The Magnet

My mum never gave away any of my Dinky toys, there was no need to as nobody would have wanted them anyway after us three boys had finished with them, I took a long look at the ravaged box of diecast a few years back when I was visiting my dad when he was sick and decided that it must have been my younger brother Paul that was the guilty party, after all, I always took good care of them, didn’t I?

However, there was no trace of my Action Men. They were missing in action, absent without leave, taken by aliens, or the binmen...

In the 1950s my dad was employed at the Meccano factory on Binns Road in Liverpool. His job of paint tester was basically quality control for the many enamel paints that were used on the Meccano construction kit parts, toy trains and Dinky cars. He’d spray paint onto glass and then monitor the drying time, consistancy and colour against existing charts.

It was around this time that during lunch and tea breaks, he would sell shirts and ties to the many female employees. It was an inbuilt trait of my dad, to sell things, to make money from next to nothing, and to work hard.

He used to cycle from Botanic Road in Liverpool 7 to Binns Road via Edge Lane on his old boneshaker, which would usually take 30 minutes or so, and was warned about his timekeeping, I also suspect that his bosses looked down on his barrow boy antics. After a bout of what he called dysentry, he was late one more time and was sacked.

They did that back then.

I think it was the best thing that ever happened to him and the family, in the short term the supply of Meccano and Bayko kits in the household dwindled, but my dad found his true calling and progressed from a paint testing barrow boy to a full fledged shop owner. In the early 1960s the "Magnet, Toys and Fancy Goods" shop opened at 179 Wavertree Road in Liverpool and if you could put a name to it, he probably sold it.

I’ll try to list what the shop sold in a later blog, but, two of the most important toy lines that he started selling, much to the joy of his two sons, were, you guessed it, Meccano’s own Dinky toys and after a trip to a toy show in Bell Vue, Manchester, Palitoy’s Action Man.

And so the first collection began.

Without that first collection, how could there possibly have been a second?

Thanks Mum, thanks Dad.

xx

Swimming with the Sharks

I’m just watching the "Crocodile Hunter" swim with sharks and whales off the coast of Australia and it took me back a few days to my Friday night challenge, we were up at Balsam Lake for a couple of days break and I’d had a couple of beers, followed by half a litre of Peller Estates. I stood on the jetty, looking out to the floating swim platform about thirty feet offshore and I said to my wife "That’s my goal for tomorrow, I’m going to swim out to that platform"

Now I, like Steve, have the deepest respect for the natural world and the animals that live within it, my goal of swimming to the platform would involve no harm to the natural habitat and the little fishes that would swim by my side, I can imagine their amazing life changing stories as they returned home that Saturday afternoon.

"Mam, you shudda seen the size of the thing, all rotund and splashing about like a huge goti [1], me and me buvver Lawrence were scared out of our wits but we follered him and he went and then he came back and then he went again and then we went off and then, well, it just was like anuvver day and so we went off to see if there was anyfing in the weeds, but there wasn’t, we looked for favver but he’s still not where he was when we left him so we came home to tell you about the goti and all dat, wots for tea?"

I’m sorry, I lost the point of this blog then, point, yes, need a point…

So, I dive in, hit my face in the sand that’s about three foot below the water, biting my lip in the process, swim the ten yards, which seems a lot longer, grab hold of the rail and hoist myself up onto the seagull papoo covered floating jetty that smells like rotten seaweed and bird ass. I Stood there for a triumphant fifteen seconds with the white stuff squeezing between my toes, then I launched myself back into the water, skimming the sand that’s now an impressive four foot below the waterline and race back to the shore, with nothing on my little feet I scraped the top of my toes painfully on some submerged concrete step, the adventure ended as I pulled myself breathless out of the wild kingdom, emerging from the tempestuous waters relatively unscathed by my incredible skirmish with the elements and certain death.

I was ready for a grand celebration of life, the release of joy after extreme sports and a pint or two of the aforementioned wine.

Steve Irwin, eat your heart out.


