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.

Thursday, February 8, 2018

News, Views Etc . . . Forthcoming Shows

It's the start of the show season, and here are a few coming-up, I've actually missed one I intended to post; the Slough die-cast show, which is very good, and always gets talked-about afterward, it's a club event with lots of side-displays and things, I went once or twice about ten years ago and do keep meaning to go again . . . anyway it was January, and I'm so behind with the News, Views; with the Toy fair stuff; with the immediate queue-stuff; it just got lost, timed-out.

And to be honest, lots of stuff gets lost from News, Views posts . . . because of lost relevance, because of something more post'able keeping them off or because of timing-out and I bet none of you notice, it's ephemeral, isn't it, and News, Views is a side-bar, if you know what I mean!

If you wanted to go that badly, you looked it up and went! However it's nice to be reminded of these things, if a useless Blogger remembers; so before I forget . . .

. . . the first Sandown Park (BP Fairs) mega toy fair is on 3rd March 2018 hopefully I'll be there, hope you make it, it's one of the best general toy fairs in Europe, and the early-year one is where everyone catches-up after the long winter and holidays, and clears their stuff/stock to make room for new stuff/stock!

Running since December at the Victoria and Albert Museum (V&A), this exhibition is due to end on the 8th April, so it's still got two months to go. I remember seeing some of the drawings once, possibly at the V&A (in a little room downstairs) and they are such delicate things close-up, a collection of them will be a treat, if it's your sort of thing; bear it in mind - doh!

This doesn't start until the 22nd February and runs through to the 9th September (glad they're clearing it away before TLAPD!), and if it's your kettle of ball game fish, go, enjoy, I find the whole thing a bit silly, but there you are; not for the first time - I'll deliver my summing up of superheroes . . .

. . . A guy (or gal) in a tight-fitting/spray-on nylon/spandex/lycra/playtex swim-suit/leotard, who fell in, got caught in the ray of, ate, drank, sniffed, suffered a spill of, was hit, bitten or injected by something radioactive, diseased, secret or alien, and who was probably adopted or is an orphan/ lost their parents at a young age to a tragedy, is either a multi-millionaire, a scientist or both, declares themselves to be dedicating their life/money/inventiveness to crime-fighting and saving simpering-idiots caught in the paths of run-away things, probably while pretending to be someone really boring or a bit ditzy (gals) or effete (guys)!

It's plain formula, and the formula continues as they get named after the trope that created them and dress-up like it, maybe with knee-pads or a cape . . . and a mask; whether it's a bat or a geographical phenomena! And they all have an Achilles-heel (kryptonite), which reduces them to a gibbering-wreak, until the last page.

See; bloody silly! Anyone can do it . . ."Oh no! I've been multiply bitten by multiple giant millipedes, I should be dead, luckily for me, the thin, rat-like jealous guy on our expedition gave me radioactive porridge for breakfast hoping to kill me and fake my will to inherited my tragically killed-young - by a run-away man-hole-cover - parent's money, and the radioactivity seems to have combined with the millipede venom to mean . . . I'm becoming . . . Pedoman! Oops! No; I'm becoming Milliman . . no, no; he ruined the Labour Party . . .I'll get it in a minute . . . The Manpeade . . . maybe, maybe not . . . Insectoid! Meet the indestructible [unless you throw porridge at him, but not on the last page please] Insectoid! Has there been an 'Insectoid'?I bet there has . . . Insect-o-man? Mansect? No that was David Koresh . . . Mannipede . . euw, did he?

He could have a fringed-leotard to represent all the little legs! And Antennae! And pincers on a bulging codpiece! And he'd read the Fabulous Furry Freak Brothers and Metal Hurlant on his tea-brake!

Finally - it'll be three months on Saturday! Best show in the world for vintage plastic!


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