GEEK SALAD LEMON PUFF

A youngster tried to convince me recently that Paul McCartney is actually dead and who we see is a lookalike. Evidence for this startling claim included the registration plate of the VW Beetle on the cover of Abbey Road, which purportedly alludes to his death [having just looked I couldn't read it] and the fact that Mr. McCartney has no shoes on the LP cover as he strides across the Zebra crossing. Why being shoeless should denote deceasement is beyond me!

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Being an avid car booter and charity shopper and netter of second hand toys I am noticing increasingly that old batteries are simply left in toys! How inconvenient for the toy collector! Yep, leaky batteries have become the bane of my life of late. Is this a problem for you readers?

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I recently had a discussion with the Missus about a favourite biscuit from the past, the lemon puff. Basically a hard lemony cream filling sandwiched between two layers of puff pastry. Yes, it was almost a cake! My Missus said they were still around. I said definitely not. Any idea readers?

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I recently saw a youngster spitting. I realised that I'd not seen anything like it - the deliberate slow release of spittle towards the ground - since the Seventies when I was a young 'un. The stock in trade of tough kids back then, gobbin' as it was known was everywhere and you did well not to fall into a pool of thick mucus once you left the house! Do you remember kids spitting?

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Is it just me or have the films that Caroline Munro's Friday Night Cellar Club airs become obscurer? What happened to Hammer films? I find I've never heard of what's being shown now. Is it just me?

Geek Salad Noodling

It's been awhile since I did a geek salad, a mixed bowl of quirks and questions, so here goes.

A kid recently said to me that he had a lot of hole punches in his paper. I asked what he meant and he showed me lots of holes made by a hole punch. Surely, I said, those were punched holes and not hole punches. He looked at me non-plussed. What do you think the holes are called?

A new word I discovered is noodling. This is when you mess about on a musical instrument in-between jams in a band. Have you noodled?

Franking used to be a big deal where I worked years ago. We had an office franking machine. It was a sort of pre-paid postage stamp device. Do you recall franking?

I often find little bits of tat at work, which I put in my coat pocket. Small odds n sods like washers and little tyres. As I walk round the site I fiddle with them in my pocket. I suppose they relax me. Anyways, these pocket things must have a name. Anyone know?

So that's probably all my geek salad for this year. Till next year.

GEEK SALAD: LOFT CHRISTMAS

It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas! I've posted some prezzies and written some cards for the family and after going home again to get my forgotten wallet I actually got them to the post office.

Most of the stuff we've bought online as gifts has arrived except the main one for Moonbase Junior our Grandson, a new Microscope. Despite a second one being sent out by the company neither have arrived yet and the first one was returned to the supplier severely damaged in transit! At this rate we'll have to give him a magnifying glass we got in a cracker last Christmas! Have you got everything you need?

Speaking of damaged goods, I went to see Spider-Man No Way Home last night in a very empty screening with my friend. At two and half hours long it was a bit of a chore to get through as it seemed like a mess to me. Marvel have thrown everything in it except Steve Ditko's kitchen sink! There were some enjoyable parts and the small kids in the audience clearly liked it going on the whoops we heard. If you're a big Spidey fan then you'll no doubt love it. At £15 entry I personally regret not seeing Ghostbusters Afterlife instead! Do you go to the cinema readers?

Another hefty price tag was the £4.40 I've paid this lunch for a battered cod. I'd forgotten how much a single fish would be. Still, with plenty pf salt and vinegar and a round of bread and butter flanked by a mug of hot tea it was a tasty treat at the start of my Christmas fortnight break, Do you like chippy fish?

After writing a few more cards I plan to go into the attic and find a model airport building that's hiding in there somewhere. It'll make a fun setting for my newly restored bodgemobile number two. Thinking of the attic reminds me of how I used to listen to audio tapes and radio programmes whilst I was selling full-time on Ebay back in the mid-noughties. A couple of them from back then spring to mind.

One was called Zap I recall, a one-off radio programme hosted by Alice Cooper, who was talking about the history of comic books. I remember taping it on my old Matsui music centre but for the life of me I cannot find that tape, probably because I had a cassette purge a few years back and it may have been binned. Anyone recall Alice Cooper's Zap?

