For Boys

My latest acquisitions.  After talking about the traditional British comics annual the other week, I succeeded in making myself sufficiently nostalgic to buy some examples.  I have to admit, that when I started browsing eBay for annuals, I had the idea that I was going to buy some late sixties TV21 or Captain Scarlet annuals, or perhaps a Valiant annual or two.  But the former two are surprisingly expensive, even in poor condition, while decent examples of the latter aren't always easy to come by.  So, I instead ended up buying three early sixties Eagle annuals and a 1967 Boys' World annual.  The latter of these, (the Boys' World weekly was a relatively short-lived companion to Eagle, which continued to issue annuals into the early 1970s, long after the weekly had ceased publication), I bought because it contains quite a few items about Triang Hornby model railways, including the 'Battle Space' range.  The Eagle annuals I bought because, well, the Eagle was the archetypal boys comic of the fifties and sixties and these three came in a job lot for less than fifteen quid.  Which is quite a bargain - pristine editions of the annual from this era can sometime go for fifty quid or more.  While these aren't pristine, they are in very good condition, (two even have their original dust jackets), with their spines intact and no pages torn or missing.

While I've had a quick perusal of these annuals, they are my early Christmas present to myself and I intend looking at them in detail when I'm off work during the festive period.  I'm definitely regressing to my childhood these days: model railways, seventies TV series and now old annuals.  Still, I need something comforting right now - it has been a traumatic week.  I mean, Spurs sacking Pochettino and replacing him with the Prince of Darkness himself, Jose Mourinho, earlier this week was a real shock to the system.  Let's face it, either one of those two events alone would normally have been deeply disturbing, but within twelve hours of each other?  Jesus!  As if that wasn't bad enough, while I was still reeling from this double whammy, on Wednesday morning, while reaching for the mouthwash, I knocked something else off of the top shelf in the bathroom and, in trying to catch it, knocked down the second shelf, sending stuff flying and ending up all over the floor.  I didn't have time to clear it all up there and then, so left it.  When I managed to get back to the house at lunch time, I noticed what I hadn't seen before: that the shelf had knocked a chunk out of the cistern lid (it is plastic).  So I determined to find all the pieces and repair it.  Which meant that I also had to find some suitable glue.  Now, I usually keep glue in the bottom drawer in the kitchen, but when I went to look, the entire drawer fell apart, depositing its contents all over the kitchen floor.  They didn't include the glue.  That turned out to be in the top drawer.  Anyway, I managed to glue together the broken fragments from the cistern lid, then glue the assemblage back into the lid.  You have to get up very close to see that it has ever been broken.  Now all I need to do is fix that kitchen drawer...