Clubbin' It

ok - Its time I levelled with you. Time to come clean and face facts. I'm a lazy bugger. No, don't argue - I Yam What I Yam. I'm soft, lacking in determination and essentially lazy. If I want to find something, I won't bother with legwork or even asking people, i'll just google it. There. I've said it. 'Google' it. The search engine has become so successful and well known it's now become eponymous with finding 'stuff'. It's so good it's even replaced the verb to 'find' in general conversation. I'll admit, i'm guilty of googling on a regular basis, you can  Bing all you want, but i'm a google man through and through.

Trouble is, Google can be good 90% of the time, but sometimes when your literally looking for a needle in a haystack, Google can tell you where the haystack is, streetview the field, and tell you how much the needle sold for on ebay, but can't actually show you the needle itself - sitting amongst the dry stalks of hay, shining provocatively. In short, there's no substitute for the legwork. SWORD itself stands for supreme world organisation for RESEARCH and development and there is still a place for hands on research in the nanny cultured, handed-to-you-on-a-virtual-plate, wifi world.

An excellent example of this kind of research - not his best by far - but a good one, is this. Trawling about on ebay one lunchtime, I did a search for badges and space. Sometimes this can be a real pain, because some of the more verbose ebayers feel the need to point out that they need to sell their tat for want of having nowhere to store it and add the line 'space in my attic'. Anyway, after cruising the listings and coming up generally empty of Sword and Spacex gems or anything not connected with the american space programme, I turned up a simple little enamel badge with a stylised rocket on it.

The listing wasn't great, fuzzy picture from about four metres away, minimal information relative to the actual item and pages and pages of information about what will happen if you don't pay for your win in seven days. But at the end of the day, postage was minimal, the start price was literally coppers and it had a rocket on it. It was a no brainer. Three days later, im strutting about the house with it pinned to my pullover. a little Brasso and a quick rub with a rag and its shining like new. Only problem was, I didn't have the faintest clue what the hell it was for. Y. E News Space Club proclaimed the badge - well im a member now apparently, but of what ? Google it. Zilch. The G Man comes back empty handed. I try a little grey matter and reason that it looks old, possibly late fifties, probably early sixties. Another, more pointed googling reveals less than before, plus a little porn. Hmm. Stuck.

Then, it occurs to me that I know an expert in matters of such esoterica and ephemera - a friend who has unearthed some amazing and unseen gems of information from the past without recourse to using the internet. I  swiftly emailed a shot of the badge to my good friend the Philosophic Toad, who I knew was adept at spending long hours poring over catalogues and microfiches, journals and newspapers in the traditional time honoured fashion of true research. Doubtful and not generally optimistic (not in the toads abilities but in the obscurity of the enquiry), I ran the idea past him that on his next foray into the stacks, that he might be watchful of something relating to the badge. Previously, he had discovered some truly outstanding scraps of information based on quite flimsy hints by me, such as the Askeys Ice Cream Space Capsule offer after I had bought the toy on ebay and had a dim recollection of seeing it advertised in a comic.

Days passed, perhaps weeks and time and my attention moved on. Then, out of the blue, PT mailed me to announce that he had indeed found the source of the badges power - Yorkshire Evening News Space Club - and presented me with a snippet from the very pages of the newspaper so long ago!

Yorkshire Evening News Saturday April 12th 1958

Now finding something so specific was akin to asking that he go out blindfold at midnight to find the field where the needle lay in the haystack, armed only with a postcode - but as ever - he delivered. Thanks to the Toad I am (apparently) an Expedition Leader for the Y. E News Space Club and I didn't have to answer all those tedious questions or read a newspaper every week! Yay!