my mum's home-made clothes 1972

Did your relatives make you clothes for yourself or your dolls?

I don't remember my Mum making any clothes for my Action Man despite their being knitting patterns for jumpers and cardies for the fighting man.

I do have a slight recollection of something being made for my Fairylite Parker doll but unsure what. I can imagine the old Cockney would have liked a silk smoking jacket or a towel coat for lounging round Sindy's pool on his days off [or maybe Penny's herself! ooh la la]

I've often thought about attempting to make mock-ups of Fairylite Lady Penelope clothes or C21 Topo Gigio gear, which I'll just never find otherwise but my sheer lack of stitchery stops me and Missus Moonbase says no!

What my old Mum did make me though were clothes - for me!

These were very specifically oriental and made to measure to feed my obsession with the Martial Arts in the Kung-Fu fuelled days of 1972.

Mum's bespokery first tailored me a full Karate suit from some off-white cotton. It came complete with hemmed collars and coloured belt and I loved it. Real karate suits were dear and I wasn't ready to join a club. I just wanted to wear it at home and do a few kicks in the mirror!

Things got a bit more serious so next came a whole group of home-made patches for my own dojo in the cellar at home. They were circular and made of material that could be sewn onto a Karate suit or white Kung Fu T-Shirt. The round patches had an embroidered Chinese Butterfly Knife in the middle with the words Powis Road Dojo of Bugei stitched round it. 

The patch looked the business and my martial arts mates all got one as long as they trained in the cellar dojo regularly. Sadly no example of my Mum's marvelous patch-making skills exists now although I do still have all the designs for them.

Last but not least and perhaps the dog's katanas of all my Mum's Eastern clobber was a Hakama made just for me. 

The Hakama is basically a very wide pair of trousers, which when on look like a broad split skirt. Ankle length, the Hakama allows for fluid movement when practising Japanese martial arts such as Iai-do or swordsmanship, Aikido or the art of flowing body locks, Judo, the art of body throws and Kyudo or archery.

Although I had a go at all of these arts in my own dojo and garden, my own formal Japanese thing was Judo and I wore my Hakama with pride during public demonstrations performed by the club I was at in Ashton, Preston. The Hakama just added that little extra when we exhibited knife evasion and basic sword movements.

I still have my Mum's home-made Hakama and it is very special to me and I occasionally don it to feel that Seventies samurai in my veins once more!

Along with the Katana sword my folk's bought me from Grattan's catalogue they are some of the very few things that I own from my childhood and early teens.

Here's my Hakama, now roughly 45 years old!

Did you have any clothes made for you or your favourite Action Men and dolls readers?

cultured! my first and best yogurt

I don't know about you but modern yogurts taste thin to me. Fruitless.

I try all sorts: from Aldi, from Lidl, from Tesco.

None of them have the thick fruit I grew up with.

My first recollection of yogurt is still my best, from way back in the Sixties or Seventies.

It was a strawberry Ski yogurt in a glass jar and foil lid [ or it may have been screw on? ]

You could see the fruit inside. Whole strawberries! Yes, whole ones! They were out of this world.

To this day I don't know if those strawberries went in fresh or were they the equally delicious tinned variety?

Doesn't really matter. Strawberry Ski yogurt with whole fruit in a glass jar has never been beaten.

Did you eat yogurt as a kid readers?

secret drawers of childhood

There are two secret drawers* I can think of from my youth.

The first was a small drawer at the foot of an old fashioned bakelite corded telephone. You know the ones, we grew up with them in the Sixties. Huge clunky black units with a big silver dial.  They rang like police panda cars. At the bottom was a small thin drawer with a slender front grip. It slid out when pulled it.

I've no idea what should have gone in there but I loved to slip in a small Action Man map or a Haunted House Wanda the Wicked card, my calling card back then!

What on earth was that drawer for? It was too small for take-away menus and I'm not even sure that there were any in Nineteen Sixties Lancashire! Fish and chips was it and you had to personally go to the chippy for those!

What did you place in that telephone drawer readers?

Writing about this has reminded me of another secret drawer, although I'm not sure I knew about it as a young 'un. Its the sliding tray at the base of a toaster, which comes out in order to clean off all the million crumbs piling up from lots of pieces of toast. These days I take the tray outside and clean it off in the garden for the birds, which for some odd reason is strangely satisfying. Like the bottom of a bird cage I doubt there is any other use for the crumb tray!

