institution.\u00a0 Then as now, every inch of wall, floor and ceiling was festooned with pocket-money priced plastic eye-catchers.\u00a0 Buckets and spades might have been their ostensible staple, but beyond the crab nets and postcards was a world of brightly-coloured gifts and gee-gaws among which seaside sauciness was alive and well.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
After careful consideration, I purchased a half-sized pack of \u2018Peanuts\u2019 playing cards.\u00a0 From the box in which they came, to the gloss of the cards and the reproduction of the illustrations, they were imbued with an exotic, American quality.\u00a0 I have never much enjoyed cards, nor ever deployed this deck in any kind of game but simply owning them affirmed my enthusiasm for Shultz\u2019s stories.<\/p>\n
I took my Peanuts cards to school, of course.\u00a0 Toys branded with film and television characters were a rarity at that time, and I expected to gain kudos by displaying my booty.<\/p>\n
The beating heat made for listless lessons- particularly in classrooms built in the 1950s with acres of glass and little ventilation. Teachers struggled to stay on two feet, much less engage the class.\u00a0 We entertained ourselves by flicking from our rulers chewed up balls of soggy paper in the hope that they would stick to the ceilings.<\/p>\n
As a geography lesson ground towards its conclusion, I handed my treasured cards around my friends for admiration.\u00a0 Revere them as I did, though, my attention wandered.\u00a0 By the time I looked up, my cards had passed from my immediate group of friends to a table of girls, now enacting a terrible scene.\u00a0 I watched helplessly across the room as Deborah Carely drew a moustache over Charlie Brown\u2019s lip on the outer cover.\u00a0 My angry cry brought the class to attention, but before the teacher could intervene, the bell had gone and thirty \u2018year sixes\u2019 (in today\u2019s idiom) crowded towards the door.<\/p>\n
My cards were handed back through the crush.\u00a0 Holding them in front of me, however, the defacing was as clear as it was devastating.\u00a0 I choked for a moment, and angry tears formed in my eyes.\u00a0 I wiped these away as my temper rose.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019ll get her for this\u201d, I shouted, as my wits returned to me, and I started pushing my way through the packed corridor in pursuit of the vandal.<\/p>\n
Deborah Carely and I had been in the same\u00a0class for the two years we had spent at middle school.\u00a0 Clever, sporty and attractive, she was among the pre-eminent girls, at a time when social circles generally followed gender lines.\u00a0 She had dark, bobbed hair and her uniform had a crisp, tidy quality that my cheaper, less well-cared for clothes never achieved.<\/p>\n
I had paid her little attention, save to notice that she could top our class with apparent ease.\u00a0 By contrast, it required a rarely-applied effort on my part to keep up with the more able pupils.<\/p>\n
The main door on to the school yard disgorged, and the playground started to sort itself into its usual knots and cliques.<\/p>\n
I looked around, blood up, keen to exact revenge on my tormentor.\u00a0 I saw her, standing with three or four friends at the same time as she saw me.\u00a0 My rage must have been evident.\u00a0 As I started to run, so did she.<\/p>\n
My pace was driven by fury, and I sniffed violence in my nostrils, but there was no doubt that Deborah was quicker.\u00a0 Her navy skirt and sky-blue shirt disappeared across the playground and into the ball-game cages, as I got into my stride. By the time I crashed through the mesh door, she had charged through a lazy game of football and was on the field beyond.<\/p>\n
She turned and laughed at me from 100 yards distant as I joined her on the field.\u00a0 As we tore over the grass, my lack of interest in games and PE started to tell.\u00a0 Hurt was enough to keep my going, but I could soon feel the sweat running down the sides of my body, and I knew that if I stopped moisture would break out all over my face.<\/p>\n
We chased from one side of the field to another.\u00a0 After a while the on-lookers and hangers on who had run beside us, hopeful of witnessing our denouement, gave up the game.\u00a0 Now I pursued her alone.\u00a0 Every now and then I would drop to a walk to catch my breath, and so would she – each time turning to give me a taunting glance.<\/p>\n
The field was dotted with groups of children – four or five girls were affecting to sunbathe, with their skirts pulled up as far as modesty would allow.\u00a0 There were boys earnestly playing Top Trumps and a couple of groups defying the sticky torpor with skipping ropes.<\/p>\n
Cat and mouse continued throughout the break period, until, at the far end of the field, where there was almost no one playing, she dropped to walking speed.\u00a0 We were in a corner, and I realised that she was trapped.\u00a0 My jog remained purposeful until I caught up with her and confronted her face to face.<\/p>\n
I suddenly became unclear what exactly how I was going to exact revenge, now that she was within touching distance.\u00a0 I reached forward and grabbed the front of her shirt, pulling her towards me.<\/p>\n
\u201cGo on then, what are you going to do?\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
I was relieved to stop running and, as I struggled to catch my breath, could conjure up neither suitable punishment, nor tart riposte.\u00a0 Her dark eyes bore into me and a smile played across her face as my mind fumbled.\u00a0 I opened my hand and let go of her shirt. \u00a0 \u201cI didn\u2019t mean to upset you\u201d, she said, before pulling away with a laugh.\u00a0 Then she broke into a run back towards the school building.<\/p>\n
I made my way back rather more slowly, trying to understand what had happened.\u00a0 Pushing my hands into the pockets of my grey nylon trousers, I found my Peanuts playing cards.\u00a0 Then, looking down at the defaced image, I licked my right thumb and rubbed the blue mark above Charlie\u2019s mouth.\u00a0 The biro line smudged on my first pass, and was erased with a second.<\/p>\n
I gave Deborah little or no thought until June 1980 – when she was the first girl with whom I enjoyed a proper kiss.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
June 1976 What I enjoyed about \u2018Peanuts\u2019 is hard now to say.\u00a0 Charles Shultz\u2019 strip cartoon appeared in The Observer\u2019s colour magazine, which my parents bought on Sundays, and each week, I devoured the four-panel tale. Snoopy\u2019s fantasy\u2019s life as …<\/p>\n