With the Missus and a mate, visiting my favourite vintage toy shop round here, in Kirkham Arcade in Otley, I was really pleased to bag a few great collectables for the Moonbase collection.
The haul comprised of a smart loose JR21 FAB1, a neat re-issue Corgi Black Beauty and an Action Man Rifle Rack along with the golden grenade launcher. I had all of these as a kid and it was great to get them back and a snip at £30 the lot.
In the town's charity shops I bagged an old hardback copy of Brave New World, a paperback horror by Shaun Huston and a hardback Adventure Annual with Pyro toy designs on the cover.
My final item was a cool multi-rotational tin globe. It rotates on two axes!
All in all a great day out.
What do you reckon?
More on all of them to follow.
Watching Tom Cruise's reboot of the Mummy last night - basically Mummy Impossible! - I was reminded of something I'd read years ago about another American desert movie, if not the very first, made over a century ago in 1923:
Cecil B. De Mille's The Ten Commandments.
It was a silent, enormous and expensive undertaking in the unforgiving sands of California.
Paramount artisans crafted the Sphinx like masons three thousand years ago!
I recall reading that Cecil's entire Pharaoh set was so massively huge that he could not afford to take it out of the Guadalupe desert where they were filming, so the whole things was buried in the vastness of the dunes!
It's still out there brooding under the shifting barchans, occasionally revealing a scree of perished plaster.
Archaeologists are involved, as they would be on an ancient dig!
Watch this fascinating short clip about their attempts to recover De Mille's Lost City.
Have you ever been there readers?
The other night I took a friend to see Dracula in Wakefield.
The Opera House to be exact, Dracula the stage play.
We enjoyed it. A dark tale with a talented cast. A clever use of movable crates and scenery kept the set alive as the story progressed from the Count's castle to Whitby to London and back to his castle.
The cast intermittently spoke as a chorus, warning the world of the terrible nature of vampires and that they are most certainly real. Quite startling really!
The ending was a surprise. Dracula sacrifices himself to save his brides and the global vampire community. Is that in Bram Stoker's novel? (which sadly, I've not read). I'm used to Van Helsing polishing off the old Vlad!
Have you ever seen Dracula on stage readers?
The Missus and me recently acquired a second-hand wooden bureau in Selby.
We both spotted it and fell in love with it at the same time.
It's got a pull-out writing board with a soft green top, concertina sliding doors, a miniature drawer, big drawers and wooden slots for letters, envelopes and the like.
Finding the proper spot in the house is an issue as we have too much furniture, but it has found a place thus far in the kitchen diner.
I've already started putting reams of paper in the drawers. I'm dying to write a letter!
The Missus never had one as a kid in her parents home, where it's known as a Sekretär. My folks had an old wedge shape one crammed with letters and photos in Preston. That's how I know about bureaus.
Did or do you have a bureau readers?
I love this Barbara and Lili bedroom Recamara set by Mexico's Lili Ledy.
There's something so 2001 about it. The cool orb chair, the small TV, the phone - all so late Sixties/ Early Seventies space mod!
Here's a few neat vintage espionage toys I've spied of late that I thought I'd blog before they self-destruct.
Here's the Lone Star Cigarette Box Pistol. It's related to the cane guns we've reprod and used the same small red ammo. It looks really smart and I love the card art!
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On closer inspection they're quite different!
Joe 90 below. Did you have this case?
I saw this neat hard rubber cowboy today in a Saltaire charity shop. A lovely figure and at just £1.99 I wuz sorely tempted. It's modern but has a vintage look to it.
And here's a couple of eBay spots and all new to me.
I thought this was a big Hot Wheels Zowie but it's a Topper camping wagon! I love it!
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And amongst this medley of miniatures, just what is that white helmet with red eyes top row centre?
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