247 The Flight of the Heron

First  watched :  29  February  1976

This  series  began  on  a  Sunday  I  recall  quite  clearly.  After  going  to  church  in  the  morning,   I  went  into  the  garden  where  I,  along  with  next  door's  kids,  worked  further  on  a  big  hole  we  were   digging  just  to  see  how  far  we  could  get  and  what  we  could  turn  up. We  didn't  find  anything  interesting  but  we  worked  on  it  for  about  3  weeks  and   the  hole  got  to  about  3  feet  deep  before  a  tradesman  altering  our  porch  found  it  a  very  handy  place  to  dump  the  rubble.

After  dinner  I  listened  to  the  radio  because  Jimmy  Savile's  Old  Record  Club  was  now  featuring  1973   which  meant  an  hour  of  hearing  all  the  classics  - Blockbuster, Part  of  the  Union  , You're  So  Vain  -  from  my  first  discovery  of  pop. When  that  had  finished  I  went  with  the  family  next  door  on  a  walk  up  to  Hollingworth  Lake  and  walked  all  the  way  round  it  for  the  first  time  ever. We  went  on  the  playground  at  the  far  side  and  I  somehow  managed  to  slide  off  the  roundabout  while  our  neighbour  was  increasing  the  speed. Fortunately  he  managed  to  stop  it  before  I  scraped  too  much  of  my  back  off  but  I  was  pretty  shaken  up  by  the  experience.  It  didn't  spoil  the  day  though  and  when  we  were  told  to  write  an  essay  about  spring  next  day  at  school  I  submitted  an  account  of  the  day  with  the  odd  reference  to  frog  spawn  and  buds  on  trees  inserted  to  make  it  fit  the  theme.

And  thanks  to  Genome  I  can  now  recall  a  detail  of  the  evening. The  Flight  of  the  Heron  was  a  rather  bleak  drama  based  on  a  novel  by  D K  Broster  about  the  unlikely  and  ultimately  doomed  friendship  between  a  Jacobite  chieftain  and  an  English  captain  during  the  1745  rebellion. Bonnie  Prince  Charlie  himself  featured  as  a  character.  David  Rintoul  and  Tom  Chadbon  played  the  two  main  protagonists. I  enjoyed  the  series  but  never  saw  the  last  episode  because  I  was  hit, for  the  third  time  in  around  four  months,  by  a  virulent  sickness  bug  and  was  too  ill  to  go  downstairs  and  watch  it. My  mum  had  to  tell  me  what  happened; the  Scot  escaped  to  France, the  Englishman  was  killed  by  his  demented  servant.

The  series  has   never  been  repeated.