Presents of the past

Somebody mentioned in Chat last week - might of been Sam R - about the new range coming to ToysRUS in time for the upcoming Christmas (and other) festivities.
This got me thinking about some of the things I had and maybe you did too from your chronological childhood and I feel like talking a little about them this week.
At the time there were at least in my country quite a number of shows on the television featuring Magicians who invited members of the public to take part in their acts and these shows really held my attention.
It was just so super exciting to see something disappear and then by magic reappear at the waving of a wand or a chant so my folks bought me a magic set with a wand, hat and a few other things to try these tricks out.

 It was something a bit like this one but in white background box going by memory.


I also had something quite useful as I have dyspraxia  which makes trying to write neatly something of a pain and that was a basic Child's Typewriter with a small frame, limited to A5 or maybe going as far as A4 paper.
Iused that to write short stories, thank you letters, lists and labels for school projects on.
This dear reader was well before the personal computer was widely available with word processing programs like Word Star came about never mind MS Word so you really didn't have too many choices!
We didn't have the spell checker - hurrah for the Can-E spellchecker on here! - so you had to use a little erasure and overtype this  being before even correction fluid became widely available for budding typists.
Mine was a Petite a bit like the one below which I kept until high school when I got a grown up manual typewriter.

Fun and Games edition

Seeing it's the annual Greenland's Bonfire and ghoulish weekend to which a number of my friends are attending although I'm going through a pawley spell so aren't, I thought I'd add something from a far as a contribution in kind to that magical spirit.

Pumpkins will be carved making them into lanterns, food will no doubt be consumed and finally that there bonfire will be lit which I think is a British tradition.
Meanwhile all the stores are gearing up to Christmas time getting new stock  in and starting the promotions for toys and games which kinda reminded me of one we used to play both at school and at home.

The great thing about Junior Scrabble the word based games is there are two tways of playing.Younger players can begin with the exciting, ‘Words and Pictures’, a game expressly created to help with the recognition and formation of complex words. Once someone has mastered that there's ‘Rainbow Scrabble’, which is the more challenging version intended for younger players of age seven and upwards. The scoring system is identical to the ‘grown-up’ version, yet far easier to use and keep track of. In a clever move both games are also conveniently located on each side of the board, making it easy to swap from ‘Words and Pictures’ to ‘Rainbow Scrabble’.

Tean Beat II

Golly gosh another entry with a difference about music.
Well I don't know about you but one of the highlights during the year at our high school was the School Disco which we were lucky in that we had a proper dj set up and mc spinning the discs  some of which we supplied from our own modest collections.
One the most in demand request for discs was from the group Chic which I had a decent set of 45's at the time to which we danced to loving funk and Soul music at the time.
This takes me to a recent 2cd set issued by Music Club a budget UK label called Chic Magnifique which I purchased.

This disc has 37 recordings by them including  all the hits we loved such as Le Freak, My Forbidden Lover, Good Times, Hangin' as as well as a few tracks from the 1992 Chic-ism comeback album .
It comes with excellent notes that reveal just how many of these tracks have been sampled by today's R&B/Rap acts and reminds me so much of those 'Good Times'.

Also up on the deck but for different reasons is a disc by the noted singer-songer writer Linda Ronstadt except that for me at least this was amongst the stuff we heard on FM radio back especially at weekends and evenings in the dorm then so frequent that although many of her hits from that period are burnt into my brain I never bought any albums by her then or afterward.

Born in 1946 in Tuscon, AZ, Linda's career started in 1967 with the Stone Ponys which is represented on this disc by Different Drum but then sh went solo recording for Capitol having a huge hit with You're No Good and Asylum/Warner with a swathe of hits throughout the 70's such as Blue Bayou, It's so Easy and Hurt So Good. Later on she explored jazz-pop with Nelson Riddle and Mexican folk which is also covered on this set with such tracks as What's New but inevitable it's the 70's material you come back to and has the lion's share of generously packed discs.
An artist who plows a musical furrow for a while and moves on is hard to compile and at times it's almost as if you've put Linda's songs on shuffle but outside of shorter less value themed collections it's hard to see what else the compilers of this set could do. It's certainly better value from both volumes of her Greatest Hits sets.

Narrow Boats

Well well well! After last weeks scary moment I'm feeling much better and have been busy doing Something Else over the weekend. As well I have my broadband back.
Jennifer seemed to like the boat picture I took and obviously loves the Trent & Mersey canal part of which goes through here to Runcorn via Northwich. Also if I'm not mistaken wasn't there a tv program called Rosie and Jim set on a narrowboat shown over here???
Anyway the upshot of this is I've decide to post a couple of pictures I took a while back but not previously published on this blog or any other site so it's a kind of exclusive for you!
The first is of a Narrowboat decorated for a Festival that passed this way with flowers and plants the second taken during the summer when we have a lot of boat people pass by and use our stores.

Every cloud has a silver lining edition

Hey people did you know this blog has had over 5,019 page views since it's conception and is read people people on two continents? Quite something, eh?
Well yesterday was quite something in a bad kind of a way cos I was halfway on the commute to work when I senses an 'aura' the warning sign of  migraine which are a lot worse than just a bad headache and had to make my way back home.
Now that of itself doesn't bother me but for two things I was feeling dizzy, the local taxis were all tied up with school runs so I couldn't get one home and critically I'd left my cellphone at home on charge!
Not good as I had to walk though quiet country roads home.
Anyway I got home taking my time and ensuring I kept to where there were houses that if needed assistance I could get some from and the weather was pretty good  - so good -  that decided to take a picture by the Trent and Mersey canal; something that Jennifer had written and taken some pictures of elsewhere.