Child Of The 1980's

Today’s post is about one of those things I distinctly remember liking as a child, yet when I try and remember the details everything is a bit hazy. I’ll start by telling you what I remember.

I would have been around ten at the time, still at primary school, and at the end of the day the teacher still used to read the class a story, though being as we were that bit older it was a longer story split over several days or even weeks. At one point a book was chosen to be read that kept the entire class enthralled. That book was called Captain Cobwebb and the Quogs.

Now, I couldn’t tell you exactly who Captain Cobwebb was, because as far as I can remember the heroes of the story were two young boys. I might have completely mis-remembered the plot, but it went something like this. The two boys stumble across an underground realm inhabited by sinister creatures called Quogs. The Quogs were presumably spider like in some way, because I distinctly remember the boys being caught and bundled up in a silky cocoon of some sort. Obviously they escape, and bring about an end to whatever nefarious plan the Quogs had in mind.

A bit slim on details I know, but there is one very specific detail I do remember, which is that at one point the boys needed to supply a pass phrase to get inside a locked door. It was a very silly pass phrase made up of lots of gobbledy gook words, and it went like this:-

OK, the spelling might be off a bit but that was what it sounded like.

The class enjoyed this book so much that when it came our turn to put on the school assembly we decided we wanted to do a play of this book, and I can proudly say that as one of one the few people in the class who could remember the pass phrase, and more importantly say it, I was chosen to play one of the two boys.

Now, even with the power of the Interwebs at my disposal I still haven’t been able to find out much more about this book, except that it was written by Gordon Boshell and it was the penultimate book in a series of Captain Cobwebb books, the first being Captain Cobwebb’s Cowboys (published 1969) and the last Captain Cobwebb and the Amazing Cloud (published 1980).

I must thank the Fantastic Fiction website for the above information, but I fear the chances of me ever reading this book again to refresh my memory are slim, since the books are long out of print, and Fantastic Fiction have some sources selling second hand copies for around the fifty pound mark. Oh well, there’s always eBay – I might get lucky one day…

Search for Captain Cobwebb and the Quogs items on Amazon.co.uk

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This entry is filed under Books and Magazines, Memories and was posted on August 13th, 2010. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.