Another thing I like to listen to were horror audio tapes. The ghost stories of MR. James and the tales of Poe and Le Fanu like the Cask of Amontillado, one of my favourites. It was great fun listening to Poe whilst wrapping my Ebay sales up in the attic office. Did you listen to audio tapes? I wonder if you ever bought anything off me on Ebay? Over the many years I did it I went by the names of Moon Zero Toys, Outerspaceman and Madaboutmonsters.

Ah well, time for some more Yorkshire tea!

GEEK SALAD SAUERSTOFF

I was gobsmacked to hear today that NASA had succeeded in making a small amount of oxygen on Mars. Perseverance did it using a device onboard, which converts CO2 into the life giving gas. It was enough to last a Martionaut 10 minutes. How amazing is that! I can well foresee in 50 years huge silos of oxygen bristling on the surface of the red planet. Can you?

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I heard a kid use a phrase today, like a straight rainbow, and I thought that's neat. Is that something you've heard? Not sure what it means.

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Another phrase I heard was Killed by Death. I don't think its possible to be killed by death is it? Death is a consequence, not a cause. What do you think?

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I saw my Grandson's favourite cuddly toy in a movie the other day, a soft doggy from Ikea. He calls it Dizzy and has a second one called Doody. It was in the George Clooney vehicle Midnight Sky. A young girl, reminiscent of Aliens' Newt, had it. Maybe Junior should rename one Clooney!

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According to the radio Phil Collins objected to the original title of Easy Lover. He just didn't like it, Choosy Lover. It got me thinking as to what else it might have been: Cheesy Brother? Sleazy Mother? What would you come up with for Phil?

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This clip on Wired blew me away. I thought it was a jungle on Earth bit its the Norgay and Hilary mountains on Pluto at Sunset. Stunning don't you think?

https://www.wired.com/video/watch/sunset-on-pluto#intcid=_cne-watch-pages_e7a4c611-d650-4c36-9a18-bd53f9c05691_entity-topic-similarity-v2

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These Ocean Adventures toy packs look really cool and remind me of Britains and Lone Star frogman toys. Have you come across Ocean Adventures?

https://guide.alibaba.com/shop/ocean-adventure-playset-32-piece-scuba-diver-figures-with-boats-and-playmat-1-35-scale_9695062.html

GEEK SALAD JABBERWOCKY

Nearly everyone I know here in England have been vaccinated [or should that be 'has'?].Me and the Missus are just waiting our turn now. Its all very sci-fi but scarily real. Have you been jabbed for Corona?

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NASA are dropping another car on Mars next week. I've not had time to look into this but I'm hoping our resident space correspondent Wotan will bring us all up to speed. I wonder if the new rover will bump into Curiosity, two mates on Mars? That's how I think, sorry!

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Moonbase Junior had an online Zoom class today whilst here at Moonbase. It was with a professor from Mini Professors. Science for small kids. It was great fun and they made fake blood with cheerio red blood cells and even a working heart with a balloon and straws. Part of the mailed kit was a real stethoscope. for listening to Junior's heartbeat. It was terrific all round and a great way to spend an hour on Saturday morning. One thing we didn't know was that a stethoscope has an on-off switch!

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We visited a local ruined castle today for our daily walk, Pontefract Castle, which was for short time in the past the English capital as King Richard was imprisoned there! It had to be the coldest day for ages and after half an hour we had to seek warmth in the nearby B&M and Poundstretcher stores, a welcome retail therapy amidst the domestic monotony of lockdown number 3 in England. 

Moonbase Junior wanted some Pokemon figures but they'd run out so he bought a six inch Iron Man figure. He loves Iron Man as much as Superman and Batman. I was sorely tempted to buy a small blister carded Shazam action figure, as it so reminded me of the DC Super Powers line of toy figures from the mid-Eighties, probably the best range of DC figures ever. I passed.

In Poundstretcher I saw blister carded discount toys from 2010 for a range called Kung Zhu. Apparently these were pieces of armour for hamsters! Surely not real ones! Mint and sealed for just 49p, the blisters felt like a bargain and I realised I still love clearance lines like I did in the 90's when I scoured shops for them for my mail order toy business! Anyone know this line, Kung Zhu?

