W is for Well, it's beginning to look a lot like Christmas!

Not so much a follow-up as a return-to or more of an annual glance-at?

I said I wouldn't subject you to the Basingrad statues, not least because they are all over the place and I can't be arsed to look for them; it may be the season of goodwill to all men but I'll be damned if I'm going to troll round Basingstoke looking for something you probably don't want to see, and saw last year anyway!

But I didn't say I wouldn't subject you to a few nutcrackers, just for the hell of it, and worse, having got the 'Fleet' day out of the stack, today we're clearing the miscellaneous 'Proper Crimbo' odds'n'sods from the queue!

This (on the right) was the 49th toy-scan of January (I'm up to 87 already [Sun. 2nd] for December, mostly archive stuff) and was an impulse-buy in the Paperchase January Sales (probably the only one!), relief stickers; you know; those foam-filled squidgy things, and at 20p or something I thought they were worth a punt . . . I'm not so sure now, but they've helped make the post! They go with the flats! 20mm!

The full force of TKMaxx's 'large' size, nutcracker display on the 23rd October; they were still putting other stuff out as I shot their morning's work! I was over there on Saturday of the week just gone and it's all a bit chaotic now as that 'bit' of Christmas is wound-down to make way for the edibles, bathroom gift sets, novelty socks and etcetera, and then it'll be January Sale stuff!

Brian Burke took these at the start of November in - you won't be surprised to hear, from the graphics - the gift shop of Cornell University! I'm not sure if I should be impressed by the marketing application, or mildly depressed by the inherent naff'ness? But many thanks to Brian for sending them, and they are rather smart in the red and white 'team colours', maybe the teams should be made to play a game dressed as nutcrackers, against a similarly attired opposition . . . or snowmen!

. . . I don't follow American Football, but that's a game I'd kill to see! They could all have giant foam crowns and shoulder-pads along with those big boots from Jeux Sans Frontières. In fact, we should have a 10-a-side with the Premier League's mascots!

I used to find these faintly sinister as a kid (like that awful shelf-elf - he's still as sinister as hell's gates), but they seem to be growing on me in old age; now I know the protective nature of their mythology.

That's Crimbo nutcrackers, for 2018!