The idea was that you visited as many houses in the neighbourhood as possible. Upon ringing the doorbell you got to wait for the excited occupant to come to the door, rubbing their hands with glee. "Bob A Job Week, mister. Is there anything we can do for you?"
In the benign cases, the most the stranger would ask of you was to maybe brush the leaves off the driveway, and then give you 50p or a quid for your efforts. In the worst cases, and there were some BAD ones, they'd have us weeding the front gardens, back gardens, and even the little bits of moss out of the cracks in the footpath paving stones (paving stones.... *shudder*.... not paving stones again!). The reward? 20 pence. Evil.
They wouldn't let kids do it these days I bet, with all the scaremongering you hear about in the news about bad men and women out there. Weird and quite sad how times change.
I mentioned Bob A Job as I got the call from HOT today to start work on a new series of designs for BOB THE BUILDER. We're onto Series 14 now and it still shows no signs of slowing down. Which is great news for me and Bada Bling!
In Other News...
Rustling together a bunch of animations for the Red Stick Animation Festival in Louisiana the week after next. Stacey Simmons, the festival director, is after "content" from me, so I'm looking under the rug for anything Jobling-esque that fits the bill. Hopefully going to be sending out there an episode of Bob, Curious Cow stop motion and CGI, Good Cat Bad Cat (pictured), and the teaser animation that's been done for Frankenstein's Cat. All in all it should be quite a diverse bunch of films that provide an insight into my portfolio.Bada Bling!
7 comments:
I never did 'bob a job' week. I was never in England during the summer holiday season, so I missed out on all those thrills.
I remember, the first every August that I spent in England was when I was stuck in Boro at the end of my first year with no money to get home.
That was fun. Strangely, no bob a jobbers in my neighbourhood. Plenty of kids breaking into students houses though. Not meaning to paint a grim picture of it, but that was the picture from my skylight window of a summers day.
Ah, memories.
I remember coming to see you as soon as we got back up to Boro after the summer and to all intents and purposes it looked like you'd spent the season barricaded in your attic room like a proper survivalist. I think you had a big stick in case any of them came in.
The only thing that was missing was razor wire in the hall at ankle height and a large treetrunk log suspended above the stairs waiting to be triggered to swing down and smite a scally!
Ah, memories indeed :-)
funny you should mention razor wire. there was plenty of the stuff all over the back fence along with grease paint all over the lampost outside in the yard. Not sure how the landlord got away with that.
Yes, that was me in zombie fallout mode. Stocked up on Food Giant tinned food and 2p loaths of bread.
I had a stick by my bed with a nail driven through it. As you may remember I nearly clubbed the landlord to death with it one night when he popped round to use the loo without anouncing his arrival (the attic bedroom was an aweful long way from that front door, I honestly didn't hear him come in).
Yes, it wasn't the ritz, but it was free while the landlord found a buyer. I actually slept on top of a free standing radiator one night, which I'd dragged into bed with me because it was so blisteringly cold one winter.
My, what fond memories I have of that place. If I wasn't there I would be in boro library (near the cop shop) which I loved. Researching the occult and victorian contraception. What? It was a long summer!
God yes I think I did do Bob-a-job, but only to the nice folks we knew nearby. I never dared to venture into the unknown worlds of strangers houses! We used to sell stuff at the front of the house too, old junk mostly. Ah, happy days!
While you're on a retro trip can you recall the long hot summer of 76? I was 6 at the time but can vividly remember runing along the street in my trunks, my feet burning on the hot pavement! We'd run from on garden to the next getting grass in everyones paddling pool!
Anyway, congratulations on more Bob!
Talking of Zombie fallout, Kinnon showed me a rather marvellous new free roaming survival game for the XBox called DEAD RISING. To say it looks marvellous doesn't come close...
Niel, I now have the image of you skipping down the streets in your trunks, whooping as you run through folks' paddling pools. I never knew you when you were a nipper though, so the image I have is of a balding hisute gent in speedos gallumphing down the pavement. It's a nice image! I likes it!
We didn't do bob-a-job,we did jumble sales and all the profits went to us !! They didn't have charity's when I was a kid ! A jumble sale was just a great excuse for people to unload a load of old tat onto unsuspecting kids,so we'd haul back old sewing machines etc... that we never could sell so they ended up cluttering up our garages until we could pass them on to other kids from near by streets who were collecting for jumble sales,I wouldn't be suprised if some of that tat isn't still getting passed house to house even now !
Since when were you in the cubs Niel? HAHAA!! I've seen you in ya trunks (we went to school together fact fans before this starts sounding dodgy!) still having nightmares now!
Congrats on more Bob.....just what my girls need.......oh gawd no....
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