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Speaking of selling toys I seem to be having trouble with Hermes the courier. Their tracking facility doesn't work on their website. You type in the receipt number from the Post Office and nada. No details! Its worrying and frustrating as I have to use Hermes for some larger items I sell. Have you had this experience?

GEEK SALAD: NOT LIFE AS WE KNOW IT

Its a dark time for sure. Lockdown. Coronavirus. Masks. Staying at home. 

Still, it can get young minds thinking. My grandson Moonbase Junior asked me if the virus was on other planets. I said I don't think so as there's no life on other planets in the solar system that we know of. 

But then again viruses aren't strictly alive are they. Could they live on other worlds? They need hosts though. Hosts! It very quickly gets you thinking about shake and bake colonists in Aliens! Oh my God!

Then of course there are the giant viruses, which may have even given cells a boot up the nucleus to start complex life as we know it! https://www.nationalgeographic.com/news/2014/7/140716-giant-viruses-science-life-evolution-origins/

Its all enough to make you go running for your DVD collection and watch War of the Worlds. Wells famously begins his apocalypse with sobering clarity and contains a line which still sends shivers up my spine:

"intellects vast and cool and unsympathetic, regarded this earth with envious eyes, and slowly and surely drew their plans against us". 

This is countered at the end with the final arresting celebration: 

"By the toll of a billion deaths man has bought his birthright of the earth, and it is his against all comers; it would still be his were the Martians ten times as mighty as they are. For neither do men live nor die in vain".

Seems saddeningly apt right now.

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I was reading on the throne room my old copy of Comic Collectables and their Values from 1996 and as usual another pearl of wisdom floated to the surface. A long admirer of the 1984 DC Super Powers range of action figures from Kenner, I was amazed to learn that three of the characters were completely made up: Golden Pharaoh, Cyclotron and Samurai.

I find it strange that Kenner decided to go for custom characters when the house of DC had so many old heroes and villains to choose from. Has anyone got any Super Powers action figures?

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I remember in a previous life driving past an amazing building in Holbeck in Leeds, Temple Works. Looking like an Egyptian temple I always thought what a great facade it would have made for a Hammer Horror. 

Alas I never went inside so I can't say if the illusion continued. Looking at it again online it immediately makes me think of that wonderful half column at the rear of the Aurora Mummy kit that I adored as a kid. Is it a kit you had?

GEEK SALAD: HISSING IN THE SEA

Another paperback I found in a charity shop this summer was The Hiss. Its a sort of monastic Sixth Sense involving a young novice monk who predicts the deaths of fellow monks. His predictions take place when he hears a hissing sound. The tone of the initial chapters was encouraging and it reminded me of the cloistered mystery found in the medieval whodunnit The Name of the Rose.

Despite these good beginnings I have to admit getting bored with The Hiss and it went back on the pile for further hissing in the future. Have you read it readers?

The Hiss calls to mind another verbal noise-based story I have called The Shout. This is a movie, not a book and is quite a harrowing watch as Alan Bates terrorises John Hurt with his lethal shamanistic shout. Its an odd but powerful film set on the Devon shore and the brazen tyranny of lodger Bates is shocking. 

Its shoreline atmosphere recalls that other Seventies oddity, Neither the Sea Nor The Sand by the famous newscaster Gordon Honeycombe. I enjoyed this book and the film version too. I seem to remember the book blurb on the front mentioning werewolves which is strange as there aren't any in it. Have you read or seen the Shout or Neither the Sea readers?

The idea of a powerful shout was a feature of my Kung Fu period as it happens. I was fascinated with all martial arts back in the early Seventies and the more obscure the better. One of the more obscure Japanese arts was Kiai-Jutsu or fighting by yelling. I used to try this out on my mates on the battlefield [our back garden]. God knows what our neighbours thought when high-kicking teenagers started screaming their lungs out at each other! Happy days!

Here's some footage of the Kiai yell I found on You Tube.  Are you a shouter readers?

           

GEEK SALAD: MATT HELM'S FOG

I keep dreaming about school dinners, especially one: a big hamburger bun with well done chips all drenched in gravy. This wasn't available when I was a kid but it is now and by God I'm going to treat myself to it if I make it to the end of next week and the start of Half-Term!

