Fiver’s vision of blood over the fields, and the weird bit with with the rabbits heads coming down the warren network and then combining in a mass of red eyes and teeth? Yeah.

I know. Me too.

As a child I found Watership Down genuinely scary, and it made me cry (Bigwig in a trap… Hazel trying to bite him loose), but I still watched it more often than The Secret of Nimh. My parents even bought me the VHS and The Watership Down Film Picture Book, for more convenient terror.

If children are going to be slightly terrified, it should be by a film which has life and death and violence, and ‘Bright Eyes’ and dark visuals and a trickster folk hero called El-Ahrairah. And rabbits.

Go watch it now. Even if you have to do so through your fingers.

The prophecies contained within won the 1997 Pegasus Award for 'Best Sorcery Song'

There are so many things I loved about these books (how can one resist the creepy crockery tracing and murderous sexual jealousy of The Owl Service? Although, as an 8-year-old the sexual jealousy bit may have gone slightly over my head), but there were some general features that were literary catnip, sending me scrambling desperately for my library card so that I could read way past my bedtime in secret (with a torch hidden under the duvet, of course, a habit which my mother assured me would ’strain my eyes’ in old age, ie. now):

1. Ominous standing stones – for aligning with other ominous landscape features.

2. Crows/ravens/rooks – for anthropomorphism and/or enhancement of general ominousness.

3. Mysterious, enigmatic, and sometimes ominous extended members of the family – may or may not be reincarnations of Merlin, or even agents of the Dark.

4. Swords, chalices, parchments – for waving, glowing at important moments, and signifying stuff.

5. Cornwall, Dorset, Alderley Edge or Wales – it’s hard to be ominous in Milton Keynes.

6. Sandwiches – magical happenings were normally stumbled upon while on a country walk with your siblings or the slightly weird local loner. This, of course, involved sandwiches packed by the housekeeper of the holiday home/the extended family member you were staying with. 

7. Total ignorance on the part of the parents. As a child this was the best part, really. The magic was all fine and dandy, but it was the fact that you could have your life endangered by masters of the Dark without your parents knowing that really did it for me.

If you drink enough you might think it’s a good idea to skate for the first time in years.

It’s also enabled me to annoy my neighbours with five hours of Van Morrison (and counting), which has in turn encouraged my sun addled brain to drift blissfully back to when I was five and my music taste depended entirely on my dad’s cassettes (with the exception of Jive Bunny – all me). Shortly my neighbours will be treated to James Taylor, Jackson Browne, Tom Petty, and the piece de resistance – Mike Oldfield’s Tubular Bells.

My brother and I were utterly obsessed with Tubular Bells as young children, and would treat anyone in listening range, or just ourselves/the nearest mirror, to interpretative performances of it (sometimes with costumes and in character) recorded on our Fisher Price tape recorder.

It was, I’m sure, absolutely amazing and a joy to watch. It didn’t seem to go down as well when I brought the concept into my primary school music lesson as a solo project, doing my unique version of Oldfield’s masterpiece while pretending to be a robot.

Anyway, sorry Silver, but this might be the best song ever:

Or I might be drunk and bewitched by the super-romantical duelling/mysterious owl bit.