Escape to Continue

Tim Slater and his brother went potholing in the Peak District and were trapped underground for days by what they thought to be an earthquake. When they finally emerged from the cave they drove towards Derby only to find it had been levelled and that civilisation had been all but destroyed by nuclear conflict. They set off to reach their father in London, using a steam engine which they had commandeered. This journey was serialised in 1979 in the comic “Action” when I, the other Tim Slater, was also 14 years old and like my fictional counterpart had bad hair and national health glasses.

I remember Walker coming into the classroom brandishing the comic. “Look, Slater’s in my comic!” I can’t actually recall Walker’s first name. The protocol was that you only used first names for friends – much like vous / tu, but with more malice. The teachers never used our first names; I can still remember the register being called out, “Berry, Blamires, Bleasdale, Burnett, Cooper…” Of course a teacher using any part of your name was a term of endearment compared to “idiot”, “boy” or the wittier “idiot-boy”. In a German lesson I was idly watching a bee crashing against the window. The teacher didn’t like it much. “Ah Slater, watching a bee for amusement demonstrates the intelligence I’d expect of my puppy. Or your older brother.” Killer punchline.

I did once dabble in caving. Whilst at school , Dave (who was later to become “Dave the Foot”) and I went potholing in Yorkshire, in a large group led by an improbably named geography teacher, Mr Winterflood. He led us through what must have been caving set-pieces; a sump, a pillar box and the cheese press. The cheese press was a low-roofed cave, deep underground, with the roof gradually sloping down towards the floor until we could only make progress by shuffling along on our bellies. At this point we realised we’d lost one of our party. After some shouting by Mr Winterflood we saw the trembling light from lost boy’s headtorch and we moved on. When I arrived home, hours later, and slept in a hot bath for an hour I still couldn’t get warm. My Mum knocked on the door once in a while to see if I’d drowned. Like Mums do. The fate of anyone unlucky enough to get stuck in the cheese press has haunted me, so Dave the Foot and I stick to climbing above ground, where accidents will hopefully have more immediate and less claustrophobic consequences. I recently channel-hopped to a film called “The Descent”. It was a little way past the start but it appeared to be some kind of cheesy climbing adventure, with a cast of foxy actresses. It turned out to be a caving horror movie, all the more horrifying when you don’t know the genre beforehand. It scared me silly, and I’m definitely not going underground now. The tagline for the film is “scream your last breath”.

My route is through Chee Dale and Monks Dale, an area riddled with caves where rivers disappear under the ground and re-appear with the seasons and terrain. Some of the earliest relics of ancient man in Britain have been found here.

Action Comic was notoriously violent. It often took a popular film and transformed it into gory comic book material such as “Hookjaw” (Jaws). It also had a strips about football hooligans and a futuristic world where teenagers ran riot. Imagine. Under pressure from the unrepresentative but influential National Viewers’ and Listeners’ Association (led by Mary Whitehouse) and battered in an interview by Frank Bough, the comic was withdrawn from sale. It emerged a while later in a toned-down form, to include “Slater’s Steamer”. When Tim and his brother witness the remains of Derby, they say “my grief!” rather than “shit!”, but there’s still something disturbing about the drawing for “Tim Slater struggled with his gag and his bonds. He knew that the steam-wagon would only stop now if it crashed into something….”

The Route

Another route where I walked rather than ran. In fact, I think if I’d tried to run I’d have broken an ankle; Chee Dale has rounded limestone steps, a lot of mud and stepping stones. Monks Dale is worse. Nevertheless, a bit of an adventure into the Land that Time Forgot.