Which meal do you dream about readers?

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Today I hear that Paypal will charge inactive accounts a fee of £12. I've just remembered I have an old business account from my toy dealer days and I don't use it anymore. Whoops! I'd better close it down! I use my wife's nowadays! Anyone else heard about this fee?

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A recent read was The Fog by the British Stephen King, the late James Herbert. Its nothing to do with the fabulous John Carpenter movie of the same name about evil dead pirates in Antonio Bay. Herbert's Fog concerns a yellow mist rising from a crack in the ground and one which sends anyone caught in it murderously loopy. 

The plot reminded me of Romero's The Crazies aka Code Name Trixie and Herbert's book starts off really well. There are some stand-out scenes especially the harrowing plight of the PE teacher in the gym but alas I have to say that I found most of the novel boring. Its obsession with two characters called Holman and Casey drove me nuts and I had to speed read the book to get to the end quickly! Have you read The Fog? Am I being too harsh?

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Another paperback I once had, as part of my second-hand TV-tie in book box for toy fairs, was called The Silencers. It was based on a film starring Dean Martin I think, who's character Matt Helm was a sort of assassin. I've never read the book or any Matt Helm novels and I've not seen the films either. Are you familiar with Matt Helm readers?

GEEK SALAD: WOLFEN TUSKS

A pot-pourri of stuff here. My mind is a cluttered loft so I'll just babble.

I'm currently reading a paperback called Wolfen by Whitley Strieber. A classic 70's horror wolf tome I remember seeing the film years ago. It described a race of super-wolves living in the ruins of 70's New York. These creatures were hidden from humans whilst also feeding on them: vagrants, winos and strays. The problems start when two cops are half eaten. 

The book touches on native American folklore and the high-rise men working on the 'steel'. The invisible beasts stalking humanity remind me of Covid-19 to be honest and I find the idea of urban decay harbouring a secret really interesting. As you'd expect the book goes into more detail and is a proper good read. Haver you seen the film or read the book?

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I wonder if this oddest of years will be remembered by collectors as a good one? Certainly toy fairs have sadly bit the dust but has Ebay taken their place? Have space-toy collections prospered this year? What's your experience?

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I've just been reading about the oceans of Ganymede. They are ..... layered! Yep, maybe three oceans, each 100km deep, one on top of the other like a stack of pancakes! The mind boggles!

How amazing it would be to glide and sail through these vast seas in sleek chrome ships.  I seem to recall a book  I read as a teenager which featured subs whizzing through Pliocene oceans. The idea fascinated me. It was called The Many-Coloured Land by Julian May, whom I had assumed was a man but was actually a woman. I had all three books but don't think I read them all, something I ought to rectify. This was the iconic cover of the paperback. Have you read it?

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Mammoth skulls, with those huge curling tusks are quite primeval things. Mammoths in general really. I remember some fabulous art of the La Brea Tar Pits when I was a kid and stared at it for ages, its epic struggle of a trapped woolly mammoth and a roaring sabre-toothed tiger. For the life of me I can't recall where I saw it. Does it ring any bells readers?

ITS A KETTLE FOR COOKING EGGS IN?

I've heard about a worrying trend for cooking food in kettles.

What?

Yes, the lowly kettle we boil water in for our cuppas has become in some hands a cooking vessel.

I cannot imagine what's cooked in that steel silo but I hope it's not for boiling eggs! Imagine them splitting! You'd have egg-flavoured water for evermore!

It has to be a form of cabin fever during lockdown. Strange indoor behaviour.

Would you cook in your kettle readers?

IS LEMON CURD A CUSTARD?

I was chatting with a friend on the phone and we discussed re-discovering Lemon Curd this Lockdown. A nostalgic spread, its something we both enjoyed in the past. My Missus had never seen it on the Continent either but has loved it for years. 

Its back on the menu at Moonbase!

Whilst chatting my friend observed that's its basically a custard. What, I said! A Custard? Yes, a citric custard. Its full of eggs was the reply. Outlandish I thought. I had to check. And lo and behold, the ingredients listed on the glass jar do say Eggs. Well I'll be a sleepy milkman!

