Today the Missus and me went walkabout round the North Yorkshire market town of Selby. Famous for its huge abbey in the town centre, it also has great brick architecture and old streets.
Here's a few of the bits we saw in the charity shops there.
See anything you like?
Loads of girls' annuals from the Sixties a snip at £2 each.
I don't recall London's Burning on TV at all. This old board game was priced £10.
We visited a quiet olde worlde cafe new to us as well, in an old and rare high street department store called Wetherells. My sausage butty and pot of tea was fab. The Missus had coffee and a cherry Bakewell.
Here's the main meals menu. Anything you fancy?
This tin reminded me of how much I loved jelly creams as a kid, where milk was used instead of water to set jelly. Talk about delicious. Not had it for decades. Is it something you remember?
Boxed Bionicles were aplenty.
And there was my fave coffee jug with wooden handle. I just love it's curves.
Vintage books are always of interest. Here's Len Deighton's Billion Dollar Brain, a story unknown to me and paperback Thunderball. Do you collect OO7?
Badges and badges. What's the yellow stripe on blue one in the middle?
Do you recall Dumpy books?
This was a whole cupboard full of vintage goodness
Records always draw me in. Beatles covers are possible collectables in charities as they often turn up. This stack contained about 5 45rpm cover versions including Eine Kleine Beatlemusic from Germany. Do you collect the Beatles?
Abba cover versions are unusual and here's an LP full by Bobbs.
Hits Hits and Top of the Pops LPs are a potential collectable I've often thought of starting. Have you any?
This looked interesting. Moog!
This wall hanging would please a Dexter fan. If memory serves he was a killer surgeon. Yikes!
And finally this knock-off set ( what is that TV show?) made me think of Thunderbird 2, which is always good!
When did Blancmange get renamed Jelly Cream?
ReplyDeleteAre they the same thing Terran?
DeleteIf you make jelly with milk instead of water it's Blancmange.
DeleteJust looked it up Terran. Yes, you're right, which you knew already! Yet Jelly Cream is also googleable and seems to have a life of its own. A new word popped up too to describe jelly and evaporated milk, Flummery, which I've never heard of! You?
DeleteReally like the cover art for the Abba tribute album. Lots of records there. Are our old vinyl LPs and singles on the comeback then, Woodsy?
ReplyDeleteYeah me too Tone. I've never seen an old Abba covers LP before! It was a really good selection of records in one particular charity shop.
DeleteThe above comment was by Tony K
ReplyDeleteYes I think records are on the up again Tone.
DeleteI've have had that Thunderball paperback since the Seventies, those "real" bullet holes through the cover were always a cool detail.
ReplyDeleteThe 1967 film based on the Deighton book, directed by Ken Russell and starring Michael Caine, was partly filmed in Finland.
Yes, those bullet holes! Didn't one of the paperbacks contain a letter too Arto?
DeleteYou know better Woodsy, I only had that one Pan 007 paperback.
DeleteThere were quite a few really old hardback The Saint novels too Arto by Leslie Charteris, including a thick Omnibus. Alas I've never read any Saint.
DeleteI have a couple of the little Dumpy books. They may be small, but they are packed with information. London's Burning was a TV series about firemen - there were die-cast models based on the series. Billion Dollar Brain is a Len Deighton spy novel featuring an unnamed hero. It was the third of three Deighton spy novels made in to a film with Michael Caine as Harry Palmer. Basically, everyone doubles crosses everyone else, and then ends up dead.
ReplyDeleteI recall other little books on planes and stuff Paul but they weren't Dumpies or Observers. Can't think what they were.
DeleteMoog!
ReplyDeletehttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HiKNh5wVmAE
Yes! Great link!
DeleteTalk about mooching around Selby ... what about Yarm half a century ago! You don’t have to have worked for MI6 to realise that bookshops can be pretty daunting, intriguing if not dangerous or even spooky places. If you want to check out an antiquarian bookshop that was up to its shelves in espionage, best read Bill Fairclough's fact based stand-alone spy thriller Beyond Enkription in The Burlington Files series and his published bios available on the web such as at https://everipedia.org/wiki/lang_en/bill-fairclough.
ReplyDeleteIn the book, his family's antiquarian bookshop is set in London's Charing Cross Road but in fact his family owned and his father managed an antiquarian bookshop in Yarm in the North East of England where real spies actually spent time together in the Cold War. In real life Bill Fairclough was an MI6 agent (codename JJ) and his father was Dr Richard Fairclough (aka Roger Burlington in The Burlington Files series at https://theburlingtonfiles.org/#/reviews) who actually worked in MI1 in WW2 and its aftermath along with his wife Margaret Fairclough (aka Sara Burlington).
Dr Fairclough was a friend of Harold Macmillan and other British governmental bigwigs. If you either remember that bookshop in Yarm (not the current one) or are into researching how bookshops featured in real espionage this is your moment. After all, if it was good enough for Colonel Alan Pemberton's people to visit regularly it must have been of interest to Sunbeam, better known as Oleg Gordievsky to you. Alan Brooke Pemberton CVO MBE (aka Alan McKenzie) was Bill Fairclough’s MI6 handler in real life: see everipedia.org/wiki/lang_en/alan-pemberton. Roger Burlington is referred to in Beyond Enkription as “the ultimate spy, the spy that never was”: see everipedia.org/wiki/lang_en/richard-alan-fairclough.
Well MI6, you're either a big fan of spy fiction or an actual ex spy !
ReplyDeleteTime to come in from the cold maybe ?