AT HOME ON THE RANGE

I love this tinplate shooting gallery, a thrilling toy of the future!

The graphics are wonderful.

Looks like it shoots little wooden balls.

A classic don't you think?

Its a Wind Up

I'm clearly guilty of hypocrisy now, as after spending many years claiming I don't like tin toys, I remembered I have another one. Its a modern repro by Schylling of a Russian car track.

Clockwork wound, two disks revolve moving tiny litho buses and taxi's in and out of a tunnel and pair of terminals.

I had one when I was about 7 and my sister got me this one a few years back gor my birthday.

I was always fascinated by watching the little vehicles pop in and out of the tunnels.

Nowadays, the vintage look is even more appealing, even if it is tin!

 

DOCTOR WHO: SPAWN OF THE GUPPIES

Our friend told us about her fish.

She has about six - guppies and fantails and the like. They're all named after characters from Doctor Who.

There's the Cyberman, Sarah Jane, Luke and more. Sarah Jane and the Cyberman bred and spawned but the other fish ate all the fertilised eggs! They must have been hungry daleks!

Most interesting is the Tardis ornament resting on the gravel floor. 

What do you reckon those fish do when they go in that Tardis?

Have you got goldfish? Have you named anything after a Sci-Fi show?

THE SPOILS OF WAR

 

Boxing up the contents of the house is throwing up some stuff for sadly throwing out.

One artefact of many destined for the abyss is this oil painting I did in 1991 "Holy War", inspired by the terrible conflict in the Gulf. I was exactly half the age I am now when I did it!

Water damage has rendered it unhangable but I never like throwing out 'art'.

Would you chuck it out?

One thing's that staying is a set of old books I inherited from my late Dad, the Second Great War by Sir John Hammerton published by the Waverley Book Company.

I have a good bundle of these volumes.

This is volume one.

They're all nicely bound and have stood the test of time.

I'll give them my daughter one day.

Have you any inherited books?

THE FALL

The Missus and I have just finished a marathon box set watch which we started a couple of weeks ago.

The series in question is The Fall from 2013-2016.

It starred Gillian Anderson - yes Scully no less! - in the lead role of a SIO, which I found out meant Senior Investigating Officer, although a lot of other folk stuck their oar in.

Being once voted the most beautiful woman in the world Gillian caused a right old stir down the Belfast nick but once her colleagues had finished gawping the show settled down to some serious crime fighting. Gillian had lost none of her patient detection honed on the X-Files!

The crimes in the Fall were heinous and many and became known early on as the work of the Belfast Strangler, although it wasn't clear how many were involved, stranglers or victims.

Without giving anything away I can recommend the Fall if you have a spare hour for about 20 nights. I think there's around 20 episodes over 5 seasons. It ended in 2016. Its all available on Netflix or iPlayer.

There is rumour of a series 6 and we'd watch it for sure.

Now Scully's gone again we're watching Beck.

Have you seen it?

HARDBACKED MEMORIES

Which books were in your family home as a kid?

My Mum and Dad had lots of Readers' Digests thick magazines in a bookcase, which I think they got monthly by subscription. There were also Readers' Digest books like road maps and countryside guides. 

I remember novels by John le Carre - Smiley's People - and Zoe Oldenbourg, Jack Higgins - Storm Warning, Alistair Maclean - Where Eagles Dare - and those Pan Horrors edited by Herbert Van Thal, the grisly covers of which enthralled me as a kid.

There were dusty poetry hardbacked books by Walter Scott, Robert Browning and a yellow volume called Casements.

There were big coffee table books too, such as the Tower of London and some old ones on the Second World War, an entire series, which I inherited when my parents passed away. I have a few of the other books I mentioned too. 

I have been steadily trying to 're-create' my parent's bookshelf, a bit sad I know, but its been fun looking for those books at car boots and charity shops. I've done quite well over the years.

What do you recall about your family's bookcase?

WILL'S WIZZERS

Loosely related to Wotan's recent post of alternatively powered Mattel Revver cars, in the 70s they made spin buggies...powered by their wizzer gyroscope toys! Anyone remember them? 

Will O.

MUM! I FEEL SICK! CAN I STAY OFF SCHOOL?

Well its Saturday morning here in the UK. I should be watching The Arabian Nights or Skippy [I wish] but instead I've been video calling my Grandkids. Little Miss Moonbase has terrible chicken pox, really quite big ones, all blistery and red. Ouchies she calls them!

My old workmate was telling me that she took her own kids to a chicken pox party! I'd never heard of one but my Missus had when I told her. Sometimes I think I just went to work and was oblivious to everything else when I was a young Dad except for what was going on in our home. 

I don't remember having the pox as a kid but I 'm sure I had 'cos I can recall copious amounts of Calamine lotion being blathered all over me. Pink and slimy and cold. And that was just me! ha ha.

In fact I think I had all the big childhood diseases - Chicken Pox, Measles and Mumps. I can also recall being jabbed and boosted for stuff. I still have the little depression on my upper arm like the Death Star dimple. That was the booster, a foretaste of what we all would have to deal with 55 years later with Corona!

There was also the little cube of sugar with some pink liquid on it - medicinal compound maybe - which we ate at school like a pony to protect us from Polio.

Beyond fresh milk and the nit nurse at school I can't remember any more childhood medicinal matters. My milk teeth will have fallen out at some point at home and gone to the Tooth Fairy with big pockets. We still have some of our daughter's teeth but she kept the money.

My Missus was a bronchial kid, snotting up masses of gunk. It was so bad she tells me that the family doctor advised they move from the city to the coast. They never did but eventually her nose dried up and she stopped being snotty.

Illness and childhood seem to be bound together, as long as there's not too much. Illness that is. Being poorly did have its upside though. Staying off school and presents, toys and comics!

My best sick bed present has to have been an Ideal Zeroid around 1970. I wuz 9. It was the gold one in a fish tank that doubled as a trailer. My Mum and Dad got it me in hospital when I had my nasty old appendix out. The kid next to me wasn't so lucky. His burst. I would have lent him my Zeroid but he was too ill. The kid on the other side called Vinny kept swiping my Vimto so no Zeroid for him!

Did you have any childhood diseases readers? Did you stay off school?