Another Christmas has long gone, the last morsel of Turkey eaten and the kids have already grown bored with their Wiis, DSes and overpriced movie tie in tat. It wasn’t always like that was it? Well, yes it was but back then in those less safety conscious halcyon days of the 70s we found other uses for our Christmas presents that extended their life in interesting ways.
Apart from having far too many military based toys I also owned a huge collection of toy cars. Mainly they were from Matchbox but there were a fair few Corgi, Dinky and lesser brands in there as well. Apart from RTAs on my town builder play mat or in 1975 re-enacting Death Race 2000 with the Airfix OO scale civilians that were supposed to go with my train set there was not a lot else I could do with them other than leaving them on the stairs in the hope a parent or relation might take a Tom and Jerry inspired tumble. That was until my father bought a set that involved yellow tracks and a battery powered motor in what looked like a cash register with gears that propelled the cars around the track. Unless you had two of these you were doomed to watching the cars zip around the track until the batteries ran out or you got bored and went to overdose on Corona Limeade for a sugar rush.
It was boring until Christmas 1974 when my mate Ross and I both got the same present, a car launcher for Matchbox cars. Basically a blue plastic box containing an industrial strength rubber band attached to a cocking lever that you attached to your track, pulled the lever back bunged a car in and pressed a button on the top of thus launching the car at high speed down the track. It was great! Cars hurtled out at phenomenal speeds. In fact I’m not sure that some did not hit the magical speed of eighty-eight miles an hour and blink out of existence in a flash of light and a flaming trail only to re-appear in 1955. It was also a lethal weapon in the hands of an eight year old boy.
Bored with launching cars we decided to try launching other things. Things like stones from the drive, things that as our parents would put it, “Could have someone’s eye out with that!” Both our mothers were out, trusting us in those pre-pervert on every corner and underage criminality days to behave ourselves for an hour whilst they did the weekly shop on the high street.
The stones were particularly successful and for an hour or two we ranged around the big back garden wielding what were effectively miniature ballistas, blasting chunks out of trees and the compost heap with Ross’s dads drive. Then, bored with destroying flora and fauna we wondered what else we could try and hit upon the idea of using them for their original purpose, launching cars but not down tracks. No, in the absence of either of us owning an Evel Knievel set or even a Ricochet Racer we would use them to re-create daredevil stunts by launching toy cars over the garden pond. There wasn’t much chance of us losing the cars as a) the pond wasn’t very deep and b) Ross’s dad had covered it with chicken wire after an incident involving a local Heron and two hundred or so missing goldfish so if the cars fell short they would hardly get damp in the half inch of water above the net.
Propping the launcher on a convenient stone looted from the rockery we took our first shot and Ross’s ‘Tanzara’ flew clear over the pond and into the shrubs beyond. Cool! My ‘Blue Lightning’ followed and then we had a brief falling out in our friendship. I wanted to fire my ‘Wildcat Dragster’ next but Ross wanted another shot with his ‘Tanzara’ as it looked most like an Evel Knievel car. This resulted in a bit of push and shove, not a good idea with a loaded weapon, sorry, toy car launcher when you are standing outside the patio doors that lead to the dining room. About five seconds into our argument there was a noise that sort of went…
THWWWWOCK – CRASH – TINKLE - SMASH
If, at that moment the word ‘Arsebiscuits’ had been invented we would have said it. The launcher had fired, the car had gone through one of the panes of glass in the door and what was worse had also taken out half of a set of sherry glasses that were about six billion years old and had been passed down through the family through generations. We were, once again deep in the proverbial doo-doo. Unless we could make it look like we had nothing to do with it. It was then that eight year old cunning kicked in. Everybody had a coal fire what with global warming having not yet been invented, the ashes went into the bin along with lumps of what my father always called ‘clinker’, bits of coal and stone that had fused together in the heat of the fire. Selecting a roughly table tennis ball sized piece we hurried indoors, located the car and left the ‘clinker’ in its place. With this we fled the scene of the crime and headed for the local park on our bikes.
We returned an hour or two later to find Ross’s mum in the dining room clearing up the glass and asked where we had been replied semi-truthfully “At the park.”
