M is for Miniature Mosquitoes

No, not more insects! I've loads more, but I can bore people on Facebook with them now!

I got a really nice little Mosquito from Mercator Trading the other day, turned out to be Beeju (EVB), so I thought I'd do a little round-up of the sub-scale 'Mozzies' in my collection...

So here they are, from the left we have a composition one from Zang for Timpo, made of compressed pumice in a combination known as 'Timpolene'. Then the Beeju newcomer, a Hong Kong copy of the old MPC 'Minis' 'plane and finally a small polystyrene version which I have tentatively suggested might be early Airfix.

Detail, both accurate and inaccurate make all four very different, yet they all manage to carry-off the distinctive lines of the original, just not when formed-up next to each-other! Scale is I guess from about 1:120 through to about 1:150.

I believe Timpo bought the rights (or remains) of Brent, and not wanting to confuse themselves with a factory full of hollow-casting machinery and equipment, turned over or contracted to Zang, the timpolene production. We've looked at the figures before Here but several aircraft were also made, I've seen an early jet (Whittle?) and a Hurricane as well as this mozzie.

As far as I know, Beeju hadn't been credited with sub-scale aircraft, being know for a range of mostly buses and fire engines, first in a distortable cellulose acetate, then is a more stable polystyrene. This is an early Cellulose-acetate one but mercifully hasn't warped much. It has the most exquisite little propeller plug-in/pop-ons made from the same material. The EVB mark is hidden in the under-wing roundels while MADE IN ENGLAND is present in relief along the bomb-bay.

I don't have the MPC mosquito, although I do have most of them and will cover them here one day, but there are several 'levels' of Hong Kong copies, of which this is from the commonest. Also the latest, being included in various sets when I was young in the late 1960's/70's. It was a smaller range than the original MPC range, or some of the earlier ranges of piracies. This is the lowest grade quality-wise, but carries over the detailing from the MPC version, just in a chunky fashion.

My speculation that this is Airfix, is based on no more than it seems to be the same plastic, in the same colours as the later version Animal Flats, contained in building blocks and baby's rattles. While they could be Tudor*Rose or Kleeware or any one of a dozen other early British makers; the colours (I have a handful of these; Lancaster, Spitfire etc...) particularly the pea-green and pink are identical to both the early cellulose acetate and late styrene Airfix flats, and the marking 'MADE IN ENGLAND' is more Airfix that the other main makes who tended to use circular marks. Still it is only a possibility, not an absolute confirmation.

This is a styrene examplr and it has warped, but due to early removal from the mould, I have a red one with broken wing which is much straighter. I would imaging that they would have been sold as a small handful, possibly in conjunction with a larger beach/bath toy, or as 'party favours' or cake decorations?

The rest are now to be seen here; Airfix Mini Planes

Finally; J. E. Beale - the trading arm of the still extant Beales department store in Bournemouth, UK, commissioned a set which contained both two Timpo/Zang Mosquitoes and some Skybirds figures, being two 'plane guards and an MG-team.

M is for Macro

A bit of a test tonight, these are all taken with the new camera. My old Samsung, which had given sterling service for about two years to date died last week and with me having A) no money and B) a need for a camera last Wednesday, I couldn't get another Samsung, or whinge quickly enough to get a replacement from them. So having written Fuji Finepix off as being shite years ago after two of theirs failed me, I managed to find a cheepie on Wednesday.

These are taken with a Nikon compact - currently £49.99 in Argos. Like the previous three and following Moore's Law it is nearly twice the power of the old one and smaller, so from now on all (new) images will be around 16 Mpx. These also took a while to load but seem much clearer/sharper and the detail - when I get them in focus! - is in a different league.

Various Hover-flys, often mistaken by children for Wasps, they are mostly pretty harmless nectar eaters, with some of them having a rather horrid aquatic larval stage known as the 'long tailed maggot'. Other larvae feed on Aphids and look like shortened Caterpillars! Or; green hairy Leeches!!

