Merry Christmas from Toyland

Yesterday I was caught rummaging around in a junk shop when I should have been doing my Christmas shopping. Lo and behold, I found a stash of mid 1950's John Bull magazines underneath a pile of obscure Victorian song sheets. Imagine my joy when I opened the December 7th 1957 issue and saw this advertisement for Dinky Toys. Or perhaps you can't. I suppose you have to be as grizzled as I am to know what all this was about, but Dinky Toys were the creme de la creme in diecast model vehicles. Forget Corgi Toys with plastic windows, forget Spot-On with its obsessively correct detail, these were the ones. Bronze green telephone service vans, deep blue BOAC coaches, yellow and green Austin taxis and one I still lust after- the Morris J van delivering Capstan cigarettes. Seen here flowing colourfully around Eros, they were the staple of my Santa Claus lists, and many a Christmas morning breakfast was spent manoeuvering the latest addition to my collection around the pork pies and mustard pots. And for the fetishists amongst you, there was simply nothing like the first whiff of new paint as you rolled the new toy back out of its bright yellow box. Merry Christmas everybody.

Silent Stars

A walk around my local churchyard on a frosty but bright morning revealed this slate gravestone. Of course in the early nineteenth century nobody would have thought twice about a Richard Burton marrying an Elizabeth, but from our 'modern' perspective the coupling is always going to grab attention. Old churchyards are happy (yes, happy) hunting grounds if you're interested in lettering and the decorative arts. In my local it's the Swithland blue slate ones that have survived the best, those carved from nearby limestone gradually becoming worn smooth by westerly rains. I go on about them in More from Unmitigated England, now stacked-up in your local bookshop. Oh, and I nearly forgot. In a village churchyard just down the road there's a Harry Potter. I won't say where it is in case coach loads of Potter Addicts turn up like others do to the Rosslyn Chapel to see if they can find the Da Vinci Code in the vestry.

Cardboard Dreams

A rainy morning, big water drops spattering against the window, blurring my view of sheep huddled-up under the trees. So I start rummaging about in cupboards and staring at bookshelves in the hope of finding something inspiring. Normally the spine of a book tells its message quite clearly, and one moves on. But books without a traditional spine can all too often get neglected, presenting just a few leaves of faded cardboard and the odd rusty staple to the outer world. And so it is this morning as I prise open a gap between volumes and pull out the Pop-Up Train Book. Published by Purnell circa 1950, a line of type advocates the use of a paper clip to keep the book open. I used a bulldog clip so that I could share this 3D railway station with you. Just to give you the back story, John and Mary are sitting next to their luggage by the Booking Office, on their way to visit Granny 'who lives far away in the North of England'. I particularly like the book stall, with its ranks of colourful magazine covers. When publisher Victor Gollancz launched a cheap paperback imprint in the Thirties he spent an afternoon going round all the station bookstalls in London to discover the predominant colour used in print. So was born the classic yellow Gollancz covers. Goodbye John and Mary! Have a happy holiday!

The Quiet Caravan

Gamekeepers leave some odd things lying around. Old oil drums and plastic dustbins for keeping feed in, mouldering timber sheds and somewhere to have a stiffener on a pheasant shoot. I'm not quite sure what this caravan was used for, slowly succumbing to lichen and moss in a woodland clearing in a lonely Northamptonshire wood. There is something very eerie about the curtains still up at the windows, and the neat bow of net on the door has chilly undertones of Miss Havisham's wedding dress. And it's hardly a love nest for Mellors and Lady Chatterley either, although round here you can never be quite sure. Somebody may recognise it from long gone holidays- perched on a clifftop at East Runton perhaps, or holding up the traffic on the Fosse Way. Nearby is a Zetor tractor that is virtually indistinguishable from the surrounding trees and undergrowth. Nature takes over quite quickly when left to its own devices.

Castles in the Cabbages

It must have seemed as though England woke up one morning in 1940 to find the countryside suddenly littered with anti-tank barricades, vehicle traps and the ubiquitous pill box. The threat of German invasion in 1940 resulted in 28,000 of these little concrete fortresses being placed in strategic locations- hidden in spinneys on the crests of fields, on the bends of rivers and at road junctions. All for a war that never came. And so instead of heroic tales of rattling machine gun fire raking across canals and cabbage fields, there must be countless tales of rehearsal, all-to-real manoeuvres or simply just rotas of guard duty that involved enamelled coffee pots and poaching in surrounding woods. I can't be precise as to the exact location of this one (this is the fens after all) but it can't be far from my smoking railway carriage. Just one of less than 6,000 still extant in the countryside. Find out more at http://www.pillboxesuk.co.uk/

Railway Echo No 5

A very evocative find out on the fens. An abandoned railway carriage sits at a deserted platform as if having collapsed on its final run up from March to Spalding. Sun-bleached peeling paint, cobwebbed windows, but still the sandblasted glass firmly saying 'It's OK, come in here and light up your Woodbine, Churchmans, Passing Cloud or Sweet Afton. No 'customer services team member' to report you to the Tobacco Police, no disapproving looks from your travelling companions. Now it's just the wind through the hawthorns blowing in from the quiet fields, the occasional badger or fox stopping momentarily to sniff the cold air. Do they catch the ghost of the last blue wreath of smoke curling up out of the ventilator? I do hope so.

Harbouring Thoughts

All the horrible stuff going on in a Margate back garden reminded me that I'd been there once. Veering away from Dreamland and the pleasure beaches I came across this marvellous little building on the harbour. Once the Customs House, it was built in 1812 and sported the official coat-of-arms with its motto 'Dieu et Mon Droit' (God and My Right). Known ever since as the Droit House, it is now the worryingly- titled 'visitor intrepretation centre' for the planned Turner Contemporary Art Gallery which I think was once going to be a huge sail-like building anchored to the sea bed. Turner lived in Margate for twenty years. The only other astounding fact I know about Margate is that the railway once proudly claimed that it had the longest station lavatories in Britain, to accommodate the urgent rush of daytrippers from trains arriving from London. Ron Combo, a frequent visitor to the comment pages of this blog, and myself can attest to the fact that not only is it no longer true but on our desperate visit it was also locked.