When it comes to decorating the entrances of our homes, one option that stands out is a door cover adorned with a witch image. This quirky and whimsical idea is not only fun but also adds a touch of personality to the overall aesthetic of the house. The witch image, with its symbolic and mystical connotations, can enhance the Halloween spirit or become a year-round statement piece for those who are fans of witchcraft or paganism. The door cover itself can be made of various materials such as fabric or vinyl, depending on personal preference and durability. By incorporating a door cover adorned with a witch image, homeowners have the opportunity to showcase their creativity and embrace a unique style that sets their home apart from the typical, more conventional decoration choices. The image of a witch can evoke a sense of mystery and enchantment, inviting guests and passersby to enter into a world of imagination and wonder.
The magic roundabout 1960s
Hi there and welcome to Ado's Blog. I am obsessed with nostalgia, especially 1960s & 1970s nostalgia and I enjoy nothing more than reflecting on days and times that have sadly long since gone! So join me, as I take a nostalgic gander down Memory Lane and celebrate all things past and occasional present, both good and bad! (All images used that are copyrighted are copyrighted to their respective publishers and are only used here for review purposes.)
The image of a witch can evoke a sense of mystery and enchantment, inviting guests and passersby to enter into a world of imagination and wonder. Furthermore, this unconventional choice allows homeowners to express their individuality and break away from societal norms, embracing the idea that their homes can reflect their true selves. The versatility of a door cover adorned with a witch image is another appealing aspect.
Saturday 7 January 2012
All Aboard the Magic Roundabout (1963)
The Magic Roundabout (known in the original French as Le Manège enchanté) the classic kids programme created in France in 1963 by Serge Danot. Some 450 five-minute-long episodes were made and were originally broadcast between 1964 and 1971 on ORTF.
The BBC produced a version of the series using the original stop motion animation footage with new English-language scripts, written and performed by Eric Thompson, that had no relation to the original storylines. This version, broadcast from 18 October 1965 to 25 January 1977, was a great success and attained cult status, being watched by adults for its dry humour as much as by the children for whom it was intended.
Although the characters were common to both versions, they were given different names depending on the language.
The main character was Dougal (Pollux in the original French-language version) who was a drop-eared variety of the Skye Terrier.
In the French version Pollux was a British character who spoke somewhat broken French with an outrageous English accent, as a result of Ivor Wood's role as co-creator. His sweet tooth, shown through his fondness for sugar lumps, was based on a French belief that one of the traits of the English is a liking for sweets.
Other characters include Zebedee (Zébulon), a Jack-in-the-box; Brian (Ambroise), a snail; Ermintrude (Azalée), a cow, and Dylan (named after Bob Dylan ) (Flappy) a rabbit , who in the French version was Spanish. There are two notable human characters: Florence (Margote), a young girl; and Mr Rusty (le Père Pivoine), the operator of the roundabout. Other less well known human characters, only seen on the roundabout itself during the credits, are Basil, Paul and Rosalie. There is also an adult character, old Mr McHenry who is seen only a couple of times.
The show had a distinctive visual style. The set was a brightly coloured and stylised park containing the eponymous roundabout (a fairground carousel). The programmes were created by stop motion animation, which meant that Dougal was made without legs to make him easier to animate. Zebedee was created from a giant pea which was available in the animation studio and was re-painted. The look of these characters was the responsibility of British animator Ivor Wood, who was working at Danot's studio at the time (and who subsequently animated The Herbs, Paddington Bear and Postman Pat).
The British (BBC) version was especially distinct from the French version in that the narration was entirely new, created by Eric Thompson from just the visuals, and not based on the script by Serge Danot. A former BBC employee, interviewed on BBC Radio in 2008, maintained that the original contract with the French owners did not include the scripts which accompanied the original animations (contrary to BBC assumptions). The BBC, instead of making a further payment to acquire the scripts, which would have required translation, decided to commission its own version - without access to the original French, and the English-language version therefore bears no resemblance to it.
The first BBC broadcasts were stripped across the week and shown at 5.44pm, just before the early evening news each day on BBC1. This was the first time an entertainment programme had been transmitted in this way in the UK. The original series, which was a serial, was made in black-and-white. It was made in colour from series 2, although the series was still broadcast in monochrome by the BBC up until the first colour episode was transmitted on 5 October 1970.
Fifty-two additional episodes, not previously broadcast, were shown in the United Kingdom during 1991 on Channel 4's News Daily. Thompson had died by this time, and the job of narrating them in a pastiche of Thompson's style went to actor Nigel Planer.
The British Dougal was grumpy and loosely based on Tony Hancock, an actor and comedian. Ermintrude was rather matronly and fond of singing. Dylan was a hippy-like, guitar-playing rabbit, and rather dopey. Florence was portrayed as courteous and level-headed. Brian was unsophisticated but well-meaning. Zebedee was an almost human creature in a yellow jacket with a spring instead of feet. He always appeared and disappeared with a loud "boing"-sound and usually closed the show with the phrase "Time for bed". In the first episode he was delivered to Mr Rusty in a box which he burst from like a Jack-in-the-box, hence the spring.
