Window Shopping

Thank heavens for the power of the internet. Sometimes it is quite literally like the proverbial time machine, throwing up things from ages past. I have a great memory for most things, but sometimes, even the best memories need a little jog. I have been a member of several local history sites on social media for some time, now as I am still desperate to find a photograph of my old house in Dingle, Liverpool, from the sixties. I am still searching, but amazingly, I have turned up a couple of wonderful shots of the immediate area, which bring pleasant memories flooding back.

The top photograph shows the main shopping street, Park Road in Dingle, where me and my mum would go on a regular basis and I would almost invariably come home with some small toy. Part way down this line of shops - its not clear where - there would have been a fantastic toy shop, packed to the rafters with all kinds of goodies and a regular haunt for me.

Just down the road from my house was the corner shop, owned by a Mr and Mrs Grace, a lovely middle aged couple who had a grocery section on one side of the shop and a big sweet counter on the other and a 'penny tray' of sweets and novelties which I could choose to spend my ill-gotten pocket money on. Here I would find the likes of these chewing gum filled plastic tanks, or capsule toys with rubber monsters inside.

Graces also sold ice creams and lolly ices such as Sea Jet, Zoom and Fab and I distinctly recall the shopkeeper telling my mum that a new lolly was due to arrive to coincide with tv debut of Captain Scarlet - the Orbit!

But it was just today, that I finally found an image of one of my real favourite shops, 'Walters' - a real treasure trove of all kinds of stuff, including Hong Kong toys and mail order items. In these hallowed windows there would always be a great range of Imperial Space sets or a Project SWORD model, prominently displayed front and centre. Xmas was especially exciting as the window would be full to bursting with the latest imports and weird and wonderful toys he had secured from the local warehouses - always the more obscure and cheaper items such as LP, Multiple Toymakers or other foreign makes. Its a shame the photograph is so blurred, i'd love to look in that window one more time! 

BRIAN CANT ATE MY TEA

As part of Operation De-Clutter Moonbase we are parting with LP's.

Some, like Led Zep, are too hard to part with but some, like this, are easy because they weren't mine as a youth..

In the 90's and 00's I bought in TV and film-related records regularly for my toy stall and Ebay shop. I still have lots left.

Here's one you may recall, songs from Play School and Play Away. I must have watched these TV shows when I had my tea around 5pm. Does that sound right?

Can you name the characters on the front cover?

Very nostalgic is the back cover, which hosts a gallery of the TV presenters at the time. So many familiar faces! 

Do you remember of them?

Today we're looking through the mucky window!

REMEMBER COUNT DANTE: THE DEADLIEST MAN ALIVE ?

Count Dante was the bearded guy in the small ads at the back of comics who promised the Dim Mak during the Kung Fu craze.

Appearing next to ads for X-Ray specs and real soil from Dracula's castle, the Count nearly jumped out of the page dim makking the lot of us.

The Dim Mak was the Death Touch, a secret technique infamous in the murky worlds of Kung Fu fighting. The Count, who appeared in the ads with clawed hands and beard, also offered an ominous booklet called Worlds Deadliest Fighting Secrets.

I loved staring at these adverts and pondering the true deadliness of the so-called Dim Mak. Being consumed by all things Kung Fu I'm surprised I never sent off for his booklet seen in the comics. Did you?

Alas, Dante's fighting life was really not the stuff of comics at all. One of his friends died in a battle with a rival karate dojo in 1965.

Count Dante himself died very young in 1975 at the age of 36.

The fascination with his life and the Dim Mak continues though and you just need to google his name. One of the more interesting online things is this 10 minute documentary about his life on You Tube.

Do you remember the Dim Mak? If you do your'e still alive.

JUST LIKE ACTION MAN'S: A KID'S LIFE-SIZE TANK!

hi Woodsy, 

what do you think of this? A tank in snow!

Its as if Topper Toys had made tanks for kids to ride in! Accessories would have included he Johnny Seven one man army machine gun... if only!!  

Regards Mark J 
Southcoast Base 

https://youtu.be/94z9H3wBpXE 

THE PROJECT SWORD ANNUAL ON THE WAYBACK MACHINE

In case you missed it when it was live, here's the fabulous page on the Project SWORD Annual from the now sadly defunct Gerry Anderson Complete Comics History site. The research the authors did is just brilliant. 

It can now be found on the Wayback Machine.

https://web.archive.org/web/20160314055305/http://www.technodelic.pwp.blueyonder.co.uk/UpAnnSpec/ProjectSWORDAnnual.htm

Have you got the SWORD Annual? What do you think?

Kev's Doctor Who Gallifreyan Staser From Scratch

Since Doctor Who has had a mention on the blog recently, here is a replica Gallifreyan Staser, the sidearm of the Time Lords' Chancellery Guard. 

I made it this month. It features in 80's Dr. Who.

Kevin D

A STIR OF COCOA

I haven't seen my old Mum for 45 years. I've spent the vast majority of my life without her being around and now I'm approaching 60.

Its a weird feeling trying to remember her from so far back. My ability to recall my childhood and my youth is fading, certainly in any detail. There are just foggy snatches of recollections peppered with the inanimate objects that made up our lives back then.

This blog is an attempt to remember. Its probably to reconnect with my childhood. Dare I say it, its maybe even to reconnect with my Mum, who died when I was 15.

I've survived the loss but I wouldn't want it to happen to anyone else, which alas, it does all too often.

Occasionally I half-remember things, stirrings like undeveloped photos which just aren't clear anymore.

For instance this afternoon I made an instant hot chocolate drink.

I had a feeling that I drank them as a kid too.

More than that I saw the flicker of a brown box packet - maybe Rowntrees - and a white china cup and saucer. I think my Mum made me hot chocolate in a proper cup with a saucer.

But it wasn't like the Nesquik I've just quickly made. 

I sense that she warmed milk slowly in a saucepan on the stove and spooned in deep dark scoops of powder, stirring all the time with perhaps a wooden spoon.

It was cocoa I think. I think she called it cocoa too and not hot chocolate. 

The drink itself, swirling in the cup, was a rich gloss brown with a ring of froth on the top like a curl. She must have added sugar because I'm getting sweetness too.

I can almost hear the chink of the cup on the saucer as I sense drinking that delicious hot cocoa. It was quite scrumptious I think.

I may have to try to get a box packet of Rowntrees cocoa.

I have to try to re-create that drink I had 50 years ago!

Do you remember cocoa readers?

DR.WHO COLLECTABLES GALLERY

Check out the Space Museum's fab gallery of Dr.Who toys and memorabilia. Its divided into separate decades to have a gander. I love the 1960's section!

http://thespacemuseum.net/1965-gallery/

Have you any Dr.Who toys?