The other secret drawer I did know about as a nipper and used regularly was the front number plate of the JR21 Fab 1 toy car. This number plate ejected outwards to reveal a small oblong recess behind it. This was ideal for shoving notes in about 1. your fave girls at skool 2. what you'd like to do to your big brothers next time there was a bedroom war and 3. the names of your top pop stars like Marc Bolan, David Bowie and Slade.

Do you know what I'm talking about readers? What did you do with the Fab1 drawer?

Are there any other clandestine drawers and recesses from your youth?

* imagine if Marvel had called their classic comics Secret Drawers rather than Secret Wars! ha ha.

wizzzer by mattel anyone?

I think I remember this toy, WIZZZER by Mattel.

I saw this pic on Ebay.

I might be getting mixed up with gyroscopes. It is a sort of one.

Its that egg shape that rings a bell.

Did you have one?

the world's best car boot sale

Little Miss Moonbase and her partner have gone to have a stall at a Sunday car boot sale this morning. Me and Missus Moonbase are babysitting baby Grandson.

We're kaput already and there's another 3 hours to go!

We used to love going to car boot sales and it got me thinking: what would I love to find at one if I could find anything at all?

I think it would have to be something along the following lines - I'm not after much! -

1. A whole box of loose Corgi Rockets, track and the Sky Park Tower, keys and everything so I could build a huge circuit round the front room and pretend I was 8 again! A few red-line Hot Wheels wouldn't go amiss either!

2. The entire run of TV21 comics, which I would spend the whole summer browsing through on a sun-lounger aided by a crate of cold Becks

3. A box of plastic Century 21 toys including the Nuclear Ferry in both its blue and white versions, together with the plastic Hover Tank over on Paul V's ace site and to finish maybe the gorgeous Submarine Aircraft Carrier, boxed or loose, I'm not fussy!

I could have said the Project SWORD Moon Base set but I think that Bill B would have found it before me and smuggled it home!

If all else fails I'd be happy with a copy of James Clavell's Shogun in paperback!

What would you love to find readers?

the death of probability

This week I watched an old flick called The Quiet Earth, a movie made in New Zealand in the 1980's. Often cited as a brilliant sci-fi film I have been intrigued by it for years and took the plunge when I saw it was on You Tube.

The story is essentially a variation of The Omega Man about the last person on Earth. The catastrophe at the start of The Quiet Earth is an accidental apocalypse brought on by an experiment called Project Flashlight.

The last man on Earth is played exceptionally well by the leading man and his descent into near-madness is fabulously well acted. The introduction of two more survivors is fascinating but it is the final scene shown below which really delivers with its towering clouds flanking an emerging Saturn rising over the horizon.

This enigmatic vision made me think about that man's final day. I imagine that this last day and the end of all nature has captured peoples' imaginations for millennia. An example which I personally find very poignant is this painting by Stephen Lack called Boys in the Last Tree shown below [Stephen Lack was the actor who played Cameron Vale in the sci-fi film Scanners].

The end of days also makes me consider mathematical ideas like probability and the concept of certainty. What happens to them when the laws of physics break down during extinction level events like entering a black hole or the death of the universe? OK, there won't be any scientists left to measure anything but will probability and certainty continue as long as time does in some form?

I ask this as a kid was recently faced with the probability of the sun rising each day. Clearly its a dead cert and I would have thought a yardstick of certainty at that. It got me thinking though about the last day on Earth when it will cease to be a certainty anymore.

Have you any thoughts on this matter readers or is it a certainty that you've logged off?

shogun: a novel of japan by james clavell

When I was a kid I bought this novel for my old Mum for Christmas or her birthday one year, Shogun by James Clavell.

Shogun was also a popular series she watched on the telly in the early Seventies and this was the novel that went with it or it was based on.

I think I watched it with her too. I know we watched the Water Margin with old Dad as well.

I've never read Shogun and plan to get hold of it this year and give it a spin.

Do you remember the TV series or the book readers?

tatooine park

I knew Kevin's new Triceratops in the desert diorama [below] reminded me of something in my past. Its this magazine cover on Tomart's Action Figure Digest: Toy Fair 97 depicting a storm trooper riding a don't know what on the desert planet of Tatooine I imagine.

I used to love Action Figure Digest and bought a copy whenever I could. Tomart did a great job keeping us up to date with new toy action figure lines as well as describing vintage toys too.

One particular special issue was one of the first toy magazines I ever got in the 90's. I'll have to dig it out. I know its got a Ming the Merciless Defenders of the Earth serpent toy on the cover.

Did you get Tomart's Action Figure Digest mag? Is it still going?