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.

Tuesday, October 24, 2017

Countdown to Halloween - 7 - Miscellaneous Scorpion

Although - If you sat on one it couldn't be 'miscellaneous' in any sense of the word!

This PVC scorpion came-in in a mixed lot a few weeks ago, and although not necessarily a Halloween toy - per se - we will see later in the week that it belongs in the countdown.

The same charity shop gave up this old Hamlyn pocket handbook on insects, I have the tree volume and a few others, there's even one on uniforms I seem to recall, indeed I may have the insect one already but the library is in storage.

They are OK for their age but North American-centric with a few lines edited in by the British publishers to cover for Europe or the UK, which doesn't matter so much for the tree or cactus volumes, but is a bit of a hamstring-injury for someone relying on the book to ID UK insects!

Also, the artwork is a bit dated and simplistic, but; having made in sound awful, I would emphasise it's still a useful work, and with the Internet as a back-up, you can find the closest-match and then do a Google image-search for the others using the taxonomic info obtained and usually find 'yours' with little difficulty. Collin's 'Gem' and the old Observer's guide books make-up the triumvirate of small, useful, reference works.

Angle Shades Moth

It helped me ID this, a couple of days after I bought it! Found in the woodpile and saved from the axe; it was mentioned a few days later in the paper as an autumn visitor - pushed-up by the warm plume which preceded Hurricane Ophelia - to feed on ivy flowers.

We ought to have Halloween moths? A bag of killer, vampire Mothma's!

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