Fear Week

Teenager Adrian Thorby is about to experience a week of embarrassing and comic incidents. But he's scared. It's 1962, the week of the Cuban missile crisis, and the world is threatened by nuclear war. He's a science-fiction fan who fears he won't live to see a futuristic world of high-technology, including space travel and robots, and will never have a girlfriend.

Adrian lives in Hull, a north-eastern English city still half-flattened by WW2 bombing. He assumes that with his country’s experience of intense bombing during the last war, there will be a swift introduction of emergency preparedness measures. But everyone continues with their lives as normal. Nobody prepares; Adrian begins to think the grownups must all be mad.

He is also in love with a girl from another school, is troubled by sexual thoughts, and through some awkward moments begins to wonder if he really has the brains to participate in a technological future. The seven days of “Fear Week” narrate his exploits, blunders and embarrassments during the nuclear crisis, and his yearnings for the girl of his dreams.