More of the same, these are three standard House-fly sized larger ones and another (top left - Sun fly?) which was the biggest Hover-fly I've ever seen, it was the same size as a Hornet and that's what I thought it was as it buzzed my ear on the way into the Buddleia!

Little buff-beauties or whatever they are called, medium sized wild bees of the small colony type (50-odd to a few hundred individuals). The detail on some of these is fantastic and I'm wondering if they are worth anything to the image libraries? I take thousands of these types of shots and it would be nice if I could earn a bit of cash from them?

This is - I know - Bombus (probably 'lucorum' but with a buff tail?), our largest true Bumble-bee, and when it gets to it, it weighs the whole candelabra of flower-heads down, again the detail on these makes the thousands I have on disc from the last four or five years look poor!

This I am very pleased with, I have a vague memory of finding a red-tailed fly all dead, crumbled and dusty in an old web as a kid, but this is the first live one I've seen and I can't find it anywhere on the web ID pages? It's actually a crimson/vermilion colour changing to a more common green at the head end with a metallic sheen, the flash took some of its prettiness away! I don't even know which type of fly it is, I'm guessing on of the House/'Bottle', Flesh, Dung or Coffin flys, but several other groups have similar but less colourful members?

These were the first shots with the new camera and I was still getting used to it, the flash on macro is a bit too 'hot', but it takes better macro pictures without flash in good light so I may change the way I shoot figures...I've yet to try toy soldiers with it.

If you're thinking of a camera, or looking ahead to Christmas you can't beat this deal at Argos, 16 mega-pixels for 50-quid? Downsides so far - bright flash in macro, standard double-A batteries that may prove expensive over time and slow response on focusing compared to previous models. In a few years this type of 'compact-digital[ camera will probably have been replaced by smart-phone cameras of the same spec, so this may be one of the last?

I'm never sure of the rule re. names - common or Latin so have capitalised everything! I know it's a mess, it looks a mess, but I have Asperger's and it's only a Blog so I don't think anyone from Oxbridge will be harrumphing me down the phone first-thing tomorrow!

[Added 12-Sep.-2013] Turns out it's a North American Sweat Bee, and a less common one at that, must have stowed-away on a flying machine heading for Gatwick or Heathrow and flown along the M25 to Leatherhead! Or it might be one of these imports the tomato-growers are bringing-in to pollinate poly-tunnels?

News, Views Etc...Plastic Warrior 151

Just as late as last time with the announcement this quarter I'm afraid, but still busy doing other stuff. The 151st issue of PW has been out for so long I think another one may be due!
Featuring this month;

* Over-moulding from companies other than Timpo; being Cherilea, Gemodels and (this author's) Kibri.
* An overview of New Russian figures by Own Production and others from Mathias Bethoux (regular commenter to the blog and French forum captain!)
* More musings on small-batch production and re-introducing toy soldiers to youngsters in the age of the PC-game from Peter Cole, with the emphasis on his own Replicants and a Pop-up Shop (which sounds faintly painful Peter?!) 
* Andreas Dittmann gives a 'show-and-tell' of some unusual knights by Acedo
* Alwyn Brice dips his toe in the Elastolin he hoovered-up while interviewing people in their own homes for Collector's Whatzit
* Daniel Morgan's Herald 'Notes now reaches the four original marked/unmarked Zang figures at attention and the later Herald re-sculpts.
* Book reviews abound with Alain Thomas's excelent Soldats Plastiques - Cyrnos et Jim and George Kearton's recently re-issued guide to plastics (published by John Curry over at the History of Wargameing blog) both covered, along with the one I'm to be having a word with the publishers about as soon as I finish my course...
* Giampiero Larizza's 'Converters Corner' features Britains and Airfix figures converted into WWII Finish troops with the summer uniform.
* What the !&*$? has question marks on some medievals (Cofalux?), WWII era Spanish (Teixido) and Wild West figures.
* Updates on...
- Heritage Toy Figures (HTF)
- Soldiers of the World by Dan Humar; seemingly inspired partly by the work done on this blog! Specifically; the North American viewpoint/Canadian issues.
* In addition to the Russians mentioned above - new products covered this month include figures from...
- HaT
- Expeditionary Force
- Paragon Scenics
- Tiger Hobbies
* Plus all the usual book-ends (!). No - literally, small-ads, news and views.
* Readers letters cover the mystery rocket-launcher from a few issues ago (Kemlows) various corrections of the last issues cover (something I corrected without highlighting in the last review), a reader asking if the Britains Para's could be re-issued (he needs to look at the new 1:72 ACTA!), Marx circus and Daz/Crescent also get futher info from readers.
* While  cover images this quarter are a shot of Elastolin mounted Normans on the front and a Soldiers of the 'Ages' cereal-box scan on the back

