Who’d Have ’Em … ?

OK, I’ll admit it, it’s weird what your imagination can do, given tiredness, lack of food, and way too much time on your hands.

Oh, and a power cut …

We just had a power cut …

Not much of a power cut, but it was something that got my imagination going in all sorts of places.

I think you’ve already gathered that, haven’t you … ?

But for some reason, it got me to thinking of something of a classic novel, that I’d first read, many years ago.

The John Wyndham novel,The Midwich Cuckoos

It’s the one book of his that — much like the original version of The Wicker Man — pretty much always leaves me …

Well …

Spooked is the best word for it, I think.

Yeah, spooked …

And there’s not many novels or films that do that, I think …

I’ll try and summarise, if I can, although I’ll admit, I’m no literary critic.

The Midwich Cuckoos is set in 1950’s England, in the fictional (smallish) village of Midwich, in the equally fictional county of Winshire, and sees the pieces narrator, Richard, returning to his home in Midwich, with his wife, after a day out in London.

To find the whole village is — apparently — asleep.

And that the army — including an old army friend of Richard’s, who’s now ‘… something important in Intelligence’ — are doing as much frantic research as they can.

About all they’ve found out for sure, is that the zone of effect stretches out in a two mile radius from the village green; which they checked using a couple of budgies in cages, and explains the crashed buses on the roads in and out of Midwich.

Richard and his wife are … concerned …

Understandably …

But, as the weird effect — that eventually becomes known as the ‘Dayout’ — seems to have no ill effects, Richard and his wife aren’t worried.

Not initially, anyway.

Notice I said the Dayout seems to have no ill-effects?

I think that all depends on what you define as ill, doesn’t it?

As some one I know once said, “I’m pregnant, not crippled” …

Pregnancies get noticed; especially, as in this book, it’s every woman of child-bearing age in the village …

Which gets everyone in Midwich thinking that the two events HAVE to be connected, somehow …

•••••

It gets stranger, when the children are born …

They’re odd …

Very odd … !

The thirty odd girls and thirty odd boys all look as if they’re related more to each other, than their parents.

And have odd golden coloured eyes.

Which is only the start.

From an early age, the Children seem to be developing at a very fast rate. Not only that, each group — boys and girls — seems to be both very intelligent and have some form of group mind, enabling them to learn much more rapidly than normal children.

That’s where the narrator leaves it, as he and his wife move to to Canada — I seem to recall — after his new job takes him there …

They come back for a flying visit, some eight years later, to find that the Children, whilst chronologically only eight, have matured into apparent 16-year-olds.

And that things are coming to something of a boiling point …

•••••

Now, I don’t know if that’s grabbed your attention … ?

But it did, me, when I read it, all those year’s ago.

Now, granted, this was written back in the 1950s; which does show …

But the central ideas in The Midwich Cuckoos — that an alien invasion isn’t necessarily going to be a big War Of The Worlds affair, and that an alien invasion spearheaded by out children aren’t going to be easy to deal with — are still, after all this time, I think, very interesting.

Which means I’m going to read myself to sleep with this, tonight …

After I’ve finished listening to the Kronos Quartet’s version of Purple Haze.

And finally debugged a bit of HTML … !