It is indeed then a type of custard in the same way, say, a Quiche mix is or the classic Custard tart. I suppose the clue is in the name. Curd, short for curdle. As in curds and whey! Distinctly dairy. But are eggs dairy? Oh my god, I'm curdling my own brain over here.

Just when I thought it was safe to go back into the larder I've remembered something else. Something similar but ... different.

Lemon Cheese!

Is that the same as Lemon Curd? Is it a custard too? Or is it really a cheese?

I can't cope. I'm off to have a slice of toast ... with jam!

What do you think?

IN FACT ITS COLD AS HELL

Just been listening to Elton John's Rocket Man. I like the realistic lines about space in it, especially the line 'In fact its cold as hell." 

I suppose its part of the same pool of space-race pop from which the earlier Space Oddity and Starman sprang. Bowie's line 'Tell my wife I love her very much, she knows' always tugs the heartstrings as I expect space will be a lonely place once we get back up there and yes, cold as hell.

Speaking of cold, I heard one of my favourite lines in all science fiction again this week, "intellects vast and cool and unsympathetic, regarded this Earth with envious eyes, and slowly and surely drew their plans against us."

This is of course the last line of the blood-chilling opening to HG Wells's War of the Worlds. The BBC are airing their new grand Victorian tripod-fest this winter and it strode into view on Sunday night. I myself was blown away. I thought the whole thing was superb and I'm already looking forward to episode 2 next Sunday.

There was another reminder of the cold vast cosmos on TV this week when I caught the re-run of Wonders of the Solar System with the ultra-hip Prof Brian Cox. Infectiously enthusiastic about space, Prof Cox, gave us a fabulous glimpse of what sunrise would be like on Sedna.

Sedna is one of the farthest dwarf planets from our sun, a distant neighbour at the brink of our system where its vast and cool. Exotic, remote and unfathomably far away, Sedna is still in the grip of the sun's gravity, despite our star being just a pin-prick of light rising and setting on its horizon. Sedna will be at Perihelion in 2075 and even though I will not be around to see this mysterious world come its closest to the sun and its inner solar family my Grandson will. He'll be 58, the age I am now! Sedna won't be back for another 11,000 years!

What are your thoughts on being in space or being visited from space readers?

A GEEK SALAD OF TARDIGRADES AND INFINITY

Now that I'm relaxing on my summer break I can reflect on some of the interesting and pleasant conversations I had with young people last school year.

I recall vividly discussing the supreme hardiness of the tardigrade. Now, I had only heard of these tough critters about 5 years ago, when they came to the fore as they went into space as part of the ISS I think. Known also as water bears and my favourite, moss piglets, the tardigrade's immense durability has been measured and metered under water, at altitude, under pressure and at extreme temperatures and surpassing all.

Our conversation ultimately lead to whether such a microscopic Hercules could survive that most lethal of all horizons, the event horizon of a black hole. We wished the moss piglet well in such an endeavor but decided that even it wouldn't live through the matter trap it would face.

Tardigrades even appeared in the film Inanimate 2015, in which they'd became genetically bonded to a cosmonaut.

Another talk revolved around the end of things or not as the case may be. We discussed the possible difference between infinity and eternity. Without googling it we chucked around ideas as to what these concepts might be and where they may meet. My young colleague argued that infinity was to do with the end of measurable things like time and distance and everything within. Eternity, he argued, is what follows infinity, the immeasurable and therefore the unknowable lasting forever and ever.

I still haven't googled these definitions and enjoy the memory of the long talks in the common room.

What do you think about these things readers?

GEEK SALAD: THE SHAPE OF THINGS

Its been a funny old week. Not the best. I get home from work and just can't be bothered to do anything. I wonder if you ever feel like that readers?

What I have done is watch films on Now TV, which I joined for a free week's trial. Its a great package of blockbusters so I have to admit to binging.

Some of the flicks I've watched are:

Justice League - DC super group. Superb!
A Quiet Place - silence and monsters. Too tense. I jacked it.
The Shape of Water - art deco fairy tale starring Hell Boy's Abe.
Equaliser 2 - wrath Denzel-style.
Deadpool 2 - second outing I've seen of the Juggernaut in a movie. 
IT - modern remake of the King classic. Pennywise has more teeth this time.
Rampage - the Rock's Kong.

