Albert Blows a Fuse

This book (sorry if the link's dodgy, this proved to be a hard one to track down online) was one that I read at least a dozen times as a child, lost (I think it was left behind when we moved to Sheffield when I was eight), didn't miss very much, but remembered fondly enough to buy the second-hand copy I found in a charity shop's bargain bin last week without a moment's hesitation. It's written by Tom Bower, also the vibrant illustrations by him are what brought this book to life to my younger self; neat-looking characters in busy colourful spreads - they're fun pictures.

   I'm gonna tell you the whole plot because I quite like it and you're unlikely ever to read it. The book's about a simple old man called Albert, who likes gardening and listening to the radio with his cat, but one day, his radio's fuse blows. Unable to find another one in the shop, he is coerced into buying a TV - and he becomes addicted to the glow of the small screen. He drinks in entertainment-based consumerism, rampantly buying more and more TVs and aerials and satellite dishes so he can get more channels and more entertainment, even selling his previously-beloved garden to fund his descent into couch-potatodom, of which he hits rock bottom when he moved a fridge and microwave into his television-room. At the book's low point, he has a wall of televisions blocking out the sun, and he just slouches there, watching/eating/sleeping/repeating. But then lo, he awakes one day and a bird has somehow flown into his room. It presents him with a flower, reminding him of his lost garden and his love for what had been his normal life, and then it starts pecking at his remote controllers, turning off each and every screen. Albert rushes downstairs, and with the neighbours' (his garden's now owners) help, tears down the fence and agrees to now share it with them, which they do, for the happy-ever-after of the book. The dozens of defunct television sets become reused as plantpots.

   It's a blatant cautionary tale, one that was needed when it was published in 1991, and one that's definitely needed in our current Netflix-age. Entertainment addiction, capitalist-driven materialism, the loneliness epidemic - these are all serious and densely-interconnected issues. Our culture is being moulded, twisted, by economic forces pushing distraction above mindfulness, isolation above community, endless acquisition for personal gain above contentment with enough for sharing. Exactly how these processes occur is far beyond the scope of a children's book (or for that matter for my blog post about aforementioned book) to explain fully, but the powerful gist of Albert's story, which I think had a somewhat underhandedly-profound influence on me as a kid, is that the solution to these problems comes down to the individual. Maybe our circumstances do drive us to loneliness, to laziness, to a passive screen-watching existence that barely resembles personhood. But we can choose to turn off the screen, to go outside, to start being productive and sociable again. And rightly. Maybe Albert needed an enigmatic bird to prod him in this direction, but we would hope that children, having read this, would learn to recognise with disgust when their lifestyles are veering too far toward that depicted but that which sadly resembles a great many people nowadays (including, I'll admit so as to avoid hypocrisy, myself at times). So, it's a very good cautionary tale and is also quite an entertaining read for children (assuming they're like me when I read it as a kid, cos I enjoyed it). Worth getting instead of another cartoon boxset for your attention-spanless nephew's next birthday, though you might be wasting your money. Cautionary tales, I find, seldom work on those who have already fallen off whatever cliff the book warns them about. Do kids even read nowadays?