[1] Fish terminology

One small step

One giant leap for mankind, my god, my god, that was thirty five freekin’ years ago, what happened?, did I sleep?, did I press pause instead of play?, thirty five years of my life have passed by since I watched that moment on our massive twenty inch TV in the front room. Thirty five years. Did I mention that?, Thirty five years.

On a related note, thirty five years ago I was unknowingly four years away from discovering the fine art of drinking, that’s probably why the time between then and now has vanished, along with a million brain cells, my Action man and all those Dinky toys.

Thirty five years....

Blue Rinse Baby

What is that point in our lives when we get the urge to display our true colors?, I’ve asked our resident print room girl at the landing gear emporium exactly when will she be subscribing to the blue rinse, or the wheely basket, or the Corvette?

Oh, she’s been driving a Corvette for years, I forgot!.

Will it help me if I start making my blond hair blond again?, or should I let it drift into the ghostly white color that my father ended up with?, well, that was after it was a subtle touch of nicotine yellow for all those years he smoked, not quite blond, not quite white, more Yate’s wine lodge urinal. A nice color.

Jim Collins, my favorite replacement father, dressed down, even though he knew that we all suspected that he was a millionaire and I personally suspect that he suspected he was one too, he dressed down well, wore jeans, scruffy cardigans, drove an old Jeep. He was in his eighties and was a cool old dude and that’s the way I want to play it, I don’t want to start scrambling to spend life’s extra pennies on the cabriolet (as my son puts it) or the polyester pants and the jaquard sweater. I’ll slowly drift into being a scruffy bastard driving an old car eating cheese and drinking too much wine.

Oh, I’ve been doing that for years, I forgot!!

Addicted to Love

Red Wine, now there’s something I agree with, Roasted Garlic, yes, yet another item that I’m totally in favour of, I don’t know where these two items existed five years ago, not in my life anyway, perhaps there are thousands of other exciting things I’m not aware of that, in time, will be pushed into my skull.
 
There have been less Nacho’s in my life lately, except for the Whitby pub Melanie Pringles masterpiece which is always available with a side of very hot wing sauce and a pitcher of the amber brew. I was first introduced to the Nacho chip about nineteen years ago in a bar in California, a delicacy that up until then, had eluded me. At the same time I was experiencing hot Pace salsa for the first time, a new heat experience for a British boy who was only conditioned to the occasional Vesta curried beef and rice.
 
Then the addiction began, the slow slope down to capsicum addiction, the sensory anomoly of pleasure mixed with pain and strong urges to try the hard stuff. A journey of discovery, the joy of hot wing dizziness, the hot sweats, the delusions, the halucinations, the panic attacks, the waterfalls of spit, the gastric rumblings and of course, the famed ring of fire.

It was in the local trendy bar the Banshee one evening when the server unwittingly passed me a dixie cup of uncut weaponised Dave’s Total Insanity Sauce ™, there I was thinking that it was the normal stuff, smearing it amply on my nacho chips, only to find that within seconds I was a foaming fountain of spit, devoid of all facial feeling muttering that "I’m not an animal, I’m a huuumaaan beeinnggg!!"

In the beer fridge downstairs I have six litres of my favorite hot sauce, two more in the cupboard upstairs, festering away at room temperature for the extra kick along with about twenty bottles of assorted hot sauces.

Strangely enough I don’t find that in the least bit odd.

In a fantastic show of support my wife Karen has joined me over the last few years in the downward spiral towards nerve damage, a woman who used to think that Vesta’s were about the spiciest thing on the planet and now, after a lot of training, she too has an insatiable urge for the fix.

And we’re both in agreement, neither one of us is going to get out of this alive.

Essential Oils

I made my Korean friend fold in on himself the other day at work using some new material. I didn’t realise that I was free forming incredible humour at the time, just stating fact.

It was just a comment based on pure observation, I asked him :

“Have you ever been to the washroom, taken a huge dump and then wiped your butt, given your hands a good wash and then arrived back at your workstation and your hand still smells of ass?”

He then proceeded to fold himself into his calculator case saying “That’s wrong Dave, that’s just so wrong”

I don’t know what he’s on about, I mean we all check if our hand smells of ass after we’ve wiped don’t we?, I’m just very efficient and do a secondary check after I’ve washed. Perhaps as my well preened Italian friend says, there are “essential oils” that are leeching through the cheap Aerospace two-ply, embedding their molecules deep into my cuticles.

