Showing posts with label Toys. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Toys. Show all posts

Tuesday 28 November 2023

Tuesday Twaddle


The sun is remarkably low in the sky these mornings, at least on the mornings when the clouds clear to allow us to see him.  He is still shining now, several hours and one trip to Tesco later.  I'm sorry to say that up Aberdeen way they are having early sleet showers, but they of course are used to this, not us down here in the warmest part of England. 5c or 40f at the moment!


Another day, another royal 'Bombshell' book.
This one takes the side of Meghan and Harry, which goes against the grain for the London tabloids.  They have already decided she Meghan is bad and Kate is good.  The truth is that both are woman on the make, both run their husbands, and neither are anything like what the press has painted them to be.
Few people really know what the individual royals are like in person, our image is cloned from the press lies, books written by hangers-on and chancers, and a few public appearances.  The life led by anyone born into the royal household is not one most of us would welcome.  While we can guess some attitudes and personality of many royals we lack clear understanding of their position.  Some clearly have a 'duty' sense,' others, the younger ones, less so.  
And what of the future?   
Charlie might last ten years, which will annoy William, and especially Kate who I think is keen to be queen.  Maybe she ought to let the kids grow up first.  The rest will continue to annoy one another while fighting for position and a handful of wealth and 'prestige.'  Good for them.
But their days are numbered.  Scotland has for  along time considered the royals a waste of time.  Many elsewhere take a similar attitude.  While the folks around Balmoral Castle enjoy their presence, and the tourists who follow them, a recent survey reveals that 36% of Scots wish to keep the royals, 48% did not.  This of course may have changed month by month.  Charlie scooping up the cash from dead people with no next of kin did not go down well.  The royals millions, their jet set lifestyle, the cash spent on frocks, all tend to put people off when they are struggling to pay the gas bill.  
Add to this the disinterest in Scotland shown by Willie and his woman it is clear he will not make a successful King of Scots, not that he would car I suggest.  
It is time for a sensible debate regarding the royals, before Charlie goes.  There may not be a sensible debate after that time.


Christmas is going well.  The 2nd hand truck my niece wants for her kid, she always buys 2nd hand, has arrived here.  When I have finished playing with it I will post it on, eventually!  This afternoon I will do the cards that I have obtained, and hope to send some off by the 1st December, just to remind folks to get one for me!

A Supper Party - 1903   Julius LeBlanc Stewart (1855-1919)

Saturday 25 September 2010

Brilliant Site!

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I have found another brilliant site! This one is aimed at those men, and it will always be men, who spend their time collecting model cars. Now my poverty, and I will not mention it as I don't want you bursting into tears while I sit here starving, as I was saying, my poverty will not allow me to purchase such things, if indeed I wanted to. However many do and I found this site brilliant when I discovered vehicles I once owned or can remember others having. In fact most models here come after my time of playing with such things, you can tell my era. the cars with no plastic windows, seats or movable doors, simply metal cars on wheels, that is my era! However this site is worth pondering, the cars evoke memories, and for some of you the police cars will be more relevant than they are for the rest of us! 

The Saracen pictures is a 'Matchbox' model. I had a similar vehicle but made by 'Dinky,' or possibly 'Corgi,' I cannot mind which, marvellous stuff from the days when playing games in which thousands of Germans and Japs were wiped from the face of the earth. Political Correctness has removed the kids fun by stopping them playing with guns ("This encourages violence") or doing anything physical, ("This encourages Competition and that leads to exclusion and we don't want that do we?") and we soon find boys playing with dolls and girls with boats! No wonder kids are confused today! Funnily enough this is the generation of well bred children who gather outside folks homes and harass them to death! However middle class liberals know best. I bet they have 'Baby on board' signs in their cars! 

But I digress, the cars on show here sell in a shop near me. One of those shops run by a family of miserable, grumbling numpties. The Gran followed me around the first time I went in there as if I were a 'Hoodie' or something. I used to deliver to the daughter, a girning old biddy who last laughed when she got her money back pressing 'Button 'B.' The young son now runs the shop, smugly grinning at one and all and boasting of his wealth. With prices like the ones in the window I am not surprised he can be smug! This is a shame as there is obviously a sale for such items, as well as the many aircraft and other things on offer, such a shame as they could treble their sales by learning how to smile.