I'll offer a few observations if I may. The Shape of Water: is it just me or is the manphibian in it the same as Abe in Del Toro's Hellboy films? They sure look the same and both of them eat eggs? If this is the case are the two story arcs connected? They are certainly set initially in World War II. 

Beyond Abe I see the Creature from the Black Lagoon in the beasty at the heart of Shape of Water. OK its a better suit these days but essentially its the same gill-man. Maybe all the Creature movies, Shape and Hell Boy could be shown as a all-nighter in a local cinema. Now there's an idea!

Justice League threw up another strange thing. Superman's mouth. Now I've seen some bad CGI; Beowulf at the start of the technique and even worse, the human Flynn in Tron Legacy, but Supe's gob takes the biscuit. It was terrible. I've read that they had a moustache to deal with but c'mon. This is Justice League and his re-incarnation!

As for Deadpool 2, away from the wise cracks and Marvel-references, I loved the Juggernaut back on the screen. And this time the biog fella's pumped up to the max compared to his slimmer version in X Men courtesy of Lock Stock gangster Vinnie Jones. 

Appearances of rare super villains and hero's like Juggernaut always reminds me of the Slurpee cups in the US. They're featured in several books I have on comics collectables. Slurpee cups gave many lesser known characters their day in the sun, characters that most of us will never have heard of.

Maybe Juggernaut will get his own film one day. After all, he is unstoppable!

That's all for now.

PS. Emails and comments I haven't answered will be answered sometime this weekend. Apologies!

GEEK SALAD POOP

I've noticed recently the rise of the unicorn.

Unicorns appear to be everywhere!

Its clearly a new craze and it came home on Saturday when my Grandson sprinkled sugar unicorns onto a cake we'd baked with his Mum. It was called Unicorn Confetti!

But its the mixing of unicorns and excreta that had me staring in wonder. In a Smyths toy catalogue I saw that kids can buy Unicorn poop sets. Yep. Poop!

It can be shaped and sprinkled! 

This has to be the new baseline. Toy poo that can be jazzed up! For all I know it can be eaten! I don't know because I imagined a dreadful version of Action Man and had to stop reading!

Continuing this look at the popularity of waste materials I have come to realise that what I called wee in my youth has now been firmly supplanted by pee.

As far as I recall saying pee was swearing when I was a kid. As was fart [for which we said buff or trump]. These words now appear to be the accepted currency among kids and adults.  is this the normal deflation of language readers or a sign of the so-called dumbing down sweeping the known world?

So. Unicorns. Poo. Pee. Its all here on Moonbase!

GEEK SALAD MOONSHOT

Its been a year of new thingies.

New words and idea thingies.

Some have been received from the distant past and some from modern young minds.

Whilst watching the movie Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein I heard a word I knew from another arena. It popped up while the short one was unpacking Frankenstein's monster. He picked up some packaging and said 'Excelsior!'. 

Now, my own knowledge of this word comes entirely from Stan Lee. he signed off his editorials with Excelsior so I was surprised to hear it said in an old black and white Universal movie.

Looking it up it turns out that Excelsior is a US brand name for wood wool, a form of soft shavings used in packing crates such as the one containing the monster! I wonder if anyone uses it for Ebay stuff?

We live and learn!

I lived and learned more when a youngster told me about two primitive beasts I was unaware of: the Titanoboa and Gigantopithecus blacki.

The Titanoboa was a colossal snake of knee-trembling proportions. Up to 42 feet long the monster was the largest snake that ever slithered. Fortunately it slithered 60 million years ago!

Gigantopithecus blacki was equally impressive. At 10 feet tall, this ancient Orang Utan was the biggest primate that ever rubbed its chin. There is evidence that it brushed up against Home erectus, our own distant relative in an early reality version of Planet of the Apes!

Completing this smattering of new words is vog. Its a mash-up of volcano and smog and describes the sulfuric mist arising from volcanic explosions. Not to be confused with vlog, which is a video blog. 

Similarly, Laze is the name for the clouds of gas rising up from lava hitting the sea. Its a mash-up of lava and haze. Not to be confused with lazy, which is how I feel most Sundays!