In the foreword to the recent re-release of the books, Emma Thompson explains that her father had felt that he was most like Brian of all the characters and that Ermintrude was in some respects based upon his wife, Philyda Law.
Other characters included Mr McHenry (an elderly man who rode a tricycle), Uncle Hamish and Angus (in "Dougal's Scottish Holiday"), and a talking Train with a 4-2-2 wheel arrangement and a two-wheel tender. Three other children, Paul, Basil and Rosalie, appeared in the original b/w serial and in the credit sequence of the colour episodes, but very rarely in subsequent episodes.
Part of the show's attraction was that it appealed to adults, who enjoyed the world-weary Hancock-style comments made by Dougal, as well as to children. The audience measured eight million at its peak. There are speculations about possible interpretations of the show. One is that the characters represented French politicians of the time, and that Dougal represented De Gaulle. In fact, when Serge Danot was interviewed by Joan Bakewell on Late Night Line-Up in 1968 his associate (perhaps Jean Biard) said that in France it was thought at first that the UK version of Pollux had been re-named De Gaulle, mishearing the name Dougal (as seen in the Channel 4 documentary The Return Of The Magic Roundabout (broadcast 08:50 on December 25th 1991 and 18:00 on January 5th 1992), and in the BBC4 documentary The Magic Roundabout Story (2003)).
In 1998, Thompson's stories were published as a series of four paperbacks, The Adventures Of Dougal, The Adventures Of Brian, The Adventures Of Dylan and The Adventures Of Ermintrude with forewords by Emma Thompson (Eric's daughter). The paperbacks were a major success for Bloomsbury Publishing PLC.
For years, the series had re-runs on Cartoon Network (UK & Ireland), and was later moved to its sister channel, Boomerang.
In 1971 BBC Records released The Magic Roundabout (RBT 8) an LP containing 10 stories taken from the soundtracks of the TV series as told by Eric Thompson. Scripts by Eric Thompson, Original Music composed by Alain Legrand, Luc Aulivier, Serge Danot and Jacques Charriere, Musical arrangement and orchestral direction by Alain Legrand. The stories were:'Dougal's Experiment/A Starry Night/The Moody Concerto/Dougal's Adventure/The Stiff Necked Heliotropes' on side one and 'The Birds School/The Piano Carrier/Banana Skin/The Musical Box/The Announcer' on side two. This album has been re-released twice by the BBC on CD, in 2005 (BBC Audio:Children's) to coincide with the 'new' film and again in 2010 (Vintage Beeb) with a bonus interview with Eric Thompson and featuring the original LP artwork.
French soundtrack recordings were also issued in France in the 60's on three EP's and again on an LP 'Pollux' in 1983 along with an original single 'C'est moi Pollux'.
Boing!
IN the beginning was Zebulon, who figures fleetingly in Genesis (30:20) as the sixth son of Jacob and Leah, and about whom little is known other than that the Lord did not equip him with a spring. Centuries passed before Zebulon resurfaced in an obscure 1960s French children's television programme, which provided the basis for the BBC's Magic Roundabout. By then he had become Zebedee whose catch phrase was "Boing! Time for bed". Only when the children had been thus dispatched could their parents turn to each other and ask: "Stone me, what was all that about?"
The question has never been satisfactorily answered. In the 36 years since it first appeared, the Magic Roundabout has been variously interpreted as a political satire, a psycho-sexual allegory, and a coded manifesto for the Sixties drug culture. The trouble was that few were sure enough, or ready to mention this at the time. Millions of five-and-six-year-olds who watched it in the Sixties and Seventies have therefore grown up not knowing what it did to their heads. Why was Zebedee always telling Florence it was time for bed? What was in those sugar lumps so hungrily scoffed by Dougal the big-haired sausage dog?
Eric Thompson, who wrote the sophisticated British version, died young without giving much away. But a further chance to make sense of it all is now in prospect with the news that a full-length film version is in the works. "We are really excited about it," professes Andy Leighton, managing director of the film's makers, Bolexbrothers. "We intend to have a ball with this one." And so they should.
Zebedee, the show's enigmatic central character resembles a Jack-in-a-Box who has been shot, by unexpectedly powerful projectile forces, clean out of the woodwork. He has bounced into a garden where stands an old roundabout which has lost its magic. Zebedee restores the magic to the roundabout and gets it turning happily again. But in the garden he encounters an oddball cast of characters, full of charm, whimsy and, occasionally, menace. They include Dylan, a dungaree-wearing rabbit who plays the guitar and who appears, from his conversation and demeanour, to be heavily dependent on a hidden supply of carrot-sized spliffs. There is Brian the snail, who is the brains of the outfit, but also a slow-to-change Old Labour-style socialist sympathiser who threatens to report Dougal's exploitative tendencies to "the union", and Florence, the artful, candy-flossed blonde moppet who some have seen as Lolita to Zebedee's Humbert.
