BUH BUH BUH BUH
BUH BUH BUH BUH
BUH BUH BUH BUH
BUH BUH BUH BUH

I distinctly remember the first time I heard the sound. Autumn 1980, the day the sleepy North Yorkshire pub helmed by my genial Uncle Keith (look it up if you like, it’s still a nice little boozer – The Black Bull in Great Smeaton) fell victim to a marauding, relentless army of psychopathic extra-terrestrials. Insert your own joke here about the residents of Northallerton, but I’m talking about the first Space Invaders machine I ever saw.

Aged eight, and given 10p from behind the bar “to have a go”, I was instantly hooked. My mum smiled patiently, my dad couldn’t see the appeal (“It’s not like you actually win anything”) but I knew I had found my purpose in life. To defend the residents of Great Smeaton, Appleton Whiske, Yarm and even Northallerton from… well, from this…

All night, as I lay in my bed, the “BUH BUH BUH BUH” march of the Space Invaders themselves echoed inexorably through my dreams. I couldn’t stop thinking about them. And in 1981, when I somehow became aware that our local seaside resorts, Redcar and Saltburn-by-the-Sea, boasted lurid, neon palaces filled with similar cabinets of 8-bit delights, I ceaselessly badgered my mum to escort me on day trips to these “amusement arcades”. On the few occasions when she grudgingly relented, I passed through portals of delight to realms of pixellated paradise. I have rarely found anything in my life as immersive, addictive and deliriously time-destroying as that first wave of perfectly-formed arcade games. “Amusements”? These weren’t “amusements”. These were OBSESSIONS.

At home, with no access to computers or consoles (Technology? God, it was a running battle to get BBC2 to work in our house), life felt stultifying. Dull, empty and endless. So, in early 1982, I took matters in my own hands. If my mum, on rain-soaked Teesside afternoons, was inexplicably unwilling to take me on a rattling train ride to Saltburn and stand idly for six hours while I pumped a dwindling pocketful of 10p pieces into the Galaxian machine, I would take matters into my own hands. I had paper. I had felt-tip pens. I had a slightly unreliable memory of the machine in my Uncle Keith’s pub that had already been superceded by Pac-Man.

I drew my own Space Invaders.

BUH BUH BUH BUH
BUH BUH BUH BUH
BUH BUH BUH BUH
BUH BUH BUH BUH

Feep Feep Feep Feep

“Get to bloody sleep, you’ve got school in the morning”

Felt Trips is a collaborative effort. If anyone wants to contribute their own childhood drawings from the era, I would be utterly delighted – please drop me a line using the “Contact” link at the top of the page. A good quality scan would be perfect, but – if not – then a clear photo of your artwork, lying flat, is fine. And maybe a few words of explanation, too: when the drawings were done, how old you were, what inspired you to tackle those particular subjects? Thanks so much.

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