Thunderbirds Are Go!

As a part of new anthology inspired by icons of popular culture, I have been asked to write a poem about Tracy Island.

This is giving me the perfect reason to watch episodes of Thunderbirds in the name of research. The series has the most thrilling introduction of any programme on the telly, and is certainly one of most exciting things ever to emerge from the Slough Trading Estate where it was filmed.

My childhood was steeped in the world of the Thunderbirds. I watched carefully so I could learn how to be like Lady Penelope, with her fancy clothes and her perfect flawless skin, not a freckle to be seen. Even today I could tell you which brother pilots which vehicle, the special features they have, and of course the way they launch. The pull-back of the swimming pool as Scott shoots TB1 out of the underground hangar, up past the diving-board with a boost of his rockets. TB2 is the green transporter, so wide the palm trees have to drop down to let it pass on its runway - which pod will it take today? TB3 the big orange rocket that bursts up through the circular observation deck, TB4 the undersea rover and TB5 is the orbiting space station.

Growing up on Tracy Island has made me experience the world the wrong way round, like looking through from the back of the screen into the room. I knew all about the Thunderbirds before I knew much at all about anything else beyond the end of the garden.

Here was my first Virgil. James Bond's villains, in cheap imitations of the original island lair, have already been thwarted by International Rescue, Sean Connery wishing he were Scott. Emma Peel in The Avengers was copying Lady Penelope's style. Frank Lloyd Wright modelled Fallingwater on the Tracy Island house. Star Trek is a tribute, of course. And imagine my delight to discover only recently that the Mercury astronauts were named after the Tracy brothers!

I was not sure at first whether the Thunderbirds were real people. However I was reassured that they were actors not puppets once I saw that, on close-up, they had human hands.

Now back to my research (zooms off on a personal hovercraft towards her magnifcent pink car).

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