Diecast Toy Cars is the place to look to evoke memories and just enjoy life for a while!   






I wondered why I had to shave twice a day. I was confused as to why I was sitting on the roof howling at the moon, and I was pondering the need to roam the streets furtively creeping around the seedier parts of town. It was as I howled last night I realised that it was a full moon, and possibly had been for a few days. I should have known there was a reason I had taken that chainsaw and sorted out the crowds annoying me by living within a hundred feet of me. Tsk! The full moon has an effect right enough. 
OK you've had your fun, open this cell door now. Hello!  Hello?






Heart of Midlothian  0 v 2  Motherwell 

As has to be expected the defence was much stronger than during the week, we only lost two goals this time. The hard hitting forward line din't hit anything, and I am wondering what is the point of it all. A normal Saturday for the fan of the Heart of Midlothian! 

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Monday 21 December 2009

Snow is Still Horrid!


Sitting here, wrapped up in a sleeping blanket, woollen gloves with the fingers cut out on my hands, I rejoice that today is the shortest day of the year! This is the day I look for more than any other for today heralds the first day of Spring! Yes I realise it is a long, cold, way off, but from tomorrow the days begin to get longer, the nights shorter, and life so much better for everyone, especially me! I love daylight and warmth and winter brings darkness and cold, as you will notice by looking out of my grubby window. Snow, and not just snow, but wet cold, snow at that, has fallen all over the area. Planes lie grounded at airports, cars begin to slowly slide sideways of the roads, and the poor among us begin to freeze to death - what are you looking at me for?


James May has been doing some interesting programmes in recent days and many of them are about toys. Yes those expensive things kids get at Christmas and break by lunchtime. I am watching, half heartedly, one at the moment. This one is about girls toys and they feature a number of girls toys and far too many people talking about them. Amongst the 'experts' that appear we have the usual 'psychologist,' there is always one and always female, who blabs on about studies with apes. Now I did not catch how long, nor how expensive, the study was but I did notice her commenting that they concluded that girls preferring girls toys was not social engineering but genetic. In short, girls play with dolls and boys with train sets because that is how they are made. She sounded smug in her research. Gosh, what a result. Walking about with an open mind and a pair of eyes would have shown this to the dumbest, well ought to have shown this to the dumbest long ago. While there are some who deviate from this, and there is nothing to stop a girl driving a train - although I bet she lets the men shovel the coal into the engine - generally people left to themselves become either male or female, no 'gender' required.




Wednesday 23 April 2008

Childhood Games

Someone reminiscing about their childhood made me ask what did we do as kids. Until the age of ten or eleven when total football took over we had the usual variety of kids games. 'Hide and seek,' sometimes in large groups and involving hiding in many strange places, the coal box at the back was good, brings back a good feeling, 'Peevers' (hopscotch to the ignorant) was really a girlie game which we sometimes joined in using an old polish tin to push along the ground. Girls bounced a ball against the wall in a variety of different games and played with skipping ropes. Boys naturally avoided such games and those who dared to participate were clearly big Jessies. Thankfully common sense prevailed and playgrounds were separated in those days so the kids could grow up naturally and not hounded by middle class women with chips on their inadequate shoulders. 'Japs and Commando's' and a British version of beating the Germans (name forgotten) was common with the occasional Cowboy and Indian stuff. Funnily enough I started school in 1956 (oh joy) and we spent several years running around the playground singing 'We won the war in 1944!' I suppose that died out before the PC teachers intervened. 'Matchbox,' 'Dinky' and 'Corgi' cars were often bought,1/6d for the big ones and 9d for the 'Matchbox' series. Some very good vehicles there which disappeared with the passing of time, although they had changed greatly in appearance, especially when tins of 'Humbrol' paint were discovered! Marbles were often the cause of fights. A game of 'Bulls' could be as gentle as playing with 'Lego,' one of the best toys invented I say, yet the kid upstairs just did not like being bettered and a squabble would ensue. It was never me cause I was nice, but usually we got on all right.

