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Unremembered, unappreciated gift
May. 26th, 2010 09:08 pmSo I was watching the UNCLE Knights Affair on Youtube last night when up popped an advert from a company offering the Invisible Man on DVD. Strange. Said not commercially available, but offering all the episodes anyway.
I never liked the Invisible Man. His hair was a tad too long, his jackets too loud and his ties too wide. Thirty years on I am not so picky. Even as a bundle in shapeless green scrubs he is still beautiful on NCIS, on every night here; so maybe time for a rethink on the Invisible Man.
I was about to order the DVDs when I had a thought - I had a video of the Invisible Man - I could even picture it, with the initials INV in sticky letters down the outside of the case.
So once the other half was in bed, I went digging in the cupboard under the stairs. Didn't find the tape I had in mind, but what I did find stunned me: a video in pristine, unplayed condition with The Invisible Man in my mother's flowing handwriting along the spine. And it is marvellous. Last night I watched two episodes, and they were sharp and slick and funny and he was gorgeous. One was about stolen paintings, and the second about a phoney medium, with a wonderful scene with just that disembodied beautiful voice. And there is at least another episode on the tape.
But it is more than that. My mother has been dead 19 years, and it is like getting a present from her out of the blue. I know how it happened - for years I never had a television, let alone a video, and she would record things for me. And with the Invisible Man I did not like it enough to watch it, and so this tape that my mother painstakingly recorded over those weeks was just never played. I had to take my tapes when her house was sold, and this one has been with me, unnoticed, all these years until last night.
And I feel strangely blessed and cherished today.
But I still don't like those ties.
I never liked the Invisible Man. His hair was a tad too long, his jackets too loud and his ties too wide. Thirty years on I am not so picky. Even as a bundle in shapeless green scrubs he is still beautiful on NCIS, on every night here; so maybe time for a rethink on the Invisible Man.
I was about to order the DVDs when I had a thought - I had a video of the Invisible Man - I could even picture it, with the initials INV in sticky letters down the outside of the case.
So once the other half was in bed, I went digging in the cupboard under the stairs. Didn't find the tape I had in mind, but what I did find stunned me: a video in pristine, unplayed condition with The Invisible Man in my mother's flowing handwriting along the spine. And it is marvellous. Last night I watched two episodes, and they were sharp and slick and funny and he was gorgeous. One was about stolen paintings, and the second about a phoney medium, with a wonderful scene with just that disembodied beautiful voice. And there is at least another episode on the tape.
But it is more than that. My mother has been dead 19 years, and it is like getting a present from her out of the blue. I know how it happened - for years I never had a television, let alone a video, and she would record things for me. And with the Invisible Man I did not like it enough to watch it, and so this tape that my mother painstakingly recorded over those weeks was just never played. I had to take my tapes when her house was sold, and this one has been with me, unnoticed, all these years until last night.
And I feel strangely blessed and cherished today.
But I still don't like those ties.
