Sunday 3 March 2013

"Is your mummy who she says she is?"

On the subject of strange visitors to Scarfolk, in October, 1974, there was a spate of cases involving parents being supplanted by eerie impostors. The frauds looked uncannily like their real counterparts and only children could spot the subtle differences.

For a time, affected children found a gritty substance in their school milk. At first poison was suspected but it turned out to be sand from a beach hundreds of miles away.

Despite police investigations none of the impostors were ever positively identified and there was a growing belief in the community that they might not even be human.

The impostors vanished as inexplicably as they had arrived and the children's real bewildered parents were found wandering on the very same beach from which the sand had originated. They had no idea how they got there, how long they had been away, or what had happened during their absence.

This leaflet/flyer was distributed in comic books, at schools, and in toy shops.


15 comments:

  1. This blog single-handedly redeems the entire internet.

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  2. Replies
    1. Romanadvoratrelundar3 November 2015 at 20:44

      Go to your room!

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  3. 01 prefix on telephone numbers didn't come into use until 1995 ;-)

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  4. Not true.
    This is a London prefix that was in use from 1959 and also happened to be the number of a famous BBC kids' TV show in the 1970s.
    The 01 became 0171 and 0181 from the 90s onward.

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    1. (I'm not the anonymous that you just replied to) I recognised the telephone number from Swap Shop too - but wasn't it 01 811 8055??

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    2. Yes, you're right, but everything in Scarfolk is always one number removed from everyone else. ;)

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  5. Please don't make me walk down by the leafy lane, mummy. I fear scabies.

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  6. Twas in fact 01 811 8055 to speak to Noel and swap a used pencil for a Scalextric set

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  7. Hey that's a thought...Did Swapshop ever come to Scarfolk??

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  8. I seem to remember the phrase 'And 01 if you're outside London!' on kids programmes in my '80s childhood. Usually while someone was being gunked or burned alive.

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  9. At the age of eight I strongly suspected this had happened to my Mother. I even confronted her about it. Of course she denied it

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  10. And because these things always go full circle I was replaced by an identical alien replica and my kids have absolutely NO IDEA! Bwa ha ha ha!

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  11. Is Swap Shop still on in Scarfolk? I want to swap a fishing rod for a Dr feelgood album

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  12. "Please get your parents permission before you use the telephone" is genius.

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