Gee up Neddy

If Carlsberg ran auctions on e-bay then I would have probably purchased the best item I ever could.

I have a vivid childhood memory of playing Totoploy at my friends house when I was about  9 or 10.  Totopoly was made by Waddingtons, and was the companion game for their greatest hit, Monopoly. For those of you not familiar with Totopoly, its a horse racing board game. There are two tracks, on each side of the board. You play the training track first to gain credits and chance cards to help you during the race, which takes place on the other side of the board.

There are twelve horses, all names after previous winners of the Lincolnshire handicap, and they are colour coded to represent the four training stables.

Now I remember these horses to be die cast lead horses with four legs, a tail and a jockey, proper three dimensional playing pieces.

When I purchased a set a few years ago, the horses had morphed into one dimensional plastic, supported on a plastic base. I was devastated, and set about trying to obtain an original set on e-bay.

Now this search  has taught me many things; firstly the set I was searching for is a 1939/40 first edition set, and the only one which had horses as described, secondly it is as rare as hens teeth, as the set I have purchased is the first I have found in the three years I have been monitoring e-bay, and lastly, there is a social history lesson interwoven with the horse manufacturing process.

The set I have was manufactured for maybe a year tops. At the outbreak of World War II, while production continued, metal was at a premium. The horses were, therefore, made out of pressed cardboard and came with small wooden blocks in which to support them on the track.
This was the style of horse which was used into the 1950's. Suddenly metal horses returned to the stables so to speak,  they remained the one dimensional style of the cardboard, albeit with integrated metal support bases. Then in the 1970's came the horrific plastic versions which I had purchased previously.

So I now own a very sought after game which I have covetted for years, but , sadly, I am too scared to play with it, and have nothing with the same sentimental attraction to search for e-bay at the moment. Oh well, it will have to be back to spare parts for the Dyson!!

Arrivederci Roma

We were in Rome at the weekend for the Italy v England rugby game. The previous weekend had seen Rome carpeted in snow for the first time for about 25 years, so we were not surprised when the skies went dark on the Friday night, and about three inches of the stuff deposited itself on us.

We were in the rooftop bar of the hotel at the time, so the sights were very spectacular. Our need to eat got the better of us though, and as there were no taxi hires available we cancelled our first choice venue and walked, or more likely slide, down the hill to a nearby pizzeria.

We had a tolerable meal, however the highlight was watching the Roman equivalent of a grit waggon in operation. Coming slowly up the hill was a builders truck of the type you would expect your jobbing roofer to have. Open at the back it housed several bags of grit and two men with garden trowels. These two individuals then sprayed the salt onto the road before a bulldozer followed along behind and picked it all up again!! Priceless.

The game this year was played at the stadium built for the 1960 Olympic Games, and a very fine stadium it is too. There was no under soil heating though so the game went ahead on a partially snow covered surface, and suffered a bit for that, but a win is a win and England move on to face Wales in a potential grand slam decider.

The stadium was my sixth Olympic stadium, although I have no particular wish to tick the rest off.

So all in all Rome was extremely cold and extremely expensive. Most meals worked out at about £50 per head and our top bar bill was £157.00 for 12 drinks. The Euro zone needs to get itself under control before I think about going there again.

Still at least we got a match in, pity the poor Irish supporters in Paris who had to travel from the centre to Stade France only to be told the game was off, so having to travel back into town only to find somebody had nicked their seats, they have to do it all over again on 4th March, c'est la vie.

Interestingly the reason it was built without under soil heating is because it was build on a rubbish tip and there are, therefore, pockets of potentially explosive methane still underneath which the heating pipes could ignite.