Get it before the next one's out!
[Another month or so?]

News, Views Etc...Absence!

Well...real life has intervened in various ways to ensure a sparsity of posts, eMail replies and other stuff in recent weeks; exams, interviews, family illness, broken camera, general malaise leading to a failed mojo...you get the picture! The only thing I've managed to do is to keep entering Paul's Monday Mystery Model quiz over at Plastic Warriors.

However I do have tons of toy soldier articles lined-up (some from so long ago I've announced them twice already - I think?), lots more macro-insect stuff, an overdue review of the new Horrible Histories stuff (well some of it), a coverage of the last Plastic Warrior magazine - also well overdue and which I must get out before the next one's due, especially as the blog gets a mention, lots of News/Views stuff and a new camera purchased yesterday.

So; watch this space, hopfully there will be a bit more happening here in the next week or so, but tonight I'm designing a logo for someone!

H

Historians have always been puzzled as to how the volatile, disorganized Italians could possibly be descended from the disciplined, brilliantly organized Romans. Similarly, the modern French are in no way related to the Normans, who were hopeless cooks but used to get the Germans to surrender to them. Patently, also the Swedes with their neurotic suicidal characteristics can hardly be descended from the easy-going Vikings with their raping, pillaging tendencies etc.

The answer appears to be that the Romans at some point in history went off to live in Germany with the Normans, and the Vikings emigrated to Glasgow.

Since the only things that the Normans and the Germans liked eating were babies, they left anyone involved in cookery behind. The chefs became the French and the modern Italians are of course babies. The Swedes wrote it all down and made a fortune from hard-core pornography.

From one of the old 'Not The 9 O'clock News' publications

K is for Knights, Knot Known!

In the same vein as the group of mixed figures (premiums?) we looked at the other night, firstly because I suspect these are French, and can even suggest a name; Jem (thanks to Paul Morehead and Brian Carrick from Plastic Warrior), and secondly because the lot Sam sent me contained a few, with two new poses...but they could be from anyone and they could be from anywhere,

So, from my unknown large scale mediaevals box, the above are separated into two batches as those in the upper shot have a uniform feature lacking in the lower bunch; two pin-release marks on the rear of each base. Also the bases are a bit thicker and slightly more symmetrical than the others.

Indeed - until the arrival of the lot from Sam, I had separated them as being two makers (with the upper lot pencilled-in as Jem?), which is why these are two images, I took them a few months ago when I was shooting all the medieval figures for future posts. Although the similarities in material, colour and sculpting meant they shared a tub, just different ends!

Added 25-09-2013 : The lower lot are Dom Plastik!

Then Sam sent me his lot and among them were the above 6, four of them being duplicates, the other two being new poses, one (bottom right) being very much part of the first grouping above, the other (top left) with the standard - being far more like the second gang but with the base of the first, so I now think they are all from one set/maker?

The question is who? Or rather the questions being who/where/when?! So any help greatly appreciated on these and the Post the other day. That's 15 figures, were there more? Of course, if they are Jem and were from a fort play-set, the number of poses is not unusual. Does the difference in - particularly - base style point to two tranches? Or just various sources of copying by Jem (or whoever?) and if so - who were the other influencing makes/originators of the various poses?

