M is for Maruzem Beretta 92SB

Yeah! Don't tell the Rozzers, they shoot you for owning shit like this! Fortunately, it's buried in a storage container, and is only a lighter! But it's made to resemble the real thing, and is unusual for being a lighter, these Japanese-licensed toy guns are usually air-soft BB pellet firers, not lighters.

It's actually scaled-down a bit too, maybe 30%'ish? But you wouldn't carry this around now, it really could get you shot! All the rage at a leisure-pit, keys in the fruit-bowl, bright, patterned skirts, long hair and flares, freak-off, in the early 1970's, how times change!

 

When we were kids, we loved stuff like this, we'd spend our pocket-money on it, on a day-trip to France with the school, but you don't even see it for sale over there now . . . my brother bought a flick-knife, a proper one!

 

It's a gas-burner, filled via a nozzle hidden in a small recess in the pistol grip, and a small flame-adjuster is hidden in a recessed slot near the trigger. 

 

There is a more obviously novelty one, petrol/lighter-fluid fired, but it needs work, the Bakelite handle has come loose with warping, and the mechanism is jammed solid, so, I thought, maybe, if I ever get the time, and manage to settle down, I'd do it as a project for YouTube, I've seen people work wonders with solid lumps of rust, this just needs a bit of TLC; disassemble, clean, straiten, lubricate and reassemble!

E is for Eye Candy - Sort Of!

I think we've seen this before, in passing, but I took it apart and cleaned it of a lifetime's kitchen grime, a while ago and seem to have taken far too many photographs, which need to be out of Picasa and on the Wibbly Wobbly Way!

 

 

Obviously you need a kettle with the right kind/diameter of spout, and when the water starts to boil, the inner sliding component moves and the bird starts whistling! Before modern automatic cut-offs (which work the same way - pressure, try getting one to work if you haven't closed the lid properly, it'll boil dry!), this was an ingenious solution, to a minor problem!

U is for Unknown Salesman's Samples

A bit of a find here, and not mine, Adrian found them, and thinking I'd like them, saved them for the blog, and posterity! There's no clue as to their origins, and the message on the slips of paper pasted into the inner edge of the boxes (suggesting they were placed rather as the shots below, upright in a cabinet of some kind), which reads "Specimen contents as used if boxed to retail at 5/6d" [five shillings and six pence].

 

The mix of metal and plastic novelty 'prizes' places this very much in the 1950's, as do, strangely, the hats, rather squidged into one of the boxes, which are about three times the size of the hats I've known all my life, but which I remember from old TV shows (think 'Love thy neighbour,' Hancock, the soaps), where people often had the taller ones? Hard to unfold now, but they all have crude 'jewels' made from silver-foil, diamond (parallelogram) offcuts glued to them, which I also remember.

 

Both boxes have similar contents, indeed, very similar to the Old World Series we looked at years ago, with wooden whistles, steel wire-puzzles, paper logic puzzles and the novelties, which include stand-alone flats, broach-badges, the inevitable thimble (Christmas was almost a disappointment, if somebody didn't get an impractical, plastic thimble!), and rings. Many thanks to Adrian for grabbing these.

N is for Nuts!

While sorting out the house over the last few years, various things came to light which had long been forgotten, among which was this childhood stash of paperback-format bound volumes of Peanuts cartoons by Charles M. Schulz.

 

And then I found another one!

 

We were early fans of Snoopy and Co., and it was always Snoopy, it was Adults who thought of Charlie Brown first, because he represented the trails, tribulations and failures of adulthood, Snoopy was just a funny dog who thought he was a WWI fighter pilot and talked to yellow chicks, who coded back in scratch marks!

 

My brother and I had a shared bedroom until I was sixteen, and when we were little, there were loads of snoopy posters on the walls, similar to these book covers, a single image and some pithy aphorism about not liking Mondays (a decade before the Boomtown Rats), or something. Except they weren't actually glossy coated posters, they were matted wrapping paper!

 

I can't remember where we got them, but I guess it was WHSmith, in Fleet, or maybe Webb's, in Hartley Wintney, folded-over their wooden bars, you'd keep an eye out for a new colour, as like the book-covers they were single-colour sheets with a black-on-white snoopy, the paper an off-white, and about the same paper grade of brown parcel-paper, which they were near. I guess the idea was you used a whole sheet on a big-box gift, and the unwrapper got a cartoon! And, or course, they were much cheaper than the posters from the wire racks!

