Eclectic Memes

Once upon a time a small boy lived in army housing in a small village, well not even a village really, called Longcross in Surrey. He wiled away his summer vacation playing with friends in the woods that surrounded the street on which he lived. All the usual pastimes of a pre-teen boys were theirs to enjoy; tree climbing, building tree houses, making fires (that they were, of course, forbidden to do), cycling to the local town (another forbidden pleasure), and generally getting into (and usually out of) scrapes.

One day the friends, on one of their regular sorties onto the common that lay just beyond the woods, came across an odd sight. Indeed it was also and odd site, because a large area of their common had been covered with a low scaffolding structure just two feet above the ground but covering a large area. What, they thought, could be going on here?

With time to spare, it was after all the summer vacation, they returned to the odd site each day and observed with increasing fascination as, day by day, a street appeared on their once wild and open common. Yes. A street. Supported just above the heather by the scaffolding, appeared a mid-western American street.

Closer inspection revealed that the marble stairs to the bank were in fact painted wood. The buildings all lacked, well a building. Each house, shop and bar consisted of nothing more than a wooden facade painted to look like stone, or brick, or in some cases plain old wood. The flowers were plastic and the church on the distant hill was actually at the end of the street but much smaller, no more than ten feet tall in fact.

Finally the boys plucked up enough courage to ask one of the men working to build the street what it was for. His reply surprised and delighted the group.

“Their filming Superman two here.”

Wow! How frickin’g cools was this. Superman. Here. In England. Superman!

The boys continued to visit the site, or as they now rather sophisticatedly referred to it ‘the set’, each day hoping to meet Superman.

They saw many wonderful things. A man being pulled on a wire through a wooden wall. A man having a gun ’shot’ from his hand by a baddie using laser beams from his eyes (this required some imagination from the boys because there was no laser, in fact there was no baddie, just a man throwing down the gun and pretending by be blasted backwards). A building was burned too, well, even more interestingly, a build was made to look like it was burned without actually being set on fire. And, perhaps best of all, a car was launched through a building and landed on a car sales lot.

Emboldened by their earlier encounter and their growing sense of familiarity with ‘the set’, the boys began to chat with the workers on ‘the set’. Later the boys would increase their kudos among friends unable to attend by referring to their ‘friends on the crew’. This bold familiarity brought with it another bonus – doughnuts!

After ‘the crew’ had finished with the tea trolley that was delivered to ‘the set’ each afternoon by (oh how the boys enjoyed this piece of insider jargon) ‘craft services’, the boys were allowed to feast on leftover donuts. This caused some puzzlement and small concern with mothers when the boys regularly announced that they were ‘really not all that hungry, so could we please have a small dinner?’

All too soon, the summer drawing to a close, ‘the crew’ packed up their things, dismantled the street and left. Leaving behind no trace more substantial than a small boys memories that either the street, or ‘the crew’, had ever been present.

Did the boys ever meet Superman? Sad to report that they did not. It seems that in this scene Superman was absent, much to the disappointment of all concerned. But, despite this, that summer remains one of the most keenly remembered among that small group.