It also means that we have a fifth figure in the series we originally looked at Here. It also - increasingly - looks as if the King 'Richard' may well have originated with Norev (linked post and forth figure from the left above), being copied both by Lone Star (or 'influenced'!), then Jem; the smaller figure from this unknown set?

Finally - if they are all or in-part - Jem, does anyone have a picture of the fort the figures came with, they could share with everyone here?

S is for S'tu-hot

Gimme shelter, I'm dying here!

Yeah? You weren't alive in '76 dude! That was too hot, this is mildly over-inclement!

The downside of having built-in champagne-coloured insulation!

M is for Mystery Men from across La Manche

Pascal-call-me-Sam from Sam's Mini's World sent me one of those wonderful mixed lots of toy soldiers he'd acquired from somewhere (I'm busy collecting him Dr. Who stuff by way of exchange!), with an eclectic mix of figures from near-mint recent French and Modern Chinese medieval through some German and Spanish Wild West to early French hard plastics in a bit of a state (but a sample is a sample is a sample and they are hard to find!), most of which I will deal with at a later date, some of which I will add to the posts which are now over a year and a half overdue!

However, I want to put these up here in order to thank Sam publicly,because they need a post to themselves and in the hope that some of you continental collectors can shed some light on them...

These have a lot in common with the Soldabar figures I looked at here; Minor Makes, in that they look like premiums, are copies of various British and other makers and come in various colours (I think I have yellow and blue ones in my archive photo's), they also cover a variety of eras. The 'premium' link is also there in the two Crescent figures, and the heavy bases and soapy-soft polyethylene of the Beverly figures we looked at the other month, these - however - have no discernible mark.

We have all four of the Britains Herald ACW poses, two Britains Herald cowboys (both poses much copied by others), a Crescent Guardsman copy, and pirates of three native American Indians, originating from (left to right); Crescent, MPC and Britains Herald again.

So - thanks Sam, one man's pirate copies are another man's ruby and jade treasures and definitely the cream of the crop...and can anyone shed any light on who produced them or marketed them, or - indeed - maybe gave them away? What other figures are in the range?

[I haven't added 'French' or 'Premium' to the tag list until we can hopefully get some more information on them]

I is for I'm Not Showing-off. But....

...the fruits of my labour!

Raspberries, a rather disappointing crop of commercial strawberries, red currents, a little taste of true wild or Alpine strawberries and four tubs of a natural cross.

The failure of the commercials (Sovereign - I think) is in part down to a rodent who carried them all off and piled them up to rot  in a corner of the cloche while I was away, annoying as I've spent 3-odd years getting the ground elder and bind weed cleared and they had a superb crop on before they went red, still; they say you are supposed to give some of the harvest to nature!

The natural cross are extraordinary, they shuck beautifully without a piece of green coming away, neither does the shuck involve half the innards - like the Alpines. They are the most fantastic tasting strawberries I've ever tasted (with the possible exception of the large - 1cm or so - Alpines we used to harvest by the side of the road to Tuttlingen when we were kids!), and just popped-up on the drive-way about ten years ago, since when they have spread over a large patch.

They have a very short season; about two weeks, and bruise very easily, as they are very soft (another trait they've inherited from the Alpines), so need to be eaten the same day or jammed, but the jam is sublime. I have seen very similar crosses advertised in the plant catalogues, so I guess the current apparent climate change is to their benefit.

Given all the other interlopers I mentioned the other day, the more fruity things the better I say!

News, Views Etc...Horrible Histories

Due to the vagaries of the UK postal system the review samples I should have got two weeks ago only arrived for me to pick-up this last weekend, so while I have taken a few hurried shots I haven't sorted them out yet. However, hopefully I will post the article in the next day or two.

In the meantime, the Horrible Histories magazine, published by TCS/Immediate Media - which I keep hoping will carry the blind-bag figures, but so far; hasn't - have two paratroops and an old-school toy 'plane on the cover this week. The figures are a bit crap and the flyer has Horrible History roundels, but if you collect the parachuting figures (as I do) it's worth a punt.

Farmer Giles and his cousin with their square parachutes!