The final word is about ideas. Its Moonshot. Or I should say a Moonshot. Taken from the Apollo moon landing, its now apparently used by the business and innovation worlds to capture their far-thinking notions. Ideas that shape the bright jet-pack future, planning that makes us wear sunglasses and gasp, projects that engineer blue skies floating above the drudgery of now. They are all Moonshots or Moonshot thinking. Google have a department called X doing just that.

I wonder what your Moonshots are readers?

From a living and learning aging geek I leave you with but one word, which I'm surely unfit to use:

Excelsior!

GEEKS LIKE US

I was a glasses-wearing long-haired geek at High School.

Back in 1971 when I first landed in the 'first year', things will have seemed rosy and bright like a sunlit democracy. But I was wrong.

High School was a desert island peppered with fighting tribes. Straying from your own tribe could prove dangerous. I learnt not to stray.

My tribe were the geeks. We weren't called that back then. We were seen as swats because we were in the highest stream. Nowadays British kids would call us try-hards.

Not everyone in my stream were Geeks. There were sporty types, captains of the school's teams, rock climbers [we lived not too far from the Lakes] and very prim and proper kids too. The girls in there were just as different. It was a catholic school so religion played a part as well.

Geeks like me tended to be into fantasy, sci fi, rock, Bowie and cover art. We were basically young hippies in school uniforms and in the fifth year we came into our own as uniforms were ditched.

The school also housed some very very tough kids too. These guys wrestled with lions before breakfast and thought David Bowie was a girl. Some girls were toughies too but it's the lads I remember because alas I stumbled into their sights now and then. Like every school we had bullies.

Hard was how these guys were described and how they saw themselves. Confusingly they would ask geeks 'Do you think your'e hard or what?'. I had never been hard. Quite the opposite, I was a softy and I knew it. A glasses-wearing long-haired wuss as the hard nuts would have said. They would abbreviate it to 'you speccy four-eyed c....!' just to make my day.

Brushing with the hard nuts was an unpleasant experience and for a time it blighted my school life in the third year. I joined the lunch time art club to get out of their way in the playground and corridors. It was my misfortune that they heard of my interest in martial arts. Yes I was a Bruce Lee fanatic but I wasn't a fighter. It was an ideas thing for me, the East, Bushido and all that. 

Luckily even hard nuts get bored and I re-entered the population freely and began to enjoy school again having learnt where and where to not go on campus.

I stuck with the geeks and in the fifth year we had our own part of the common room. We played ping-pong and even played our electric guitars there, discussing whether Neil Peart or Cozy Powell was the best rock drummer around!

I met a girl in the fifth year as well: JJ. What she saw in me I don't know as we were like chalk and cheese. But I must admit I thought she was gorgeous!

That final year at High School meandered on without event. I went out with JJ. I met up with the hairy geeks. We listened to Rush and Budgie. Exams loomed as they always do at the end. Life was teenage sweet.

But it was not to be. By the end of the fifth year life would never be the same for me or any of my family as our dear Mum died suddenly at the young age of 56. She never got to see so so many things.

Now, staring at 60, older than my Mum ever was, this glasses-wearing balding geek can look back with a rueful eye and make sense of the senseless things and smile at stuff that couldn't be smiled at back then.

Time for a coffee readers.

THE FADING OF THE BUG

Domestic matters gave ascended in my personal firmament of late so I've been absent from commenting on MB.

Bill B has kindly taken up the commenting reins and I'm very grateful.

This maybe the case for some while yet.

In the meantime I find I have a spare ten minutes to ruminate on less mundane things than our dodgy oven.

I recently took out some junk to the bin. One item made me think twice. It was an old kid's Spider-Man T-shirt. Being a super-hero related item I had real difficulty releasing it from my hands to fall into that dark maw of oblivion. 

Ever since I began collecting, buying and selling toys and collectables, I have been consistently fixated with super-heroes. This manifested itself most often in buying action figures and vehicles at car boot sales, but my addiction stretched much further into anything related to the super ones.

So chucking this T-shirt I realised that something had happened. About 10 to 15 years ago I would had trashed it. It would have been washed, ironed and put in the packing case ready for my next toy fair stand. I always had a few items of second-hand Marvel or DC clothing like this.

