Bella, from Bella's Toy Chest, shows off her latest haul. Mostly 1980s onwards, but towards the end of the clip there are a couple of key rings from The Munsters - Lily and Eddie. I have never seen these before. Very nice. After a bit of checking (I could not really find much on these), there were also figures of Herman and Grandpa. I seriously doubt these are 1960s vintage, but can not be sure. From the few photos I could find on Ebay showing the underside of the base, they have © date Kayro-Vue Pro. and Made in China. The date is very hard to read, it could be 1964 or 1984, and would a 1960s vintage US toy really have been made in China ? In the comments section, one reader does say he thinks they are late 1980s. They also look rather too new to be from the 1960s. Any keyring experts out there ?
Did your Mum and Dad ever take a friend with you on holiday? A friend of yours so that you had someone of your own age with you and not just the oldies?
It looks good on paper but the reality can be something quite different. The beauty of friendships is that you can come and go in them on a daily or even hourly basis. You decide when you've had enough.
Holidays are different. Like a nice prison sentence, they usually last at least a week and your'e stuck in one place. If your folks convince you to take a mate then you are stuck with them in one place too, come what may.
My parents once took a mate of mine on holiday. I wasn't 100% about it but they felt sorry for him so I did. He'd been knocked over earlier in the year and his parents weren't planning on a holiday that year for some reason. It was around 1975 and we went to the Isle of Man in a guest house in Douglas.
It wasn't great from the get go. I realised that friendships can be stretched when I got over excited at a amusement arcade, spent all my pennies too soon on the one armed bandits and asked my friend to lend me a quid since he still had a lot left. He refused, which I thought was most annoying, especially as he was our guest! He should willingly lend me dosh if he has more than me!
Much worse was to come. I got pally with a girlie in the guest house and feelings developed quickly as they do when you're 14. My friend noticed this and proceeded to muscle in. He won and the girlie only had eyes for him for the rest of the week. I remember feeling gutted and hurt, but mostly I just wanted my friend to not be there with us.
I have a feeling that may have been the last summer holiday I had with my folks. I can't be sure. My mate didn't ruin it completely. I can tell that when I look at the photo's now and then. I'm obviously having fun anyway, which I'm pleased about for my parents' sake.
Did you ever take mates with you on holiday as a kid?
When I was a young teenager in the early 1970's Pink Floyd were massive. Its hard to describe now just how big they were, almost god-like. You never saw them on the telly but they're LP's were like holy works.
Me and my mates adored Floyd, especially my mate Pete. We'd gather in his colossal shed at the end of the garden and stick Dark Side of the Moon on the stereo. We'd stare at that cover and wonder at the life beyond the rainbow prism as we melted away to the melodic heaven of the the Great Gig in the Sky.
But it was their next album, Wish You Were Here that really blew our jets. From the burning man sleeve to the fabulous tracks we were smitten in a way that only Floyd could smite you. The stand-out track was easily the epic Shine on You Crazy Diamond and we all shook our heads in reverence of such deck-defining material. For me though, it was Welcome to the Machine, which I liked the most. I've always like songs about machines and robots, like Bowie's Saviour Machine, so it fitted right in.
My mates tried other prog bands for an equivalent surge; Sad Cafe, ELP, Tangerine Dream, Camel and Genesis to name the best. Genesis were probably the nearest to Floyd in terms of reverence for their work on albums like The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway and Flick [or was F*ck!] of the Tail. But in reality Genesis were sadly in the tepid aftertow of Floyd and never reached the Olympian heights of Waters, Gilmour and co. Only Yes were more important to me in the prog stakes, their Yes Album and Tales from Topographic Oceans becoming lifelong friends and LP's I often listen to even now.
Anyways, back to Pink Floyd. I saw an excellent documentary about them the other night and it became clear just how affected they were when original band member Syd Barrett left the band in the early days. They mourned him in words and song as of he were dead, which I suppose to them he was musically, no longer part of the project he founded in the Sixties. They showed a photo of a bloated bald Syd visiting the recording of Wish in 1975 and it was shocking how he'd changed from the elfin minstrel to this.
Like many singer-songwriters from the Sixties and Seventies who simply faded away like Syd Barrett or died too young like Nick Drake, the tragedy of these losses can linger on like myths. In the early Noughties I bid on an Ebayed artwork by Syd, a sort of wooden book-end I think, but I didn't win. I think I spent the money I would have used on a book from the library of John Entwistle of the Who. It'll go to my Grandkids one day I imagine.
From Wish You Were Here in 1975, my hairy mates and I had to wait till 1977 to hear anything new from Floyd. It came in the form of a flying pig and was called Animals, another slice of pink genius. But by then Punk and not Pink was sweeping the UK and the longhairs like me were in retreat, retiring to our hobbit holes, licking our wounded gatefolds and as Syd would have said, setting our controls for the heart of the sun.
Were you Floydian at all readers?
Remember the old Gerry Anderson connected beat group, The Spectrum?
Here's some info about one of its members now in the USA.
