Fangs for the Memories! New Year's Eve in Whitby

 A day trip to Whitby on the Yorkshire coast is always a treat. Twinned with Anchorage, Alaska, this old fishing town is a feast of sights, sounds, seagulls and salty chips.

Here are a few snaps I took.

There's an old die cast shop. I bought some great Super fast there last year.

An Army Surplus with Action Men! 

The really old toy corner shop on the market square. I bought a Fairylite Stingray here years ago for a fiver! 

And some black and white shots of Whitby's old gothic streets.

St. Hilda's on the hill.

Henrietta Street end

The harbour

The lights of dusk

Dark Henrietta Street.

The famous steps.

The Board Inn.

A Snicket to the shore.

Old town.

Christmas Spirit.

Dracula! Bram Stoker wrote it here!

Arguments Yard. Settle this! 

Town centre.

Over the Bridge.

Christmas tree.

Have you got a favourite seashore town like Whitby? 

KRAMPUS IN WHITBY

Check out the Krampus parade in Whitby on the Yorkshire coast this month. Its scary! Whitby is where Bram Stoker wrote Dracula, it has a huge Goth festival as well, so old Krampus fits right in!

We weren't there but enjoy this Facebook footage nevertheless. Is there a Christmas parade near you? Any Krampus action?

https://fb.watch/oRK5w3Otgs/

Drac's Plaque

This is the blue plaque outside the erstwhile residence of one Bram Stoker in Whitby,  East Yorkshire.

You been to Whitby?

GLIMPSES OF A WHITBY CHRISTMAS

As the glitter settles for another year on the shadows of Christmas here are a few snaps of our festive break this year in the harbour town of Whitby on Yorkshire's east coast.

Its a place I can truly recommend for its salty air, chewy whelks, seagulls mewing, narrow alleyways like Loggerheads Yard, whale bones, fog-bound streets, small shops, charity shops, the best fish and chips and general all-round misty period nautical charm. Imagine a place by the sea concocted by both Dickens and Bram Stoker and you have it.

The view from our attic bedroom: the Abby and St. Hilda's on top of the hundred steps.

Whitby Abbey ruins in shadow, the inspiration for Stoker's Carfax in Dracula.

The Builder-Joiner-Undertaker business opposite our house. I thought it said Butchers! Yikes!

Copies of Dracula in the Old Town.

Boxing Day night when the toys come alive.

My small haul of Superfast cars from Whitby and a Jeek Tunneln die-cast by Shinsei given to me by my daughter for Christmas.

More to come on the toys.

Time for another advocat!

What did you get for Christmas readers?

VISITING WHITBY'S OLD TOY SHOPS

Me and the Missus joined family in Whitby on th Yorkshire coast over Christmas. It was good to get back to this coastal jewel and stay in the town again after a few years' absence.

Besides the aura of Stoker's Dracula [written there] and the ensuing gothic sub- culture infusing the old fog-bound streets it was also good to catch up on the die-cast cars always on offer in a couple of Whitby's many independent shops.

One of them is the famous vintage toy kiosk on the corner of the old town square. Its more of a lean-to than a full blown shop and at the best of times can only fit one or two people in. With Covid there's even less space so I stood outside, staring at the well-stocked window displays and chatted to the proprietor, who I have bought from for over 30 years. I didn't purchase this time round but we reminisced about older times when I'd bought for instance a Fairylite Stingray off him for a fiver. That was years ago and it was good to see the kiosk still going strong after all this time. Do you know it?

A more conventional shop and equally reduced in accessibility is Collectables Past and Present on Skinner Street. This store holds a huge stock of old and new die-cast, bric a brac and models. With entry reduced to the two people my Son-in-Law went in first with Moonbase Junior, who came out with a nice Corgi 007 Moonraker Space Shuttle for £12.95 that his Dad had bought him. Loose and minus the satellite the Grandson was suitably chuffed. 

Next the daughter went in and bought a Russian ceramic polar bear for £25, which she saw in the window and loved partly dow to the association Whitby has with these noble animals. 

Next in was yours truly along with Moonbase Junior again and all we wanted to see was the purveyor's Matchbox Superfast stock. I bought 8 lovely Matchbox for £15 including a felt-pennable scrap Mercedes Benz regular wheels for Junior to do up. 

I'll blog the ones I got soon, which included a gorgeous purple Dodge Charger. Lovely!

 Last but not least, the daughter took Missus Moonbase in and bought her Mum a post-Christmas gift for £20, a nice ceramic ornamental green hare. The Missus was touched. After they came out the shop promptly closed!

Have you been to either of these long-established die-cast shops readers? Did you get any die-cast for Christmas?

A UFO HAS LANDED BY BILL EV

Sometime in the summer of 2005, I spent a week up in Yorkshire with my friend, Celtica Radio presenter and the stations Founding Director Dave (Cooky) Cook.

During that time, we visited Whitby, and there found a little shop off one of the narrow cobbled streets. The shop was an Aladdin's Cave of Product Enterprise die casts; Eagles, XL5s, Stingrays, SPVs and SHADO equipment which were all in abundance. There was also a beautiful SHADO Interceptor and UFO for sale at £29.99. Stupidly, I thought it was too much to pay, so I passed up on it.

I've been kicking myself ever since.

Cooky and I have often talked about this time, and that I should have just bought the blessed thing. But with the prices such precision models now command, its not something I'd never, ever have suggested a treasured friend to get for me as a gift.

A few days ago, a signed-for package arrived via Royal Mail. So, expecting something else I'd ordered on Ebay turning up (which we'll hear about in a later posting), my first thought was "This is a bigger box than I expected."

