About Me

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No Fixed Abode, Home Counties, United Kingdom
I’m a 60-year-old Aspergic gardening CAD-Monkey. Sardonic, cynical and with the political leanings of a social reformer, I’m also a toy and model figure collector, particularly interested in the history of plastics and plastic toys. Other interests are history, current affairs, modern art, and architecture, gardening and natural history. I love plain chocolate, fireworks and trees, but I don’t hug them, I do hug kittens. I hate ignorance, when it can be avoided, so I hate the 'educational' establishment and pity the millions they’ve failed with teaching-to-test and rote 'learning' and I hate the short-sighted stupidity of the entire ruling/industrial elite, with their planet destroying fascism and added “buy-one-get-one-free”. Likewise, I also have no time for fools and little time for the false crap we're all supposed to pretend we haven't noticed, or the games we're supposed to play. I will 'bite the hand that feeds', to remind it why it feeds.

Monday, May 29, 2017

R is for Racing, to Sandown Park!

So, another weekend, another show, I was very reserved and managed to spend only £11.50p the whole day, but people's generosity contributed to the small but useful haul of plunder I carried away in two little paper, 5"x5", sweet bags!

The queue at twenty-past ten; the rain had been and gone a couple of hours earlier, the sun was shining and British Airways had used their extensive, state of the art computer systems to clear London's skies for to create a quite Saturday morning for the dweller's of the Home Counties - which was nice of them!

I'm not 'suggesting' the rest of the world is laughing at us, but we've lost two wars in the Middle East, fucked-up Libya, left the Egyptians to their own miseries, turned Syria and Iraq into charnel houses, sent the people of Greece to the food banks, watched 10,000 humans drown in the Mediterranean, voted Brexit and now can't get the national flag-carrier into the air, yet in two weeks time dumb-people are going to elect the Tories again, after 40 years of Tory and Tory-lite, 'New' Labour policies, we're so myopic we are incapable of reading the writing on the wall - No, I'm not suggesting the rest of the world is laughing at us - I'm telling you they are!

You don't want more pictures of greying, balding, pot-bellied, middle-aged, white men, most of them in too-casual wear (hey, I'm describing myself, it's no great criticism!), bending over tables of old toys so soon after the last lot, so straight into the plunder I think . . .

. . . with a fiver's worth from Abid's rummage trays; Blue Box knights, one with an original weapon, all with better paint than some of my existing samples, two Marty toys including a painted one, four Spot-On ethylene's, a copy of the Timpo foal, probably by one of the early Brits in that question-mark group of Kentoy-Speedwell-Trojan-Una or VP, a Festival carol-singer and Toyway Indian (sans base!).

An early hard plastic railway figure, possibly Hong Kong, or a margarine premium type thing (?) is the only HO-gauge piece. Kinder (?) Snoopy, 3 Deluxe/Topper ground-crew in the rarer - but more recent - orange, a Blue Box tiger moulding (but probably Red Box issued; as it's airbrushed), a bunch more Bravestarr Galaxy Rangers (I'm trying to build a set of one each of every pose in each colour, and one spare of each pose to paint-up!) and a plug-in/swivel-waist sumo wrestler. Lastly (top right) is a Takara for Hasbro figure which I suspect is a Halo video-game, tie-in figure?

Adrian Little gave me these! The two big Indians are more of the 'maybe Argentinian' ones looked at yesterday which I bought from Adrian at Plastic Warrior two weeks ago, but I left these as they were much larger and had holes in their bases, yet the paint and plastic looked like the others (which I think I posted yesterday - but that was published last week sometime, this is late Monday!), so I thought I'd better get them all together again, and Adrian said "Have them"! The blue remnant of something the green Indian plugged-onto is visible sticking out of in his base!

The barrel; I think it may be a wine barrel from an old tin-plate 'O' gauge wagon (it's wooden under the paint) and that the Castrol ends have been home-added, but as they have been carefully scaled to fit; they could be a more commercial thing? Anyway, now it's posted here it goes-on to my Mother's barrel collection (seen on the Blog passim) so its provenance ceases to worry me! 1:24th racing-car stickers?

Finally these were also a fiver, with several given to me by the seller! I did offer to pay for them but he insisted - I think he likes that I tell him what they all are as he seems to be a Farm Toy specialist? He had a lovely tray of painted Britains animals I had rudely referred to (jokingly) as his 'junk tray' earlier in the day - and he follows the Blog!

I'm never too sure of the athletes, Marx UK also for Kellogg's/Nabisco/Quaker or one of the smaller cereal makers was what I told him, I do sort of know, but you can't remember everything 'on the spot' without all your folders in front of you and some of this stuff was Pepsi or Coke, while the sculpts were common to Marx US I think and in the same cream plastic! It was Kellogg's - I think!

A Gem Indian was a nice find as were the Gemodels Life Guards, while the Gem-looking ice-skater is another Festival-marked piece. We had a chat about these on Black Dragon ages ago, and I'm only more convinced now sure that Gem (George Musgrave) was behind Festival, it's just the how and why, my own feeling was for/as an own or sub-brand of Culpitt? Specifically - the seasonal stuff (Christmas and Easter) and a range of mini-candle holders, and that seems to be the case.

I also spent £1.50 at another stall, but the results were so interesting I'm posting them separately tomorrow.

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