Confusion

Things were black and white when I was a boy.

Choices were binary with overtones of good and bad.

In my comic, Dan Dare or the Treens? On film, cowboys or Indians? World War Two, English or German? In my illustrated history of England, Saxons or Vikings?

The Vikings had the better kit, winged or horned helmets and eyes suitable for scanning far horizons.

They had better gods too. Odin, one eyed like Kirk Douglas, owner of pet ravens, wolves and an eight-legged horse running day excursions from battlefields to Valhalla.

Fast but must have run up some enormous blacksmithing bills. His son Thor couldn’t afford horses so had a chariot pulled by goats, wandering round waving his hammer starting thunderstorms and ruining picnics.

My only experience of boating was a pedalo at Bournemouth but that gave me enough of a nautical insight to appreciate a long ship crewed by winged-helmeted, bearded oarsmen.

But Saxons had Alfred who had lived up the road from me.

No wings on his helmet but apparently he spent his time, hands on the pommel of a whacking great sword, looking into the distance, pondering.

What he lacked in culinary skills was more than compensated for by being wise and be really good at having a ponder.

I confess to a little confusion that Saxons had come over from Germany but with all that pondering they were clearly different from the recent ones.

So I was Saxon although I wouldn’t have minded being on the previous page. Boadacea, queen of the Iceni, although she seemed a bit unsure of how to spell her name.

Wearing a white dress and riding on a chariot with one arm raised above her head waving a sword. She had red hair to which I thought I might apply my recently discovered word “tresses” although they might be “locks”. Dress and hair flowed behind her in the wind as she started on a bit of avenging.

She had swords attached to the hubs of her chariot wheels, handy for a battle but might be a problem when doing the shopping so I would stick with a piece of card clicking on the spokes of my bike wheel and penknife in my pocket.

Putting history into order was complicated although Boadacea must have been earlier than Alfred because she was fighting Romans and was on the previous page.