I carefully opened it only to find it was this…

Inside, was this beautiful pristine Konami 1/144, or 1/200th scale UFO. Mint, in a mint box, in the sealed plastic bag. And a personal message from Cooky and his wife Angela. I know how much these things fetch on Ebay so I rang them up to say thank you and also to tell them off about spending that amount of money on me.

I honestly can't put into words how perfect the build of this model is. Konami are known for their television accurate models, (I have more than a few of the others in my collection) and this is no exception. Using the 1971 UFO Annual as reference, this is perfect. 

 In fact, because its been made with modern materials and production methods, the UFO is better finished than the actual models used in that TV show itself. For the team of craftsman who created this model, it must have been a labour of love. The lines are clean and super accurate, and even the veins and inner section spins with the clear dome and base staying static. 

 Certainly, if some production company wanted to make a new series of the UFO TV show, and Xerox the look of the UFOs. They could scan these beautiful models for CGI distance shots, and possibly close-ups too.

Here are a couple of shots next to a few other famous craft that I have which are roughly in scale...

Of course I'm very grateful to their kindness and for thinking of me like this. So thank you Cooky and Angela you have of course not only added to my valued collection, with a piece that was missing. But its nowhere near as valued as your friendship means to me.

Bill Ev

UK

RENFIELD'S DENTAL RELISH

Whether its the book I've been reading called Fangland [didn't enjoy it] or my musings about Transylvanians in Whitby for a possible Sarge story, our dog Blue has made the household fly his sworn enemy.

As its summer and the windows are open we have a variety of domestic guests flying round: tiny flies, small moths, huge moths, the impossibly long-legged Crane Flies [ I wrote that yesterday about Kris Kristofferson! Maybe he's a human crane fly!] and the more chunky house fly. If you read my report yesterday then you'll know we nearly had fridge flies too.

Blue isn't keen on any form of incoming. Unscheduled flights near his face, especially when he's busy resting, are guaranteed to raise the security level to DEF DOG 1 [or is it 5?]. Any further incursions into Blue's hairspace will result in immediate and often fatal retaliatory strikes.

Lifted by unseen canine forces Blue will launch himself into the air off the settee like a missile and snap his jaws tightly shut around any stray fly or bluebottle. Sometimes the hunt goes mobile as the fly fleas [can you say that? fly fleas?] to the rest of the house with a crazed dog at its tail.

The chances of success are high as Blue is what the RAF call an ace. In fact he's the local squad leader for RUF but I don't know what it stands for.

Its a sorry sight to see a fly taken out by a dog. Often they are maimed and hobble along the floor fatally wounded. The old adage 'Wouldn't hurt a fly' always grieves me but not for long. Like a noble knight Blue always curtails their misery with a swift bite and a swallow.

Yes, Blue eats flies. A munch, a lick of the lips and they're gone.

He reminds me of Renfield in Dracula. I'm unsure of how this is explained in the novel as its years since I've read Bram's Whitby-inspired tale but I can clearly see the actor in Coppola's film version who plays Renfield locked up in Carfax asylum.

Flies are the lives for the Master. He collects fly-lives in the hope that Bad Vlad will promote him to Chief of Carfax Blood Bank. Small lives will get him there. Bigger lives like mice and even, yes, a kitten, would get him there quicker thinks the ill-advised Renfield.

I wonder if Blue is secretly Renfield. There are certainly no mice in the house and next door's cat drives him wild. He does already have very sharp teeth though, Renfield's dental relish.

Come to think of it Blue could be farming fly eggs in our Fridge! Advanced Renfield Tech. More flies. More lives for the Master!

It puts a whole new spin on the record label HMV, His Master's Voice! That pup is clearly being sent off to capture bluebottles like Blue!

Have you got a Renfield dog?

SUNDAY DRIVER

Today, I had the distinct pleasure of visiting Whitby with Woodstock and his lovely wife. During our ramble in the fresh sea air, we took in the sights of Dracula country, such as Whitby Abbey and the house that Bram Stoker stayed in while writing. Before partaking of the local fish and chips, we took a stroll around the shops and Woodsy showed me a tiny kiosk in the town square, which sold diecast models. Needless to say, as it was Sunday, it was closed. Camera in hand, I managed to take some tantalising snaps through the barred windows...

MOONBASE GOES TO WHITBY

Whitby harbour [picture: esk railway]

Yesterday we spent the day on the Yorkshire coast. Staithes, Runswick Bay and the fishing town of Whitby. It was the first hot Saturday of the year and the great British public were out in force to go crabbing and eat eat fish n chips next to the North Sea. Sat on a bench staring out at the ocean, an old man said to me: "There's a sharp horizon. It's going to be good". He was right.

Whitby is a small but important English fishing port, an even more important tourist town and the erstwhile residence of Bram Stoker whilst he wrote his gothic novel Dracula. For me and Missus Moonbase it's quite simply an escape to another world. Just two hours from our house, it's a home from home. We've been going there and to its neighboring villages for so long as a family it feels like we've never been away. Yet every visit is magical as I'm sure it is for many of you who have favourite seaside haunts.

For me personally Whitby is the birthplace of my collecting bug. It was in 1989 on our first trip that I found the first Project SWORD annual I'd seen since I was a kid in '69, in a second hand bookshop called Cuvvins. Twenty years had passed since I'd seen all those wonderful colour illustrations by Malcolm Stokes and the like. It was a revelation that such things still existed! 

Over the next 25 years visiting the Yorkshire coast I found robots, rockets, books, monsters and a Fairylite Stingray for good measure! It was all great fun.

Do you have a favourite seaside place readers?

Gothic Whitby: steps to the Abbey ruins [picture: the guardian]