One steam locomotive I loved as a boy was Mallard which I saw at a number of occasions owning postcards and mugs of it.
The London and North Eastern Railway locomotive number originally 4468, 22 and 60022, named Mallard is a Class A4 4-6-2 Pacific steam locomotive built at Doncaster Works, England in 1938.
It is historically significant as the holder of the world speed record for steam locomotives at 126 mph, aided by Sir Nigel Gresley's streamlined design.
To my eyes it was beautiful.
Think of summertime radio and you fall straight back to this Anglo-American outfit known as Katrina and the Waves whose hit Walking On Sunshine written 4 years before charting is THE summer song.
For those of us brought up on hand me down sixties pop and rock it's hardly surprising we'd fall for it.
Those of us who were braver back in '85 venturing out to our record store buying the album were only to find that this was really a bar band with a neat line in well crafted good-time rock being followed up a year later by Waves! which featured the European hit Sun Street.
Fortunately BGO reissued the albums on a single cd in 1996 in an excellent transfer.
Catalogue number BGOCD 330
The first one I had was a O gauge set with a diesel battery powered locomotive with mainly blue body with white around the edges that run on plastic self coupling track that had points and a decent set of matching coaches.
The track easily got twisted on the house carpet and wasn't easy to put on a wooden board.
I later got an all metal set with a electric controller, a turntable and some Lima and Triang coaches and locos, often going to local shows to buy used bits for it including buildings in kit form and trees.
I just loved it as that child, playing for hours with it.
Action Man was my world from the age of Nine through Fourteen, collecting accessories such as vehicles, dinghies, weapons to using in playing soldiers killing and torturing the enemy when not planning my own escape with my mates when we played together.
Best of all unlike G.I. Joe he was British through and through.
The anime Ponyo Upon a Cliff comes out soon but a couple of stills from it kind of remind me of a few things.
The first is how in early years we play as a group together because the fun we can have together is the bigger thing so boys and girls play together easily.
The boy here is looking for an excuse to not play with the girls, it's quite probable he senses the social kudos he will get for waiting for a better off from boys as he's trying to make a stand for who he senses he ought to be with.
The girls can sense his excuse and call him out on it as any one who was five knows you have few chores beyond keeping your space tidy.
By the time they reach seven or eight the girls will be the same, only playing in tightly policed girl only groups so if if as was the case at times they boys were playing games that either I couldn't join in with or just didn't remotely interest me having a feminine side they would refuse to let you join in.
I know that cos it happened to me at the same time the girls parents were starting to push for equality for girls and there was a lot of noise about Boys dominating the playground.
Boys games tended to use more physical space but both groups could be pretty dominating and exclusory for boys and girls like me that didn't fit neatly in their ideas of what boys and girls are and should be.
The anime Ponyo Upon a Cliff comes out soon but a couple of stills from it kind of remind me of a few things.
The first is how in early years we play as a group together because the fun we can have together is the bigger thing so boys and girls play together easily.
The boy here is looking for an excuse to not play with the girls, it's quite probable he senses the social kudos he will get for waiting for a better off from boys as he's trying to make a stand for who he senses he ought to be with.
The girls can sense his excuse and call him out on it as any one who was five knows you have few chores beyond keeping your space tidy.
By the time they reach seven or eight the girls will be the same, only playing in tightly policed girl only groups so if if as was the case at times they boys were playing games that either I couldn't join in with or just didn't remotely interest me having a feminine side they would refuse to let you join in.
I know that cos it happened to me at the same time the girls parents were starting to push for equality for girls and there was a lot of noise about Boys dominating the playground.
Boys games tended to use more physical space but both groups could be pretty dominating and exclusory for boys and girls like me that didn't fit neatly in their ideas of what boys and girls are and should be.