I mean, how many parts per million have to remain on the fingertips for you to actually still discern that distant ass smell? and even after additional washing, how many of those remaining molecules end up in the package of dry roasted peanuts you’ve been generously passing around to your colleagues?

Just wondering.....

Sand and Garbage

I have to throw an extract from Jeff Kay's blog up here, he's the brilliant creator of the West Virginian Surf Report and lives an almost parallel life down there.

"Another weekend disappointment: Close Encounters of the Third Kind. I saw this flick in theaters in 1977 or so, and thought it was just about the greatest thing ever. I don't guess I'd watched it since (I've been busy), but always remembered it fondly. Same with Toney. She said she actually had a Close Encounters t-shirt when she was a kid, and loved the movie as well. So I was excited when I saw it listed on one of the movie channels, and promptly saved it to the DVR. And Saturday night we settled in with some icy Yuenglings, and proceeded to watch one of the dullest goddamn things I've come across to date. I'm not joking, it was like something off the Sundance Channel; I needed a drool catcher. Toney said it's two and a half hours of people looking up, and she's right. A huge chunk of the movie is taken up with extended shots of folks looking to the sky -- waiting for something exciting to happen. We know how they felt. It was one long encounter of the tiresome kind. I once thought this movie was the shit?! Good God. My whole life is built on a foundation of sand and garbage"

And he's right, sand and garbage. It sort of makes you think about the whole CD or DVD libraries that we're all being encouraged to invest in. I have a cupboard full of CDs that I don't play any more, sometimes I grab an old favorite, slap it in the car and think what a load of crap that is, everything fades with time, give me something new.

Same with DVDs, I mean, 2001 is really an excellent movie, full of amazing special effects for a 35 year old classic, but nowadays I just feel like reaching for my little blankey when it's on, making me want to sleep at any time of the day as HAL lulls me to bye byes. It's a sad, sad day when you place a valued DVD such as that back in the cupboard and believe that it'll never escape again, trapped in there with it's boring relatives, lost for the rest of time. Mind you, I can get the same effect by "loaning" the disk to a certain individual at work.

So, we're off to Future Shop or Best Buy to purchase the next event, normally another few hours with Tom Cruise or Tom Hanks, seldom with Ben Afflek who in my opinion couldn't even act like a potato. Yet, even after the buzz of the new, the second, or third showing, one day, The last Short Samurai or Shaving Ryans Privates will enter the one way valve we call a media cupboard, never to see the light of lazer again. It's a sad thing, but often with the two Toms, it's a good thing.

See ya later.

PS. (there's a lot more Jeff Kay at www.thewvsr.com - check him out)

Penny for the Guy

It’s probably always been this way, but from my perspective, it’s getting worse.

If you’ve read my previous posts, you’ll know that I have mixed feelings about firemen, so, it’s comical when one of the breed is on the phone asking, with buckets of enthusiasm, if I want to be charitable and help to send a busload of homeless children to the circus.

And if not a busload, would I consider a car full or perhaps just a couple of the little waifs, or maybe just little Johnny who is especially worthy of my charity as he has had legs off and cannot get around at all any more, especially with the asthma and the incontinence.

The local police are at it too, so the apparent choice for me is to risk allowing the house burning down as the brigade hang back and access the database to decide if I’m an uncharitable bastard, or the rozzers fit me up for a grow lab just to avenge the hurt and pain I’ve caused at the orphanage.

Crank up the Guilt Meter.

To defend my position here, which I shouldn’t really have to, I do give to charities, the one’s I choose, at a time of my choosing.

At the liquor store on Saturday we popped in for a bottle of wine as it’s nice to enjoy a glass of Cabernet at the end of a working week isn’t it.?…but to get to the front door we had to pass a new millenium match lady who had set up a chocolate factory there. As we walked in she didn’t say “would you like to buy a bar of chocolate?” she actually said “would you like to save victims of abuse and make their lives better?”