 

I seem to recall, Coronet, the publishers, also supplied a fair-few of my sci-fi novels a few years later! 

 

I also found these! Because we spent all our holidays running about on Hazeley Heath, climbing trees, shooting at each other with airguns (nope, we've still both got two working eyes!), from the tree-house or similar shenanigans, we tended to wreak havoc on our trousers (jeans or cords), and Mum would cover the holes (knees or bums!) with these patches, to give them a little more life. There were others, some more 'hippy' and I found a bunch of them too, they'll be a future post!

A is for ♪♫♪♪♫ All-in-All, Theyyyyy're All Just Bricks in the Wall ♪♫♪♪♫

Definitely ticking the 'other collectables' Tag, these are a fun novelty which seem to have been with us forever, or at least the mid-1970's, when I got my first, but, being a magpie, I now have four! Fake sponge bricks!

 

The collection,

"More than two of anything . . . "!

 

My original Christmas stocking brick, one of the 'practical' gifts which were always included; novelty soap, toothbrushes, combs, wiggly straws, things which, however-much fun they were, were also meant to be used daily! It's a soft bath-sponge material.

 

This was my second, it's a harsher foamed polyethylene, still a batheable foam, but more like garden-game balls, or pet-toys, and was given away at corporate newspaper events, or even with a daily-paper? I can't remember the promotion now, but I dare say, given it's The Sun, that they were for throwing at 'Lefty' politicians, or foreigners?

 

Once I had two, the track was inevitable, and over a few years I picked up two of these, more modern brick design, and made of recycled foam-rubber granules, much heavier, and not so good for washing!

 

In the US, they remain a strong, current phenomena, with corporate logo's to the fore, I think they are for throwing at referees' in disgust at their decisions, although I've never seen a clowud of them hitting the pitch, so I guess, once you've paid money for one, your desire to retain your investment in bricks & mortar, mean you hang on to it and just shake it threateningly toward the Man In Black?

 

While this is Art! A design by Alexander May, for a concrete-block sponge!

 

There was a trend for mattresses made out of the same heavy, granulated-foam, of my third brick, but often in greys or neutral colours, and they were a favourite of early fly-tipping when they started to break up, and you'd see this stuff in the rubbish pile, odd-shaped lumps, which looked exactly like concrete!

 

A very commercial one here, from Milton Bradley (MB Games - that's almost like LB for Lik Be!), and hitching a ride on the trend . . . nay, 'craze' for all things Karate, back in the 1970's - "Ah, Soh, Grasshopper!".
 

Contemporary one, available, new on the Internet as I write, this is expanded-polystyrene, and looks to be pre-coloured, so a few chips or a knocked corner would only add to its aura of realism!

 

Also current, but a bit naff, and more of a face-cloth? There's a sponge-foam core, but it's covered in a printed-pattern fabric 'pillow', sewn-flush, and over-printed with crude holes, I'd leave this on the self, as the point of the collection is that they look vaguely like bricks, and this doesn't! Although, I guess it does, if you don't display the 'holes'!

P is for Public Presentation of Pure Nostalgia

I can't remember why I was in the Fleet Library back in April, probably looking for someone, but I happened to see what was in the 'Christmas Toy Display' cabinets, and found this. I also noticed Fleet and Crookham Historical Society, seem to have been renamed Fleet and Croockham Local History Group?

 

 [They've loaded back to front again, and I can't be arsed to switch them all round, it's only NTS imagery, and it leaves the chocolate wrappers down the bottom, near the Internet image of similar stuff, so it's sort of sorted itself out]

 

Definitely remember the Monarch seed packets!

 

It's funny how many of them I recognise, I'm only sixty-one, but a good half my life is 'ancient history' to almost everyone under thirty! Rudolf Hess, I met him twice, in my duties, yet, he's history, proper history to every single person born after about 1985, and many born in the years immediately before.

