Animator Ivor Wood also created The Herbs (with Michael Bond, whose Paddington books are what I went from being read to from by my mum to reading them myself) and reading the Wikipedia descriptions of those characters, it's surreal in a way I don't remember appreciating when it began (in 1968, the year after The Summer of Love). Surprisingly The Magic Roundabout didn't air in colour until 1970 (when we first got a colour TV - and half my mates came round to watch Chelsea in the FA Cup Final. The year after Woodstock). Now I was watching it more critically. Not that there were any clear signs of the drug culture in the provinces and it wouldn't have occurred to me then; undoubtedly in the orbit inhabited by Ivor Wood and Eric Thompson it would have been rife. Acid as well as dope. Hard to imagine the parents of Emma Thompson didn't indulge. I don't believe Eric Thompson narrated The Herbs, but Lady Rosemary looks suspiciously like his wife, Phyllida Law.
Oh! I have slipped the surly bonds of Earth And danced the skies on laughter-silvered wings; Sunward I’ve climbed, and joined the tumbling mirth of sun-split clouds, — and done a hundred things You have not dreamed of – wheeled and soared and swung High in the sunlit silence. Hov’ring there, I’ve chased the shouting wind along, and flung My eager craft through footless halls of air.... Up, up the long, delirious, burning blue I’ve topped the wind-swept heights with easy grace. Where never lark, or even eagle flew — And, while with silent, lifting mind I've trod The high untrespassed sanctity of space, – Put out my hand, and touched the face of God.
