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, April 28, 2024

D is for Defence Works & Dragons Teeth!

I shot these the other evening in Guildford. When I was going to collage there in the 1980's they were hidden in the undergrowth either side of the old sort-cut path, but, in the 1980's the population of the UK was half what it is now, and the necessary development which has filled the years between has lead to them being revealed, as more formal paths were arranged through them, and in 1998 they are formally recognised with a plaque (bolted to one of them) and are watched-over of not actually looked after! They are yards from the London Road railway station in the centre of town.






One or two are still overgrown in the background, and a better-surviving example was seen here on Small Scale World, many years ago, about a mile to the south, which would all have been part of the same defence plan - to prevent German invasion forces coming up from the South East corner of Britain, getting though the Downs at the  'Golden Ford' and having a clear-run across Surrey Heath toward London.
 
When you realise how many gargantuan flack-towers (Flaktürme) are still blotting the landscape around Germany and Austria, a few Dragoons teeth look quite innocuous! These, unlike the ones down by the river, don't seem to have any pattern to them and may have been individually cast on a Monday morning, or Friday night?!! Built by 578 Army Field Company of the Royal Engineers in February 1942 . . . a bit late really!

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