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.

Sunday, January 6, 2019

O is for Odds and Sods - Incoming!

A while ago, in some post on some toys somewhere, I used the following excuse - or something like it - to explain some point or another . . .

I've just been sorting a bag of swords, a Japanese APC and a ceramic cat!

. . . I thought it would be amusing to photograph the said items!

An ACW arm from the Swoppet range, part of a cannon's metal-work, a Timpo Indian's necklace (red) and HK copy (lime-green) are also there along with a Deetail pole-arm handle, a ramrod and the little brown thing which I think is something to do with the Britains' seige engines?
This was the bag of bits, mostly Britains with a lead torch, boy-scouts or Shaggy - for the use of! I kept one each of the swords and gave the rest to a dealer mate of mine. The street lamp is someone like Matchbox (petrol-pump stand) or possibly Peco?

An ACW arm from the Swoppet range, part of a cannon's metal-work, a Timpo Indian's necklace (red) and HK copy (lime-green) are also there along with a Deetail pole-arm handle, a ramrod and the little brown thing which I think is something to do with the Britains' seige engines?

Bag o'bits; whenever you see a bag of bits going cheap - grab it!

Japanese APC; loosely based on the M113, it's only Japanese because of its sticker.
Japanese APC; loosely based on the M113, it's only Japanese because of its sticker. The running-gear is a bog-standard generic design which I have some tank-hulls on somewhere, if I could be fagged I'd look it up, but this is a fun/lazy/holiday post, likely to prove ephemeral - traffic wise!
 
The superstructure though is really quite good, if a little high-sided, and it is quite large, scale-wise, maybe 1:58th/50th, so probably better-suited to a Space Marine army from the Sherriff of Nottingham, which would allow for all sorts of markings and transfer crap on those flat, slab-sides!

A ceramic cat! Or at least I hope it’s a cat, it might be a particularly ugly snark, or a lesser-common, whiskered rock-owl from Planet Zolgon Snnikkitti IV?
A ceramic cat! Or at least I hope it’s a cat, it might be a particularly ugly snark, or a lesser-common, whiskered rock-owl from Planet Zolgon Snnikkitti IV?

The small fairing (or similar novelty) is a slip-ware item, manufactured similarly to poured hot-lead hollow-casts, but with a cold, thick, liquid clay-slurry run round inside a mould slowly until it sediments out and the water is poured away leaving it hollow.

The above is the second bag's contents! To which you can add a box with Peter Evan's finds, another with the animals from Jim's big box back in the summer (sorting animals is a big job!) and another bag with mostly TV/Movie and cereal premiums cartoon stuff going back a few years, they are all in the attic.
I have three bags of TBS (to be sorted) kicking around, within reach - at the moment, one with the dregs of the PW show stuff and early charity shop stuff from 2018, another with the rest f the charity shop stuff, anthing waiting to be sorted from the four Sandown Park shows wich has also had some 'from storage' stuff added to it as I combine, and a third, bigger bag which I stated the other day, it contains the Chris Smith parcel's contents, the lose figures from Brian B's autumn parcel and a few charity shop things from the last five or six weeks.

The above is the second bag's contents! To which you can add a box with Peter Evan's finds, another with the animals from Jim's big box back in the summer (sorting animals is a big job!) and another bag with mostly TV/Movie and cereal premiums cartoon stuff going back a few years, they are all in the attic.

Although they are all sorted to some degree, by type or maker in the 4x5½ or 5½x9 inch bags which are my two main sizes, I've never had so much not yet put away at one time, and it's in part because of the time I've spent on the storage stuff, the generosity of other people and the amount of stuff you can find if you simply check your local charity shops a couple of times a week.
Although they are all sorted to some degree, by type or maker in the 4x5½ or 5½x9 inch bags which are my two main sizes, I've never had so much not yet put away at one time, and it's in part because of the time I've spent on the storage stuff, the generosity of other people and the amount of stuff you can find if you simply check your local charity shops a couple of times a week.

I will now have to go through the three bags here, putting some things duplicated between them together (Dinky, Corgi, Matchbox, Subbuteo, Blue Box and Airfix are the chief culprits!),
I think we've seen most of this lot on the Blog now, one way or another! The trouble is, once it becomes 'easy' to sort into the little bags and chuck them in a bigger shopping bag, the tendency is to keep doing it!

I will now have to go through the three bags here, putting some things duplicated between them together (Dinky, Corgi, Matchbox, Subbuteo, Blue Box and Airfix are the chief culprits!), then sort the animals out, for transfer to the Jim box, then start putting them in their final homes . . . as I continue to consolidate the attic and storage samples - it's going to be a busy year!

Lledo wagon, two accessories (from one of the electronic gaming systems I think?), a Tin Tin character key-ting, a robot with a Kinder 'K' but too big for a standard egg, so presumably a Maxxi-egg toy and a flocked parrot which seems modern, but it still rather clever. I was taken by the elephant made of beads thread on steel-wire, has he looks like one of the suits of elephant armour in a museum somewhere!
But I'll continue to photograph as I go, so lots to look forward to on the Blog. This eclectic bunch came in on the 29th December, when I shot-up into town in the afternoon to get ham for the cat! Six of seven charity shops were open and this was the loot - it never ends!

Lledo wagon, two accessories (from one of the electronic gaming systems I think?), a Tin Tin character key-ting, a robot with a Kinder 'K' but too big for a standard egg, so presumably a Maxxi-egg toy and a flocked parrot which seems modern, but it still rather clever. I was taken by the elephant made of beads thread on steel-wire, has he looks like one of the suits of elephant armour in a museum somewhere!

There's a post on the electronic gaming figures in the queue and it's been there for over a year, maybe it'll get finished soon, but time waits for no man and there's always new stuff to shot and post!

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