So, you say no, feel like a heartless bastard, rack up some points on the meter and move on.

She was there when we came out as well, watched us as we walked away clutching our bottle of happiness, selfish bloody swines...

I can’t answer the phone, open my own front door, go to work, liquor store or now even the supermarket without being on the receiving end of some efficient technique attempting to extract my cash using guilt.

I’m up to here with it, and there’s only one way I can reset the guilt meter.

pass the corkscrew........

Death by Piano

Just a question I like to ask people, and you are people out there are you not my invisible friends?

If you could choose to die by a musical instrument, which one would it be?

I’m a bit of a coward of course, choosing the Grand Piano method. A well dropped 88 key piano, taken squarely on the coconut, would do the job nicely for me. The perfect end, with life ebbing from my crushed body to a resounding multitimbral chord and the smell of toast.

If not a piano, something else with significant mass, but not Rita MacNeil.

I couldn’t handle death by a Piccolo or a drumstick, there would have to be too much jabbing and faffing about for it to be rewarding, mind you, it could depend on the professional approach adopted by the attacker, there are some very gifted people out there you know.

And the inverse is true, what if the chap with the release handle for the piano has astigmatism or a twitch and drops it too soon or too late, catching me on the knee or on the edge of my elbow, and then what? It wouldn’t be a surprise any more, I’d be suddenly aware that the game was afoot, the adrenalin would kick in, and I’d make like a tree and get out of there before the backup drop.

Yes, granted, there could be problems, but I’ll stick with my choice.

What about you?

Low Fidelity

I recently rediscovered an old cassette tape I’ve kept around for almost thirty years now, It was recorded in February 1975 and it’s the Soul Show from Radio City, Liverpool. Its packed full of the type of the Soul music that I loved back then and a genuine time capsule for me.

This reminded me of a prized possession I have in my room, it’s a little Philips transistor radio that I bought myself for my 17th birthday in 1974. It was bought with most of my first pay packet from the Ford Motor Company. I’m quite gobsmacked to think, that besides a few diaries, that’s about all I have to show for those apprenticeship years.

This brings me to the joy of such an item when you’re young, I’d sit in my bedroom in the digs in Hornchurch, Essex, where I was living at the time, listening to crackly Radio Luxemborg or Radio Caroline, on the medium wave, well into the early hours of the morning, a couple of batteries providing almost endless mono entertainment for a young lad living alone, far away from home.

Of course, it wasn’t long before I had a few friends, discovered Rum and Coke, Pubs and Nightclubs, full of loud, stereo Soul music with incredible bass and fidelity...

...and of course the dancing girls.

And then it all went to rat shit.

Pitch that Fork

I’ve had a bit of writers block over the last few days, perhaps it was the mega long weekend, perhaps Greece winning the European cup combined with too much alcohol, perhaps my laziness is creeping into even this aspect of my life.

I finally tackled the grass tonight, I just knew I had to, it was a sort of eighth sense. I’ve not discussed this here before but my continuing problem is that all my neighbours are retired, spend far too much time and money on their lawns and Superpiggy in the middle here spends most of his life with a sword hanging over his head, nicknamed yardwork, playing catch up.

They probably use Scotts golfgreen, weed and feed, conditioner, teezing combs and Pledge furniture polish on their bloody grass, whatever I do, mine will not look like theirs, I can’t compete. I bet that within 24 hours my neighbour to the left will have trimmed his grass 50% lower than what I’ve just done, making mine look like it hasn’t been cut for a week. Bastard.

And they have their nice little single pull start, thousand dollar, self propelled polished lawnmowers while I’m wanking the cord out of my rusting Crappy Tire special twenty times to get the thing farting away, add to that the shaft oscillation I have after bending my blade last year and the fear, yes I said fear, of having a leg cut off following crack initiation and rapid stress reversal fatigue fracture of said mild steel shaft (It’s an Aerospace type of fear).

So, the grass is cut for another few days, I still have both my legs and I can hide in the house while they all get busy again. I’ll know exactly when the neighbourhood needs my help once more, that’s what we super heroes are here for you know.

Zorgon.