RED SHIFT HOTZENPLOTZ AND A MYSTERY ACTION FIGURE THROWN IN

Once a year Bill B visits Moonbase and this weekend was that time.

I've known Bill for well over twenty years and corresponded online with him first way back in the early 1990's. The subject that brought us together were Project SWORD and SpaceX.

At each visit we usually have a number of tasks to do which help me with the blog and also my own collection and research.

This year we tried to fix a remote-control Probe Force Three but the nose and engine were tightly glued onto the body. Freezing it in the freezer overnight didn't loosen the cement and it remains on the workbench. 

Missus Moonbase also very neatly cut up some scratch SpaceX cards created and donated by kind reader Kevin D for this years 10th Birthday bash goody bags, which are currently in production!

Missus Moonbase was busy too making natty new clothes for her old wooden-headed puppets like Robber Hotzenplotz, the blue and red number to the right.

We also had a go at downloading my old hard-drive onto my new laptop using Bill's drive-reader but it didn't work. There are 20,000 old emails of mine on that old drive, which I'd like to get at. I may need an older laptop with an older version of Windows for the reader to work. Dunno. Ideas?

We also proof-read my new attempt at a book about old Hong Kong plastic and I managed to talk Bill into taking a cover photograph and writing a forward for it. After 6 years work in progress - snifter below - its new cover is in the pipeline and my second BLURB book's nearly ready for launch!

There's usually a car boot sale and some charity shops involved on this weekend and Missus Moonbase joins these trips too.

York Car Boot is always great value and stacked with fine vintage toys and books. As I like a bargain I always look for pocket-money stuff and this year found two items I was pleased with:

Red Shift, a 1973 paperback fantasy novel set in Cheshire by Alan Garner, who also wrote the Owl Service. Now I've personally not read any Alan Garner so this will be my introduction to his works. I knew about Red Shift already as its a well-known folk horror TV play from the 1970's and as readers will know I'm a folk horror nut. Have you read any Alan Garner?

I also found an unusual action figure, which I didn't recognise at all.

The makers' mark on the body said 'TONG IND.CO'. The soft rubber head came off.

After some searching online I identified the body as that of Batman. The black hands and legs helped a lot. A new one on me! Was it released with clothes? My own Batman clearly had a substitute head from another figure though!

But what? 

Do you recognise this soft rubbery head readers?