Sunday 22 December 2013

Bagpuss


Today's next post is fondly remembered by many, many people. Bagpuss, the old, saggy cloth cat, baggy, and a bit loose at the seams!




Each programme began in the same way: through a series of sepia photographs, the viewer is told of a little girl named Emily who owned a shop. Emily found lost and broken things and displayed them in the window, so their owners could come and collect them; the shop did not sell anything. She would leave the object in front of her favourite stuffed toy, the large, saggy, pink and white striped cat named Bagpuss.
When Emily had left, Bagpuss woke up. The programme shifted from sepia to colour stop motion  film, and various toys in the shop came to life: Gabriel the toad, and a rag doll called Madeleine. The wooden woodpecker bookend became the drily academic Professor Yaffle, while the mice carved on the side of the "mouse organ" woke up and scurried around, singing in high-pitched voices.
The toys discussed what the new object was; someone would tell a story related to the object (shown in an animated thought bubble over Bagpuss's head), often with a song, accompanied by Gabriel on the banjo, and then the mice, singing in high-pitched squeaky harmony as they worked, mended the broken object
The newly mended thing was then be put in the shop window, so that whoever had lost it would see it as they went past, and could come in and claim it. Then Bagpuss would start yawning again, and as he fell asleep the narrator would speak as the colour faded to sepia and they all became toys again.

Come repeat with me now and see if we can wake Bagpuss up together!

Bagpuss, dear Bagpuss
Old Fat Furry Catpuss
Wake up and look at this thing that I bring
Wake up, be bright, be golden and light
Bagpuss, oh hear what I sing!

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