Apparently I'm supposed to keep old comics in slip-cases...
I know it’s a guy-thing to endlessly adjust lists of favourite or hated films/books/football teams, but one of the things I’ve done in my upcoming memoir ‘Paperboy’ is to include lots of lists. One is a list of words I read in hearty kids’ adventure novels but didn’t quite understand at the age of ten:
Incognito
Copse
Ingot
Pipette
Zeppelin
Contraband
Hottentot
Capstan
Runcible
Quartermaster
Chocks
Infidel
See the ‘Paperboy’ section for more…
Captain Scarlet was also good for two: retrometabolism and pulsating!
And though I couldn’t read at the time, I somehow almost knew the title of “The Atom” — I said “The Atomic.” I think it was those spinning electrons in the logo…
It’s not that I didn’t know the meaning…rather the pronunciation of “Alien”. For some odd reason I pronounced it “Allen”. Didn’t have a strange friend named Allen or Alan, so that wasn’t it. A peculiar factoid (pronounced “thing”) from my peculiar (pronounced “peculiar”)childhood.