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.

Kung Fu Panda

The panda's were not the only reason we were in Edinburgh, but it would have been churlish to miss the opportunity to go and see them. It has been about 17 years since panda's were last in a British zoo, although they were a major attraction at London Zoo in the seventies. Chi Chi and An An were a star attaction although their discussions about Uganda came to nothing which was a disappointment for the zoo. Chi Chi is now stuffed and displayed in the national History Museum in London.

Anyway, back to Edinburgh and Tian Tian and Yang Guang. The zoo sell tickets to see the panda's in 15 minute slots throughout the day. It's included in the zoo entry fee which is a reasonable way to go about it. Unfortunately Yang Guang, the male, has got colic at the moment so he is resting up and is out of sight in his panda den.

Tian Tian, however, was happy as Larry as she chewed away on her bamboo and allowed us to snap away to her hearts content. Tian Tian has already given birth to twin panda's in a previous life, and Yang Guang himself has fathered a child panda, so the staff at Edinburgh are confident that they will be presented with a baby sometime during the ten years they are in residence.

If that's the case, Edinburgh zoo will not know whats happened  to them as visitor numbers will go through the roof. So if you find yourself in Edinburgh do go and see them, but do bear in mind there is not a lot else to see in the zoo, although the penguins are always good value.

Sydney Carton

Yesterday I travelled into Canary Wharf  courtesy of the Docklands Light Railway. It is now a tried and tested part of the London transport infrastructure and it links the East End to South London using a series of disused and rebuilt railway tracks as well as some complex interchanges which have been built especially for the job.

It is a very effective way of getting around, the trains are driverless and the system is cashless as it utilises the Oyster card payment system. It links with the Croydon tram system which runs from Wimbledon to New Addington as well as the underground system at Bank, and the overground at Shadwell among other interchanges.

Compare that then with the efforts of Edinburgh to build and operate a tram line through their great city. SWMBO and I went up there this weekend to see the giant panda as well as have a couple of days break. Given it is two years since we were last there, we expected to see the trams buzzing up and down Princes Street crushed with people hanging on the sides like they do in San Francisco.

Lo, not a tram did we see. The engineering work started in 2008 so you would have thought that the route would be finished by now. The project, however, has been blighted by bad management, bad planning and constructor disputes which have several times put the whole project at risk.

For those not familiar with the topology of Edinburgh, the plan was to initially  run from Gogar in the West to Leith in the East. A single line would run through Haymarket, Princes Street and St Andrews Square  before joining Leith Street on its journey to the Forth and the Royal Yacht Britannia.

Why it did not start at the airport which is only a short hop from Gogar, I have no idea. It had no fans amongst the taxi drivers of the city, and as time went on, amongst the population either.

To save money, the line was modified to go from Gogar to St Andrews Square, where it could link with the mainline station and the bus depot, but now it has been reined back to stop at Haymarket, a projected eleven stops before St Andrews Square, and frankly, in the middle of nowhere.

The lines remain in place along the route, and this weekend the trams were tested at the Gogar marshaling yards. When they will start taking fee paying passengers remains to be seen. The project has over spent by an enormous amount. I just wonder if Scotland are to be trusted with their independence if this is the sort of project they would have control over.

Bayko to Lego

The book of maps which I was given for Christmas represents a smartly bound volume  of extracts relating to Lorne Road.. It commences with the Landranger series from 2011 before moving through a range of  National grid series maps. In this case it shows 1982, 1954, 1938, 1913, 1899 and 1882.

I know from other sources that the house was built during the early 1870's and it is interesting how there was little or no development across the road from the house until 1900. There was then a steady increase in development in the 1960's and 1970's as the Birkenhead conurbation moved towards the newly constructed M53. The M53 now acts as a development barrier and the land to the West of it still remains predominantly green belt.

One thing that did surprise me was the lack of war damage shown on the maps, although there may not have been specific cartography during 1938 and 1954. It is also iinteresting that trams ran past the house from early in 1900 to the late 1950's.

I am now researching The Architect journal which was published between 1869 and 1926 to see if there is any reference to the Shrewsbury Estate development in Oxton, on which we sit. A few days in Collindale at the National newspaper library should sort that out.

British standard handful

People have been searching for the ultimate question ever since Douglas Adams, in the Hitch Hikers Guide to the Galaxy,  indicated that the ultimate answer was 42. In the minds of dads and lads, however, there has been a search for the answer to a much more fundamental question,'just what is a British standard handful'?


At last we are able to reach a conclusion, and it is all as a result of the unfortunate news that breast implants from the French company PIP have been manufactured with non-medical grade silicone, and many thousands of women will need to have them removed, or replaced..


Clearly displayed on the implant exterior, during all the press coverage they have been getting,  is the volume indicator 400cc. So now we all know.

Toby jugs

And here it is courtesy of Ms Strobes at Private Eye:

Its from issue 643 and is in the Business News section.