The magazine is also running a competition for the new tranche of Horrible History figure sets, including the 2nd series blind-bags, although Worlds Apart have told me they're not ready yet. Presumably they will be by the time the competition closes?

W is for WTF

We asked the Horticulture department to line-in the boundary on the cricket field, I say 'field' over 'pitch' as the grass is so long getting a ball out to the boundary can only be accomplished hitting-out with high balls, risking a catch!

They gave us a five-a-side football pitch running parallel with the wicket!

What can you do? If you don't laugh, you'll cry!!

And it's indelible!

P is for Pencil-thin...but Fat-legged!

These are currently very common on the roadside verges and in the hedgerows of this still remarkably green and relatively pleasant land. Watch the grass brown if this weather continues though! In a similar colour range to the Rose Chafer from bronze-greens through to grass-green, this is the Thick-legged (or Fat-legged) Flower Beetle (Oedemera nobilis), the leg thing being confined to the males.

These are the large daisy-type things - I don't know the name of - which line our verges and colonise waste ground, central reservations (medians) on motorways (highways/interstates) and the like, they look like Michaelmas daises but it's not Michaelmas!

These are all males and you can see where the name comes from, the upper section of the rear pair of legs are ballooned out.

Some more males, the other defining feature of these is the non-meeting of the wing casings, leaving a small section of the wings showing. One of the things I've noticed photographing beetles these last few weeks is how appallingly bad they all are at getting their wings back in order when they land, this species seems to have just given-up altogether!

The Females; these are all together more dowdy, less tapered toward the rear and lacking the fat legs of the male, still they can have a metallic sheen, it's just that I failed to get a decent shot. They also seem to make a better job vis-a-vis wing cases! Notice also that the one in the bottom-right image needed to take care - a very pale and quite well camouflaged spider was ever so slowly stalking her...

H is for Hey! You!...

 ...get off of my clo...er...Flower!

These are probably my favourite UK beetle, there is a small one which looks just like a little apple-green metal scarab I really like but I haven't seen any since I was about 11. This also looks like a scarab type but is in fact a chafer, the Rose Chafer (Cetonia Aurata) or Green Rose Chafer and Mum's garden is always good for one or two at this time of year, this year there were three over a couple of days...bargain!

These are very slow and measured in their movement but still appear clumsy and always remind me of Sloths! The one pictured above was the first, and this little plant (the name of which is unknown to me) was covered in insects on the day I took these and we will come back to it in the next few days.

Looks like a rose but it's actually a flowering shrub-current, they do very little damage to roses, eating a few holes in the odd petal or perhaps a whole petal if it's a particularly tender one, or if the chafer is particularly hungry! Mostly they seem to help themselves to the same pollen and nectar that the bees enjoy, hence the accidental encounter in the top image, I only saw it after I'd uploaded the photographs.

The apparent cracks in the wing cases are actually markings in a pale creamy-white and when they are on a rose leaf the camouflage effect is very good indeed, especially the older leaves which take on metallic hues with thin pale marks themselves.

As can be seen from these examples, they can vary from a quite uniform metallic green through to one I saw the other day (without a camera) that was almost totally bronze, like the size of the antlers on the stag beetles, I suspect it is about age, with the greener ones being younger, but that's just me and might be wholly inaccurate! It may be more like hair colour?

V is for Vicious Varmint!

Although I've mostly been photographing beetles in the last few weeks, there are a few other interesting things to show over the next few days, and this F***er is one of them, it had me off a ladder and across the lawn (I was cutting the hedge at the time) like a much younger man, believe me!

And like the lily beetles in the previous post, I've seen more of these in the last five weeks than I have in the rest of my life. Another species that will exploit mans inability to stop himself ruining the environment. It is of course a Hornet (Vespa Crabro), or to give it it's full title the European Hornet.

It has another name, due to it's having colonised somewhere else long before it took to crossing the channel...in 1840 it joined the exodus to the new world and landed in New York, in America it is also called the Bell Hornet. This particular specimen was over an inch long and hummed like an expensive miniature helicopter from Maplins! Looks like a wasp, but really, very, absolutely isn't one.

"Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, the wretched refuse of your teeming shore. Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me, I lift my lamp beside the golden door, oh, go on then...give me your vicious bad-tempered insects too"

When I was a kid you'd see one of these every four or five summers, blown over from France on a breeze and investigating the lack of mates in Hampshire. I believe if you lived on the coast you'd maybe see one or two a year, but in the last four years I've seen similar numbers and in the last few weeks dozens of them.

Now, it's probable that seeing so many means a nest nearby, but then they never used to nest here...at all...ever! And I've been seeing them in two unconnected geographical areas, so two nests? This is the trouble, all these 'super species' tend to be damaging due to the hardiness that is a prerequisite of their exploitative attributes (god this insect study has some big words in it!) and need to survive man. Lily beetles eat lilys, Chinese worts and weeds choke everything, mitten crabs and crayfish kill everything and these hornets will hit you like an shot-gun pellet - soon as look at you.

I shot one a few years ago on a friend's garden wall, it let me take a single photograph, and when it sensed me focusing a second - lifted off, turned to face me and made it quite clear I needed to give it some space...I'm sure they are disturbed by the electronic focusing signal, you notice a lot of insects react only when you start the focus? Even some caterpillars.

C is for Cruella

Which would be a good name for lipsticks of a certain shade! This little beauty is a wolf in sheep's clothing; the Red (or 'scarlet') Lily beetle, Lilioceris lilii and is not to be tolerated if you are a gardener. A foreign import, living in Surrey since 1939, but exploding across the country in recent years, it is one of those 'super species' who will benefit from the harm we have done and continue to do to the planet.

It is so shiny it's not easy to get a shot in focus, especially on the plant where the camera will select something near to focus on rather than the insect. Here it made a fatal mistake, usually they hide under the leaves or in the cruck of several leaves, this one went top-side and I had it, photographed it and dispatched it.

It would be nice to say "I regretfully killed it" or even 'grudgingly', but the fact is, pretty as they are, they are deadly to the lily, and will do massive damage, so they have to die...for the moment, eventually they will win as most lilys are smart hybrids or imports (the irony there being that the imports by/for the gardens of the rich of Surrey probably brought them here in the first place!), while there is evidence that non-hybrid 'specie' are - to some extent - resistant.

Killing them is however bitter-sweet, as the find/kill is satisfying, yet you know that like Canute, you are pissing in the wind, yet they are rather beautiful.

If you don't put a hand under them the instant you see them, they will fall to the floor on their backs and be very hard to find, this one didn't move for about five minutes. I've executed five this year for crimes against lilys and that's the worst year ever. Still; after they've stared in my court there is no recidivism...there are no juve-cubes for lily beetles - I am Dredd and I am the law!

Q is for Quiet Majesty

Not trying to score one-upmanship points against John of John's Toy Soldiers blog who had a really nice dark, blackish one visit his garage the other day, but rather that these have been flying for about 4 weeks now and along with various other beetles I've shot over May/June were due to star here.

Starting with the king of beetles the Stag or Lucanus Cervus, a now endangered species (like anything unconnected with Homo Sapiens but sharing a planet with him), although not that endangered if this years number are anything to gauge things by, I've seen dozens, but then I've been seeking them out!

The time to find them is twilight, that quiet period after sun-down when the light just slides away while you're busy doing something else, they sound like a clattering bunch of dry leaves in flight. This one is a typical male of mid years with reasonable sized 'antlers' (enlarged jaw mandibles).

This younger one (smaller antlers) was crashing around a hazelnut hedge like Arnie looking for Sarah Connor, but after a while he settled under a leaf. I have always found them here, year after year, and usually when I find one I can pop-up to the station car park and find a few more, but this year there weren't any, so I wandered back to shoot some more pictures of this one and found...

...this old boy with huge antlers flying round the same hedge (I assume there is a female somewhere near giving off a pheromone signal?), sadly the shots are not brilliant, these pocket digital 'instamatics' are fine for toy soldiers, family shots and even macro-work, but they struggle with decent landscapes, bright or very low light and anything buzzing around like Budgie the Half-cut Helicopter with a damaged rotor!

