PARKS BATMAN WATER PISTOL RE-IMAGINED

 Ever since seeing the old Parks Batman Water Pistol I've liked its sleek design.

Here's my re-imagined version of it using parts from two modern water pistols bought in a discount shop. I sawed, glued and filed and painted it black. Wotan Bill kindly sent me the fabulous decal.

Not quite Parks' smooth biff-bang design but it'll do for the cabinet.

If you can find any of the colours that Parks issued their water pistol in you could paint yours black too!

Further Glimpses of Childhood

We are still at Juniors place.

Here's the bundle on his window sill. The sarellite dish badge is from Jodrell Bank, a UK space listening post. The tin contains his milk teeth. The Tooth Fairy was broke after that lot!

Wallpaper and mobile

The local playground, a reminder of my own childhood. Cold, wintry slides and empty spaces.

Lonely distant footy fields we used to call recs, short for recreation spaces I think.

Junior's rocket launcher in the playground. His double jump technique sent the foam rockets sky high!

Did you go to playgrounds and recs as a kid readers?

ITS AN ADVENTURE PLAYGROUND!

We took the Moonbase Grandson to an adventure playground this morning. You know, zip slide, wobbly logs, rope ladders, wooden forts, revolving cupolas and swinging bridges.

He's too small really and was quite happy running up and down the slopes of the forest park it was set in.

I don't recall adventure playgrounds when I was a kid. I'm pretty sure there wasn't one in Preston in the Sixties. Certainly not one near me, I would have remembered the zip slide or death slide, although I did send my Action Man down the washing line!

Later in the early eighties I noticed more of them springing up and when I went to the Continent they had paid staff to help kids and parents make the most of the big playgrounds.

Did you go to an adventure playground readers?

SPACE ANTI-TANK GUN-TYPE TOYS

I do love this toy of Bill's, the hilariously named LUNAR DUMP. Its on of a quartet by Parks. What interest's me here is it's rear 'turret'. There's something wholly futuristic about angled turrets pointing to the sky. I suppose as well they remind me of ant-aircraft guns from WWII [is that the same as a flak gun?]. Maybe I mean retro-futuristic? Anyways. in this case the turret is actually a telescopic crane.

Another fine turret is the SpaceX LAMA or Lunar Anti-Meteorite Attacker. Based originally on Ed Valigursky's book cover for Sinister Barrier, the LAMA fires satellites for detecting meteorites.

Can you think of any more angled turrets like this readers?