What does Zebedee represent? He appears at the beginning and the end of each episode, but not often in between, and then only if the others appear to need him. In this sense, he has been seen as the garden's "spirit god" - his noble "Boing" sounding a note of comfort and guardianship. But if this is really his role, why doesn't Zebedee throw out the degenerates? Dylan is a disgrace. He doesn't even hop. The only thing he digs is beat poetry.
When Dougal ("that like way-out dog with the crazy fur," as Dylan puts it) challenges the rabbit about his unappetising way of life , Dylan yawns: "Man, I'm re-thinking my image." Dougal's no better - vain, pompous, and for all his pulp philosophising, as bright as a bowl of Bonio. And what kind of exotic fauna is Ermintrude the cow consuming when she suddenly lifts off the from the field and drifts, to the sound hurdy-gurdy music gently towards the clouds? And then there is the garden itself - a psychedelic daydream brought to life, with electric colours and softly nodding flowers.
Might Zebedee's failure to act against the others stem from a recognition of his own glaring weaknesses? It has been suggested that a spring isn't his only means of getting high. Just take a look at those eyes - crossed and spacy, and focused, perhaps, a little too lustfully on Florence. He appears desperate to impress her. And it works. "Zebedee will put it right," trills Florence, approvingly. And, suddenly, he is by her side. "Boing! Time for bed."
All this unfolded on BBC 1 between October 1965 and January 1997. It went out for five minutes, five nights a week, and at the peak of its popularity, each episode of Magic Roundabout drew more than five million viewers. Many of them were students who, appreciative of the fact that everybody in it seemed to be stoned, accorded the show a cultish following. But the big following was among children who watched it with their unsuspecting parents, and when the BBC attempted to move the show from its regular 5.45 pm slot to a less convenient earlier time, a national wave of protest forced the Corporation to relent.
Eric Thompson, the actor and director - and father of Oscar winning actress, Emma - had first spotted Zebedee and Co appearing in Le Manege Enchante, a French children's programme, created by Serge Danot, the late songwriter and satirist. The French version was less sophisticated - and far less subversive - than the one Thompson would create, but even in the original it had attracted a peculiar level of attention. The shaggy dog was supposed to be General de Gaulle (De Gaulle = Dougal), and Zebedee, with his Petain-like moustache was there less to fix things than to take the blame.
The French continue to have problems with the show. Earlier this year a couple from Besancon fought a court battle to call their son Zebulon. A judge ruled against them declaring that "the name's televisual connotations would hold the child up to mockery and sarcasm from which it would be unlikely to escape".
Thompson, described by his daughter as an "irritating and optimistic" man, and fondly likened by her to a neat amalgam of the show's characters, suffered a first heart attack at 36, and died in 1982 of a pulmonary embolism, aged 53. By then the fashionable weirdness of the Sixties had long since faded. The world was a tougher place. Margaret Thatcher was in Downing Street to the overdue detriment of the likes of Brian; and Zebedee appeared to have been well and truly bounced out of the realms of popular culture.
He came back, briefly, in 1990, for a Channel Four revival series written and narrated by the actor Nigel Planer. But Zebedee seemed to have lost his mystic edge or perhaps the hots for Florence. Either way, the show didn't live up to the standards Thompson had set it. Then the Sixties revival began, and as on the roundabout, things turned full circle. The image of Ermintrude the cow now now appearing on handbags and T-shirts. One of Thompson's short animated films, Dougal and the Blue Cat, was re-released on the art house circuit with huge success.
The new film - as yet unnamed - will be the biggest step yet in Zebedee's return to superstardom. Production is likely to be completed by the end of next year in readiness for a 2003 release. Unlike the stop-frame animation of the original, the feature film will use advanced computer imaging.
"The story starts in the garden, and then the characters go off on a big adventure around the world," Leighton explains. "It is our job to preserve the Magic Roundabout that we know and love, but it also give us a chance to develop the characters a bit more for all ages."
And the revival doesn't stop there. Last month Zebedee was enlisted for duty by Leicester police in an attempt to deter drunks in the city's centre. The idea, according to Inspector Daimon Tilley is to play the soothing, swirling Magic Roundabout theme in pubs and clubs at closing time. Weary of breaking up brawls, the police have expressed the hope that the music will calm tempers and send all home peacefully. Free lollipops will be handed out . "I have no idea whether this will work," admits Inspector Tilley.
The Magic Roundabout: 1960s 4 Toy Figures: Dougal, Mr MacHenry, Florence & Paul.
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Reviews for "Transform Your Door into a Portal to a Witch's Lair with a Door Cover"
1. Emily - 2 stars - I was really disappointed with this door cover. The image of the witch was blurry and poorly printed, so it didn't look good on my door at all. The colors were also washed out and dull. Additionally, the material was flimsy and thin, making it easy to tear. Overall, it was a waste of money and I wouldn't recommend it.
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3. Sarah - 2 stars - I was really excited to decorate my door for Halloween with this witch door cover, but unfortunately, it was a letdown. The image was not clear and the colors were faded. It didn't look as vibrant and captivating as the picture online. The material was also flimsy, and I had to be extremely careful while putting it up. It ended up tearing easily, which was frustrating. I wouldn't recommend this door cover to others.