The previous three were all shot in Fleet, Hampshire, over the end of May/early June this one was on a path near Leatherhead, Surrey a week or so later (two weeks ago) and is a lovely polished mahogany colour with a fine pair of medium sized antlers, he could sense me and reared-up like an invertebrate cobra!

This was one of about six converging on an old oak tree, it was getting too dark to shoot them and most settled up in the crown, but this chap started climbing from the base. Again, I assume a female was silently calling them to the fight (they use the antlers to throw each other off the branch when they meet!), and I guess he'd lost a bout and couldn't be arsed to fly again!

The weird thing was, 20-odd hours later when we were finishing a knock-about cricket session (I survived about eight balls!) he was still in the same spot, he hadn't moved all day? But I didn't have the camera, so I couldn't get any natural-light shots.

Speaking of the females; I have shot them in the past at the station car park, but am not posting them as it was a year or so ago and i want to post the ones that I've seen in the last few weeks. They tend toward being much darker (darker even than the one in John's garage), some almost black, and have no antlers so they look like a different species, but are about the same length and the abdomen is pretty much the same as the male stags.

Back home last week and another one in [the] Nut Bush City Limits! Daedalus and aeronautical engineers have so much to learn from these before we kill the last of them (within about 50 years, globally?). They actually seem to use their wings to lower the air pressure under the wing casing and then use the cases as a hang-glider, steering and changing altitude with the wing-cases while the wings just flap away AFAP. The result - it has to be said - looks like a large bumble bee on a drug-trial!

In researching all the beetles I've seen over the last 4/6 weeks, I discovered that the Rhino (Oryctes nasicornis) beetle is also a native, I've never seen one but he has a single horn and looks like the miniaturised bastard-child of a rhinoceros and a mono-ceratops!

B is for Bridge

Bridges are good things, they ease our passage on any journey, whether to the shops or through life and carry us over obstacles; real or imagined. Here's one what I built in the woods the other day, Tesco's is now 15 minutes nearer and not one more car has been put on the roads.

When I joined the Army in 1984, my ambition was to be a Plant Op-Mech (Operator Mechanic) in the combat engineers, however; although I got technician grade on four of the joining tests (spelling, dominoes, logic puzzles and IQ thingies) I kept failing the [basic] maths paper, so the MOD would only offer me Infantry, Artillery and Pioneer Corps...

...now I knew from my Father that the peacetime Pioneer Corps spent most of their time digging latrines and making wooden floats for civic KAPE type events, and in wartime spent most of their time digging latrines, trenches and graves (sometimes probably using the same hole for all three in sequence!), so they were out, likewise the Artillery seemed to have to hump a lot of heavy kit about and then wait for counter-battery fire to ruin their day, so the Infantry it was.

I kept putting in for a driving cadre, and kept being promised the next one by company commanders who's Sgt. Major's had no intention of giving me the ammo I needed to apply for a transfer, so in the end I 'did my bit' and got out, pity as I think I'd have a made a half-reasonable engineer?

Yes...it's just a pile of logs!!!! Maybe it should have been the Pioneer Corps!

SA is for Silly-Arses!

Except they weren't actually silly in real life were they? But this lot look really silly...

...in fact they look like they're playing hump-backed bridges!

Years ago when we were little and Britain only had one motorway (unimaginatively called the M1), we used to have to travel to Wales 'cross-country', and at the Hampshire/Berkshire end of the journey was a road somewhere round the back of Reading (I think?) which we used to use to get across to the old A4 'West Road', it was called Seven Bridges Road, or eleven...twelve maybe? Anyway - the bridges were all little culvert/stream types of the hump-backed variety. Our Father would announce our arrival at the start of the section and we would count-off the bridges as he drove over them a bit too fast, leading to squeals of delight from my Brother and I as our little bums (we were between 4/5 to about 7/8 during this period) left the seat, sometimes we would hit the roof of the car with our heads!

