My mum and dad have always had bizarre priorities. While my three brothers and I were growing up I remember snapshots of the parental input that seem in hindsight a little eccentric. My mum's obsession with the state of our cagoules to the point where it almost took presidency over the state of our literacy was interesting. And Dad's words of 'wisdom' were always the first thing he would ever offer a child in distress. I recall him saying to a fretting younger Me more than once "Frances, at the end of the day, it gets dark."

It therefore doesn't surprise me in the slightest that in the early 90s they recorded every single re-run of Thunderbirds from the TV, lest they miss the chance to give their four young children a completely well-rounded education. If they'd truly known what they were creating in their impressionable six-year-old daughter, I think they might have put all their efforts into getting me really interested in cagoules.

I'll never forget watching that first episode, 'The Perils of Penelope' whilst eating my dinner with my brothers. Strange, though those moments have stuck in my head these thirteen years, I don't remember being any more impressed with Thunderbirds than I was with Fireman Sam, The Shoe People or any Disney offering. However, time has told. I have yet to write a Shoe People fan fiction.

To put your finger directly on why Thunderbirds is so different from anything else is simultaneously both ridiculously difficult and ridiculously easy. For want of better imagery, it just seems 'bigger' than any other children's TV show, almost too big for its own genre. Well, we know now that this is because Gerry Anderson was desperate to be taken seriously as a director, and poured every ounce of professionalism, ingenuity and style into the children's TV puppet jobs he was repeatedly handed. Poor Gerry. I hope stealing the souls of everyone on this website and countless others worldwide has made up for all the time he had to spend with "those damned puppets".

But they're not puppets, not really. Anyone who takes the merest of glances around this site will know that mixed with the love of a fan and the imagination of a writer the Tracys live and breathe. Which is nice. Especially when one looks at Scott.

It was tricky going through secondary school as an outed and practicing Thunderbirds fan. But regardless of the fact that this tortured writer now resides at university where such interests are merely quirky and eccentric, the presence of the Tracy Island Chronicles is equally a warm and comfortable home for the weary Thunderbirds fan. A place to sit in huge armchairs and drink hot chocolate while everyone who passes through greets you cheerily by name. Or so I imagine it to be, anyway.

But I digress. I mean, why use twenty words when two hundred and seventeen will do the job equally well? In the scantest of nutshells, thank you Mam and Dad. Over the years the two '90s annuals have become a library of Thunderbirds literature; the Tracy Island that the lads so painstakingly snapped the palm trees off of has been replaced with every vintage toy, and then some, and your 19-year-old daughter is writing this in her bedroom, the bed of which has a Thunderbirds duvet cover on it. Thank you for raising your children with such bizarre priorities. I bet you're still kicking yourselves.