Letting it go confirmed that my obsession had waned dramatically and that the 'bug' had faded. Is fading. This is a salutary moment for a one-time zealous collector, the revelation that the spark that once drove me to spend hundreds of hours buying, selling, identifying, cataloguing, ebaying and toy fairing anything and everything super-hero/ sci-fi/ monster/ fantasy/ TV/ pop culture and space related was growing weaker.

Even worse, after the initial tang of nostalgia for my younger self, I am in some ways comfortable with this new less-manic frame of mind. No more rooting on the edges of old rubbish tips for Seventies crisps packets [ and yes, I found some!], no more getting up at the crack on a Sunday to spend all day in a cold sports centre behind my 'Madaboutmonsters' stand [it was great fun though] and no more squirrelling away anything remotely pop cultural. Smaug has well and truly left the Mountain.

Another good example is this Star Wars shaving foam can. I bought it ten years ago specifically for the can. 

Yes, I used the foam on various cakes but really it was the act of putting t away that I was interested in. It came out of hibernation last week as part of our de-clutter programme and like the T-shirt found itself teetering on the brink of the wheelie-bin.

It fell in and no ...... I didn't rake it out!

Is your collecting bug fading readers? Have you cut back or modified your squirreling?

BADLY PARKED KIDS BIKES, BATH SHELVES AND OTHER HOUSEHOLD STRANGENESS

I've noticed that I moan when I dry my face after washing it. In other words I groan involuntarily when I'm rubbing a towel over my face, especially my eyes! Do you towel moan?

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Do you take your shoes off as soon as you get through the door? I do if they're gardening shoes. There's a small row of them in what would be our porch in a different house. Street shoes get taken off in the hall and piled up. We used to have a shoe cupboard but it never got used! Sometimes the rebel in me lets my shoes fall off in the TV room! What do you do?

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I've noticed kids parking their bikes outside the local sweet shop. They're left flat on the ground sometimes in the way of pedestrians. Most rebellious! I'm not sure I was street-wise enough to do this. I think I parked my bike neatly against a shop wall or I may even have stood it up on the bike stand that most bikes had back in the Sixties. My chopper had one I'm certain. It made a most satisfactory sprung clicking sound. What did you do?

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A bathroom item recently found itself obsolete and upcycled in the garden as a flower pot base. I'm not even sure what its called but its function was to act as a shelf across the bath. Like a wooden Golden Gate bridge, it spanned the width of the tub offering sanctuary to such oddments as soap, loofer and nailbrush. The loofer and nailbrush went years ago so like the household phone the bath bridge has seen less and less action of late. Increasingly difficult to limbo under and irksome in the extreme when showering the slatted plank has sadly felt the spray of bubble bath for the last time. Have you a bath shelf?

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More domestic folk tales to come. What concerns you readers?

geek salad with space junk

Well the start of Advent is round the corner so I've started watching my traditional brace of seasonal movies I watch every year.

I've kicked off with a relative newcomer, Christmas Horror Story, which I've seen the last two years. Starring the brilliant William Shatner getting merry on Egg Nog, it depicts sinister events in the American town of Bailey Downs one Christmas. 

The main draws for me are the really excellent Krampus character and Bill Shatner's philosophical radio host. I rented it on You Tube for 2.49. Have you seen it?

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Regardless of the season mathematics rolls on regardless as does my inability to comprehend basic principles.

The latest brain melter, discussed with my daughter's fiance, is an almost unintelligible number,  zero to the power of zero!

Even more lobotomising is that it equals one!

How 0 x 0 can equal 1 is simply beyond me and counter-intuitive surely! If you can explain it simply I would be obliged!

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Presumably much mathematical discourse was had during the design and build of the latest NASA/ ESA mission, a space-bound bin lorry refuse truck!

Going on what I saw on today's news it looks like a large box of tricks sent up into orbit to snaffle some of the half million bits of machinery circling the globe. If I understood the schematic on TV the space bin spits out a net -like sheath to grab the floating crud and take it to burn up during re-entry.

It would make an excellent JR21 toy!

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With the cold winter nights drawing in here at Moonbase and around the Northern hemisphere its time to get your coats and jackets on.

What better jacket could you have than a S.W.O.R.D brand one!

I saw this rather nifty one on Ebay!

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More geekery soon