But the point of this anecdote it that in order to become airborne, you had to hold your arms out, as if they were anchored to the window or seat, the effect was greatly reduced, a lesson our little SA-men here seem to have learnt. Once you realise they are playing hump-backed bridges, you can't take them seriously! "Yetz Hans, schnell, schnell....Whoooooaaowh! Wieder Hans, wieder!

The other accessories that came with the little wooden craft-work figures and buildings from Bavaria and Baden Wurttemberg (among other places) that I have been interposing with the Subbuteo posts (and the only reason I forced myself to get the last of those published earlier). I suspect the card table was liberated from a set of dolls furniture, due to the size of the playing cards, while the cook's tent is lovely, both the tent and the staff-car are from the smaller (20mm) figures, and the staff-car - while being taller, otherwise sits quite well with the Hasegawa Mercedes.

B is for Bladder-ball!

I posted these about 10 days ago and have tried to text them several times with little success, I managed to get the tag-list done about Monday and gave it a title last weekend, but each time I open 'edit' I look at these and get that sinking feeling; "Why did I ever start this?". Well, I know why I started blogging; to share what I know and hopefully learn a bit from visitors, but the thing is, I really don't like football, it does nothing for me and the overpaid Prima Donnas who partake at a professional level just annoy me.

Therefore, getting enthusiastic about something that leaves me quite cold is not going to happen, so little chat tonight, just the facts. I understand that some people love football, and if they want to add anything to the post via the comments, that might help the casual visitor...I don't hate football, I just never 'got it'!

Given away with Yorkie chocolate-bar branded Easter-eggs in the last few years; Hasbro's return to flats. The dates I bought them/that are displayed on the packaging are at odds with those on Peter Upton's site, I don't know why.

"Kar'm-on yoouu reh'heads...and...ah'ther kull'urs", the reds are arranged from earliest phenolic-based figures to late tampo-printed team-specific strips.

I can recognise some of them, the German National team particularly, as I always root for them when they play a UK team! What? I'm a stubbornly contrary near-professional iconoclast and half-German, it's begging to be done!

Goal keepers and throwers-in, various, ball handling for the use of, Mk's 1 - 4!

There, that's the players done, now go back and look at the pitch-side figures they're much more useful for crowd scenes, model railways and zombie war-gmaes, these figures kick a bladder about...Right! Sgt. Major - kicking a ball up and down the PITCH!

K is for Kaserne

Well, you've got your little wooden SA and SS men, the Fett Kontroller and a young Parker..."Yawol mine Dame, schnell-maken mine dame" (the grey one in the last post?), now they need somewhere to live...soldiers live in barracks, so they too made up the little miniature world of worked pine and other woods.

The Stabswache or 'Staff Guard' were Hitler's personal bodyguard, some eight or so Loyal SA men, soon renamed the Stosstruppe 'Adolf Hitler' they would eventually become the 1st SS Panzer Division 'Leibstandart'. The fact that this little watch-post - Soldatenheim/Soldatenhaus - is named after the short-lived moniker of a unit from the early days of the Beer-hall Putsch, shows how popular the mythology of the National Socialists had become, and might date it to the earlier 1930's?.

A larger building, in the Wilhelmine (Wilhelmian?) style (contemporaneous with Victorian architecture). Very much in the typical urban style as against the old rural/market town's city-wall post/watch-tower of the previous shot; the barrack blocks we lived in at Wavell Barracks, Berlin were very similar to this one, but had longer wings and four stories, one in the high-pitched roof.

Apart from the Swastika's these buildings can't really be regarded as 'sinister', they are in fact rather charming, and would have been available without the hakenkreuz stencil with other wooden sets, perhaps with May-pole dancing villagers, traditional 'toy' soldiers (think Nutcracker suite!) or lederhozen sporting Oompa-bands. Indeed - as we saw here - Not Necessarily Erzgibirge; the little tower on the SA-Heim still features on these toys today, and often finished in a herb-green!

G is for Google-pub!