 

This went through Facebook the other day, it's frightening how many have gone, and how bland the choice actually is these days, I tried to buy a Topic the other day, and couldn't find one, Googled them, and they've gone! Just like that, partly my fault for not buying enough, "Use them or lose them", under Capitalism, the customer's never been right!

D is for Duracell Durabeam

Another in the occasional series of nostalgic posts, and a funny one as I found the add' while scanning other stuff from the colour supplements going to recycling, when clearing the house out, back in '22, and doing so while sitting on the end of my bed nearest the scanner, with the actual torch, still working (not switched-on!), on the mantle-shelf behind, less than an arms reach away!

I don't remember many adverts for torches when I was a kid, this would have been from 1982, or thereabouts, I can't remember the date now, but there's chapter and verse on them, here. I do vaguely remember their being a larger one, but this little one was the classic, most UK homes in the 1980's had one tucked away somewhere!

 

The iconic black/yellow-highlighted design launched a thousand copycats and a - continuing - generation of like-designed Duracell's, with several of these being so-branded, the rubber one lying on the left, obviously, but a couple of the others, too, I think, they've gone off to storage with everything else! I think the one with a grey seal is none-Duracell, and the squared-end one is an Eveready?

 

And, believe me, this is about a third of the torches I've ended-up with, having now, the accrued torches of two lifetimes, my late Mother's and mine! All torches used to become temperamental, either because the tensioned copper or brass conductor plate/s at the switch, or between batteries would lose their springiness and not make good connections, or because acid-damage, from an old, dead-battery would kill the conductivity altogether!

I think my Durabeam (centre) was a Christmas stocking present, and one of the last crimbo-stockings I ever got, probably that 1982 xmas? And it still works, with quite a decent light, it has facilitated many Blog Posts, finding stuff in the attic!

 

Now, I have two pen torches, both LED, both still only two AA-batteries (same as the Durabeam), one a mini Maglite (about 2.5 inches long) which I keep in my driver's bag to find door numbers from the comfort of my cab, the other a cheapo' lookie-likie which I keep in the car, mostly to help fill my vape, or change its battery in dark lay-byes! And either of them produce a better light than all the above would, if used together!

Oh, and Energiser are a bunch of phuqing wankers! My own personal opinion, of course!

P is for Pure Nostalgia!

MFP - Music For Pleasure, a British 'K-Tel', There's lots about both on Wikipedia, so I won't bore you with it, but it's interesting. We loved this, played it all the time! I don't know how it ended-up at our house, possibly Woman's Hour on Radio4 had something to do with it? All instrumentals, some originally having lyrics, and all pop-hits in the early 1970's.

I thought Telstar was on here as well, but I can't see it listed, so there may have been another 'Moog' album! We were quite late to pop/rock, living our early lives mostly outdoors, or, if it was wet (and it was 2024-style wet for years when we were kids!) it was Lego, the wooden fort or Action Man, with the odd dodgy foray into the chemistry sets - which invariably involved setting our work-table on fire . . . Methylated spirts, it's almost magic!

Anyway, as a result this was pretty-much what we got until we were old enough to buy our own, which for me was Blondie's Heart of Glass as a first single, followed by No Mean City by Nazareth as my first album, quickly joined by two space themed orchestral works off the back of Star Wars, then several more Nazareth albums and three from Tangerine Dream, I'm sure the Moog led me to Tangerine Dream, but it wasn't until the advent of Trance-Techno, that the sound I wanted to accompany mile-long starships, failing in C-beams off the Shoulders of Orion, finally arrived. 

 

Obviously by then Jean-Michel Jarre, Vangelis, Peter Gabriel, Mike Oldfield and Aphrodite's Child had joined the soundtrack, but that's for another day. However, I can't leave you with an album still, so make what you will of this! I'm not sure what I make of it, I'm pretty sure no one does, but the 1970's were a different planet! Watch the backgrounds, especially the Hooded Swan at the start!

I get sad watching this stuff, not because I'm some populist, flag-shagging, Trumpundbrexit Boris-hugger wanting to go back to some sunlit upland of chocolate rationing and beating your wife with impunity, but because we had such high-hopes then, for a magic, happy, space-age future, and what we've got is closer to the grey dystopia of Metropolis.

And I guess that's the point of nostalgia, it's got some poignancy attached to it, it's not necessarily a happy thing?