Because there were two roads at the front we often played in the wee road in perfect safety. While the main road had heavy traffic occasionally passing by it was for the most part comparatively quiet, unlike today. I remember the fish lorry heading for Newhaven passing by. As it approached we could see it stacked high with fish boxes and waited while the lorry passed. As the vehicle rumbled on it's way the smell would follow behind like a wake behind a ship spreading to the side as she passed. Lovely, well no actually! The traffic on the wee road was minimal. Next door there was the 'Highland Queen' lorry from the man on the top flat and Dode's bakers van. That is while it was the bakers van. His habit of drinking too much meant it often changed names on the side! A small Austin 7 belonged to the man upstairs, who we hardly ever saw, and far up the road another vehicle would be parked here and there. The field opposite, soon turned into a school field, meant there was plenty of light and no-one opposite. A great place to grow up! That road also saw 'Kick the can' being played as well as the occasional failed attempts to become 'Zorro!' The small verge between the roads could be used for some games but mostly it was a kind of border rarely crossed.

In the backgreen we would use the washing poles to play 'Long banging.' A simple device to enhance the goalkeepers ability even though this centre forwards talent failed miserably here. Only later did I realise this was why I was such a good goalie - oh yes I was! - as the practice here helped. One day we went round to play with the big boys and I was forced into goal. I was wonderful! From then on until about fifteen years of age it was football every night!
We played in the field opposite for a time, then decamped to the large roundabout round the corner where we used half to play and occasionally the whole circle was used for big games and 'take ons' against lads from just outside our area. Rarely did fights intervene and 21's the winner was the norm. It became my habit, wherever we played, to come in at night at place my sodden muddy jeans in the old cola cellar. Next night I would break of the hardened mud, replace the jeans over my skinny legs and go off to perform heroics once again! If it wasn't for my eyesight and no scout ever calling on me I could have been somebody you know! We also played a football version of a 'Squash' like game by banging a ball against a certain area of wall and the next in line had to get the ball from wherever it ended up and return it to the same spot. I forget what we called it but this was good, when you won.

There came a time when this all changed. The wee road became too dangerous as wealth crept in and folks parked their cars there. Ford Anglia's and 'Z' cars appearing in the late 60's reflecting the economic growth in society, even where we lived. Football seemed to die away in the late seventies or early eighties. On the roundabout someone planted four trees, they are still there today! We had come across a 'No Football' sign there at one point and some of the boys chucked it over a fence! Not today's men. No-one plays football any more unless they go 'training' with their team. The type of football that gave us Alan Gilzean, Bobby Walker, Denis Law, Willie Hamilton and Jim Baxter has been obliterated and is occasionally seen only in school playgrounds. Now kids are coached from an early age,tenderly cared for in seven a sides, and not allowed to play to many games in case 'it has long term damage!' What rubbish! There is a story that Dave MacKay signed for the Heart of Midlothian while running from one game to another while a schoolboy. If not true it sounds it! To much care for the little darlings does not do them good.

Do they play games now? In our family the kids have far too many toys. Especially as they only have one kid each and it gets spoiled, although no more than I was to be fair. Being girls for the most part I cannot say whether their games are better than before, as they still play with dolls, as normal girls do, fight and play sweet when they want something. Boys get the guns and cars, although much more space orientated than before, more 'Star Wars' than the World War Two stuff we were surrounded by. (While the war was long over by the time I arrived, an 'accident' my mother used to say, it was still deeply imprinted on everyone's mind.) Boys remain noisy, loud, obnoxious brats as all boys have always been - myself excepted naturally, and remain the same at heart in spite of the daft attitudes so often seen today.

The good times in the past were all in our heads. We heard of 'wars and rumours of wars,' but these were forgotten when the Ice cream man's bell was heard. George had several years service round our way and saw many of us grow up. But he did not have the 'Mr Whippy' type van and looking back he must have struggled to keep himself going. In those days often the men would get out and fight it out for the round, an idea stopped when Edinburgh Corporation licensed them, George however could always rely on our support. Nobody was assaulted by dirty old men, although our folks warned us about them, mothers were far from neurotic but did keep a watch on us, and life was better. Child abuse happened but was not splashed over the papers, and if our dads found someone doing it they had the means to bring it to an end, quietly and quickly! But in spite of the overprotected habit of today, the fear engendered by the press and the PC brigade who care for themselves through their nonsense, is life more dangerous for kids than before? I don't think so, and the brats grow up just the same. If they are allowed to do so by their elders. If they go wrong it is their elders fault, yours and mine, there is no one else to blame.