Comics and things

I had forgotten about the tin pencil box with aspecial pen and pencil inside, and a picture of the newly-crowned Queen on the lid. We were all given one at school to commemorate the coronation, but I have forgotten what happened to it. If only I had made the decision in my childhood to preserve some of the things I had in the fifties. If only I had put them away carefully, looked after them, or in other words, didn't use them, play with them or get any pleasure out of them at the time. But I was not encouraged in this. We were not that sort of family, and I was the sort of child who believed in squeezing every tube of toothpaste that life offered me, until it was absolutely empty. Pencils were used and sharpened with the kitchen knife, until they were stubs, too short to hold. Fountain pens did not fare so well under my tender care. I seemed to have a habit of dropping them on their nibs, or the little rubber tube inside would burst, making a dreadful mess. Tins got dented, broken or lost. Comics, once read and kept for a few weeks, became clutter, and ended up as fire-lighters or in the dirt pail.
I was an avid comic reader from quite an early age. I suppose Beano and Dandy were the ones I bought most frequently, as they were only two pence, a penny cheaper than all the others, and two pence cheaper than the one my mother ordered for me, that used to be delivered on Sunday morning. That was 'Girl' of course, sister comic to 'The Eagle', the one I think I would have preferred. But I am afraid, my mother's attempts at gentility did not really make much impression on my. Definitely before I was ten, Minnie the Minx and Dennis the Menace were my undisputed heroes. I found it delightful how they invariably ended up being put over an irate parent's knee and being thrashed with a slipper. Belle of the Ballet and Wendy and Jinx didn't get a look-in in the popularity stakes. It was only as I started to get older, that they started to appeal to me. I wish I had a pile of my old comics now. Comics, or what passes for comics these days, like lots of magazines, seem to be all pictures and headlines with no 'meat' in the middle, or they want to teach children their letters and numbers. Children don't want comics to be taught letters and numbers, or anything else that the adult world wants them to learn. They need comics to slip into and enjoy the private world of childhood. They need to be vicariously naughty, stuck-up, stupid or just plain bad, through the characters in the comics, and learn the consequences of such behaviour. In fact, there was a black and white morality in comics. Bad deeds and naughty children always got their just deserts in the end. The good and downtrodden were ultimately rewarded. The world made sense (what the public was allowed to hear, that is) But now, the unmuddied morality of those days seems to have turned into a veritable morasse of political correctness gone mad and justice frequently stood on its head.