Jackanory, Jackanory...

Now that the days are drawing in and the leaves are falling, my thoughts turn to that return-to-school period of yore, when I remember rushing home from said establishment in the fond hope of catching Jackanory, on the box. Those of you of a certain age will remember it, a story-telling slot that ran for ten minutes from quarter-to-five-ish on BBC1, of a weekday evening. The formula was deceptively simple; a reader would relate a tale pulled from the trove of popular children’s writers (RL Stevenson, Roald Dahl, Anna Sewell, et al), the episodes from each tale divided up over the five evenings. Sometimes, the telling was interspersed with original illustrations from the books. But the big draw-in was the actual reading, the readers drawn from the galaxy of British stage and TV stars. Oh, the pacing of the text, the punctuation and intonation, the voice characterization and dramatization. Ten magical minutes saw countless children transfixed and transformed into knights in castles with kings and princes, and youths sailing the high seas with patch-eyed buccaneers and talking parrots. It was the best tuition in reading aloud ever and more than that, Jackanory served as a release, a wonderful escape from the pressures of the day, poised as it was in the dream-time between day and evening. As in all the best fairy tales, we returned to normality when the narrator finished. Normal but much stronger. Somehow, vicariously slaying dragons and sailing the high seas proved refreshing, rejuvenating and recharging, giving the fortitude to face more pragmatic matters. And it was all too short-lived. Sadly, the dawn of adulthood shattered the time-frame that allowed for Jackanory. No more seaside adventures and treasure-hunting of an afternoon any more, just news reports and adult soap operas. The loss of Jackanory is what has turned the grown-up me into a pitiable, permanently-exhausted wreck. No doubt Jackanory still lives on in some rarefied, online enclave or podcast. But I prefer to remember it as the collective experience that it was, enthralling countless children and breeding the next generation of storytellers, artists and simply, persons who know that life is much better for story-telling.