Sometimes, when things get a bit difficult, I think about the immutable comforts of childhood.
Cupping a mug of hot chocolate – the warmth, the smell, the anticipation.
A pet, perhaps a dog, doing dog things. Or maybe a cat, doing cat things. Or even a gerbil or a goldfish or a stick insect, each doing their own thing in ways that only gerbils, goldfish and stick insects can.
Snuggling under a duvet.
A favourite television show – Top of the Pops, perhaps, or Grandstand, or Crackerjack – coming on nice and reliably at the same time every week.
Now you mention it: Tom & Jerry. Always.
Soft boiled eggs and toast soldiers after you’ve been ill.
The snug feeling of a pack of Rolos in your pocket.
A postman, chatting.
Swallows on telegraph poles.
Falling asleep on the back seat of the car, head in your mother’s lap.
The smell of linseed oil – evidence that the cricket season was nearly upon us, and that I had put too much oil on my bat. Again.
A favourite soft toy (in my case it was a brown bear called Sirly-Wirly. The origin of the name is lost in the mists of time; his left eye was lost some time in the early 1970s.)
A much loved blanket.
Which brings us to possibly the greatest comfort of my childhood: Peanuts.
It’s difficult to quantify what I found so comforting about it. It was not a world without conflict or worries or cruelty – indeed, Schulz’s universe was notable for the undertow of anxiety and loneliness. Mostly, let’s be honest, Charlie Brown’s. And in amongst all the glorious nonsense (mostly, let’s be honest, Snoopy’s) there were complexities and ambiguities and depths that you didn’t find in a regular comic strip.
But at the age of 9 or 10 I didn’t really get all of that. Or indeed any of it. I just knew I wanted to spend time in that universe.
I suppose, if pushed, I might have said I enjoyed the humour. Peanuts strips rarely made me laugh out loud. They still don’t. But lack of laughter doesn’t mean lack of humour. Amused observation was the order of the day.
And while I wouldn’t have been able to analyse it at the time, there was something about Schulz’s minimalist drawing style that drew me in. Other comics were all crash and bang, each panel brimming with colour and energy. Peanuts was clean and simple, somehow soothing.
But what completely passed me by was any sense of historical context. I was reading these strips not as they were originally presented – in a newspaper, as an antidote to whatever was in the news that day – but in books, all in a heap, and at least a year (sometimes as many as twenty) after they were drawn. Most often this didn’t make any difference to my enjoyment of them, but sometimes a strip had me perplexed, its relevance sailing over my uncomprehending head like a badly directed free kick.
And sometimes it cut through my ignorance of world affairs and delivered a sharp jab to the solar plexus.
Hold that thought.
I have reached 1954 in my year-long reread of (according to Robert Thompson of Syracuse University) “arguably the longest story ever told by one human being”.
Here are some of the things that happened in the Peanuts universe in 1954:
Schroeder’s Beethoven obsession developed, and he celebrated the great composer’s birthday for the second time.
Linus (still basically a toddler) became increasingly adept at constructing advanced edifices with his building blocks – and, later in the year, playing cards.
Linus also started clinging to his ‘security blanket’.
We discovered that Snoopy’s dog house was basically the Tardis.
Lucy, over four consecutive Sunday strips, entered – and nearly won – an adult golf tournament. Incidentally, these strips are very rare examples of the representation of adults (albeit just their legs) in Peanuts.
The strip acquired two new characters: Pig-Pen – dirty of appearance but clean of spirit – who would stick around; and Charlotte Braun – a loud-voiced girl presumably intended as a foil for Charlie Brown – who wouldn’t.
Charlie Brown discovered, in a series of strips in which Lucy vehemently denied the existence of just one sun, the frustrations of arguing with someone who stubbornly holds misguided beliefs and is apparently impervious to all logical and reasonable evidence-based arguments. Sound familiar?
Charles M Schulz began to enjoy, and get really good at, drawing rain.
Schulz encapsulated, in two strips, the cruelty, unfairness and loneliness of life. I call them ‘the model train one’ and the ‘stomping sandcastle one’.
Oof. Not a word is spoken in either of them, and therein lies their power.
But the one that really sticks – the solar plexus jab referred to earlier – appeared on 18th June 1954.
Blimey.
There you are, nine years old, happily reading a comic strip, perhaps skimming some of them, not taking in all the details, drawn to the ones featuring your favourite character. Smiling quietly. Happy. At peace.
Then, out of the blue, bam. Or, in this case, BWHAM!
“We’re playing H-bomb test.”
OK then.
Comforting? Now I come to think of it, not so much.