WHEN BATMAN WORE WELLINGTON BOOTS...

What a difference four or five years makes. I had just turned eight years old when JOHN FIDLER, who lived a couple of doors along from me, got

a CORGI TOYS

BATMOBILE for Christmas in 1966. I coveted it greatly, but for some curious reason, never got around to buying one until my birthday in 1970 or '71 when I was twelve or thirteen.

Nowadays that would doubtless be considered too old to be buying
die-cast toy cars, but back then, twelve or thirteen year old boys were a totally different bag of spiders to what they are now. More innocent, not quite so eager to grow up, etc. Well, at least, that's the way it seems to me through the mist-enshrouded maze of memory whenever I revisit my past. And yes, Summers were longer and it snowed every Christmas. (You can dispute it as much as you like - I prefer my version.)

John Fidler was younger than me by a couple of years and, consequently, smaller. When we played at BATMAN & ROBIN, I naturally took the lead while John was relegated to the position of 'teenage' sidekick (even 'though he was only about five or six).

In my homemade Batman costume (a pair of blue or purple swimming trunks pulled over my corduroy trousers, brown gloves, a black raincoat with the sleeves pulled outside in, a Batman badge on my jumper, a Batman mask bought from a shop - oh, and a pair of wellies) I cut an impressive figure. (In my head anyway.) For my utility belt, I tied some dangly, strappy portion of my father's wartime morse-code apparatus around my waist - I was nothing if not resourceful. (Trust me - it looked the part.) 

John wore a domino mask with his mother's lemony silk headscarf tied 'round his shoulders. He cut a less impressive dash in my opinion, but he was only the sidekick remember. Sidekicks aren't permitted to upstage the main hero, and that was me - by dint of being older and bigger and more oblivious to making a t*t of myself by running around in a homemade Batsuit.

My "official" mask was like a black plastic bag with half of one side cut away to reveal the lower face, and eyeholes to allow anyone daft enough to wear it to see all those who were laughing at them. The idea was that, when you pulled it over your head, the corners would stick up like the bat-ears on ADAM WEST's headgear, enabling you to strike fear and dread into the hearts of criminals, who, as we all know, are "a superstitious, cowardly lot".

Unfortunately, the corners tended to stick out rather than up, somewhat negating the desired effect and only managing to strike mirth and merriment into the hearts of amused observers as they fell about with laughter. Undeterred, however, me and John soldiered on, and we must've milked being the caped-crusaders of our neighbourhood for almost as long as the TV show was on telly to inspire us in our dashing deeds of derring-do.

Then, alas, as is the way of things, we eventually grew up. I moved to another area in 1972 and only saw John in passing and from a distance over the next few years. Imagine my surprise (and annoyance) when I ran into John in adulthood, only to find that he'd grown at least half-a-head taller than me. I realised with great sadness that, if we ever decided to reprise our Batman & Robin roles (unlikely as it was), he'd be the "main man" and I'd have to wear his mother's poofy silk lemon headscarf. Life can sometimes be so cruel.

Anyway, John and I reminisced and laughed about our boyhood exploits for a while and then went our separate ways. It must be close to thirty years since I last saw him, although it seems like only yesterday, cliched as that may sound. Where does the time go? In fact, where did John go, for me not to have seen him since?

Sometime back in 1991,
in a fit of nostalgia, I reacquired (at great expense) a mint and boxed 1966 Corgi Toys Batmobile from a shop in Edinburgh. Whenever I look at it, I'm once again running around my old neighbourhood with my boyhood chum by my side, with no thought for the morrow and unmindful of what the passing years may bring. 

"To the Batpoles, Robin!"