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.

Saturday, October 11, 2014

R is for Rocketry

A couple of poorish images for you in this post I'm afraid, but it gets a new tag in the list and clears some stuff from Picasa, so win-win for me!

I love this, branded to Lyvia, this Hong Kong made money-box has a mechanism which allows you to fire the coin into the cone, how long before it would crack the cone or knock it off is open to question, but what a fantastic, practical 'toy'! I also love it because it has a combination lock at the bottom; when I was a kid, I had a post-box money box, also made in Hong Kong, so there's a nostalgia hit in this. I occasionally see the post-box one on evilBay, but so far have managed to resist!

I never saw one of these when I was a kid, if I had some serious badgering and car-cleaning would have ensued! A forerunner of the modern Estes rockets, and slightly safer, this seems to rely on 'Epsom Salts' tablets and the instructions are interesting reading, comparing what was acceptable for sale as a plaything 40/50 years ago with what is acceptable today...

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