Saturday 6 October 2012

Indiana Chip and Detective Teddy - Introduction

When I was ten years old I wrote a novel.

Alright, it wasn't a novel - it was a story written in the sort of notepad book thing you got in Primary School in which you recounted to the teacher what you did over the weekend. At this point the book feels like it falls apart further whenever you touch it, the pages are threatening to fall out and I'm pretty sure the staples holding it together are not the originals. In short, this is a book (I use that word lightly) that should not be touched. The work, however, should be thrown out onto the wild jungle of the internet, where perhaps it shall survive longer than it's physical body can allow.

This is a story written by a ten year old completely influenced by popular culture. It is a story that completely rips off Indiana Jones, Sherlock Holmes, Jurassic Park, Star Wars, The Lion King, Sonic the Hedgehog and I'm sure many others...I've only skim-read it again. Ten year-old Phil did not care for originality, apparently, and to be honest it took at least another ten years for the idea to change that to sink in. At the time I thought I was writing the greatest novel in the world, now I see it as a rather adorable fan fiction in which all my favourite things are mashed together.

Some back-story: when I were a young lad between the age of nine and eleven, I went to Florida and got myself a soft toy of Chip, from Chip and Dale: Rescue Rangers (this toy was signed by Chip himself, thus making it the most awesome thing I have ever owned). Afterwards I went to visit my family in Thurso, at the most northern of Scottish northerness. Unlike Florida, Thurso does not have theme-parks. If you wish for entertainment, you must imagine it yourself.

So my cousin and myself imagined a story. I refashioned Chip into Indiana Chip (it was more to do with his outfit - I don't recall having seen Indiana Jones at this point), and she had an incredibly small bear that we named Sherlock Ted. Together they went on adventures and, being the creative sort of children we were, we decided we were going to write about such things.


 We purchased (or possibly our granny purchased for us, ho hum) two of those not-quite-books, not-quite-notepads and wrote stories about our two heroes. We wrote about their adventures - Indiana Chip the action hero and Detective Ted the clever problem solver. Nearly all the characters that were featured were toys either one that either of us owned, and our stories created from the adventures we had them enact throughout the day. In my case I was incredibly influenced by the films and comics I was reading at the time - Jurassic Park can already be seen in the cover above - and I'm actually quite disappointed in my ten year-old self for not being more creative. My cousin, being more clever, managed to keep away from such things and almost certainly wrote the more brilliant story.

 So this is Indiana Chip and Detective Teddy in the Case of the Missing Kitten! I shall put each chapter in its own individual post, and I shall try to put in all the pictures. I shall photograph them, for I fear for the books safety if I were to scan it. All original grammar and spelling shall be kept intact, and I'll try to provide notes from the perspective of a 28 year-old Phil.



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