“So you don’t know anything about this then?” she asked brandishing the piece of ‘clinker’. For a moment our lives hung in the balance, would one of us crack in a moment of George Washington style “I cannot tell a lie”? It was Ross who spoke first:
“Cor! Is that a piece of meteorite? It must have come from space and smashed through the window. Lucky we were not playing in the garden it might have hit us!”
I’m not entirely sure if his mum believed us but without the proof we were innocent until proven guilty and Ross kept up the pretence by asking if he could keep the bit of meteorite so he could take it in to school the next day only to quietly dispose of the evidence just in case his mum had managed to invent DNA evidence twenty odd years ahead of time.
Apart from having far too many military based toys I also owned a huge collection of toy cars. Mainly they were from Matchbox but there were a fair few Corgi, Dinky and lesser brands in there as well. Apart from RTAs on my town builder play mat or in 1975 re-enacting Death Race 2000 with the Airfix OO scale civilians that were supposed to go with my train set there was not a lot else I could do with them other than leaving them on the stairs in the hope a parent or relation might take a Tom and Jerry inspired tumble. That was until my father bought a set that involved yellow tracks and a battery powered motor in what looked like a cash register with gears that propelled the cars around the track. Unless you had two of these you were doomed to watching the cars zip around the track until the batteries ran out or you got bored and went to overdose on Corona Limeade for a sugar rush.
It was boring until Christmas 1974 when my mate Ross and I both got the same present, a car launcher for Matchbox cars. Basically a blue plastic box containing an industrial strength rubber band attached to a cocking lever that you attached to your track, pulled the lever back bunged a car in and pressed a button on the top of thus launching the car at high speed down the track. It was great! Cars hurtled out at phenomenal speeds. In fact I’m not sure that some did not hit the magical speed of eighty-eight miles an hour and blink out of existence in a flash of light and a flaming trail only to re-appear in 1955. It was also a lethal weapon in the hands of an eight year old boy.
Bored with launching cars we decided to try launching other things. Things like stones from the drive, things that as our parents would put it, “Could have someone’s eye out with that!” Both our mothers were out, trusting us in those pre-pervert on every corner and underage criminality days to behave ourselves for an hour whilst they did the weekly shop on the high street.
The stones were particularly successful and for an hour or two we ranged around the big back garden wielding what were effectively miniature ballistas, blasting chunks out of trees and the compost heap with Ross’s dads drive. Then, bored with destroying flora and fauna we wondered what else we could try and hit upon the idea of using them for their original purpose, launching cars but not down tracks. No, in the absence of either of us owning an Evel Knievel set or even a Ricochet Racer we would use them to re-create daredevil stunts by launching toy cars over the garden pond. There wasn’t much chance of us losing the cars as a) the pond wasn’t very deep and b) Ross’s dad had covered it with chicken wire after an incident involving a local Heron and two hundred or so missing goldfish so if the cars fell short they would hardly get damp in the half inch of water above the net.
Propping the launcher on a convenient stone looted from the rockery we took our first shot and Ross’s ‘Tanzara’ flew clear over the pond and into the shrubs beyond. Cool! My ‘Blue Lightning’ followed and then we had a brief falling out in our friendship. I wanted to fire my ‘Wildcat Dragster’ next but Ross wanted another shot with his ‘Tanzara’ as it looked most like an Evel Knievel car. This resulted in a bit of push and shove, not a good idea with a loaded weapon, sorry, toy car launcher when you are standing outside the patio doors that lead to the dining room. About five seconds into our argument there was a noise that sort of went…
THWWWWOCK – CRASH – TINKLE - SMASH
If, at that moment the word ‘Arsebiscuits’ had been invented we would have said it. The launcher had fired, the car had gone through one of the panes of glass in the door and what was worse had also taken out half of a set of sherry glasses that were about six billion years old and had been passed down through the family through generations. We were, once again deep in the proverbial doo-doo. Unless we could make it look like we had nothing to do with it. It was then that eight year old cunning kicked in. Everybody had a coal fire what with global warming having not yet been invented, the ashes went into the bin along with lumps of what my father always called ‘clinker’, bits of coal and stone that had fused together in the heat of the fire. Selecting a roughly table tennis ball sized piece we hurried indoors, located the car and left the ‘clinker’ in its place. With this we fled the scene of the crime and headed for the local park on our bikes.
We returned an hour or two later to find Ross’s mum in the dining room clearing up the glass and asked where we had been replied semi-truthfully “At the park.”
“So you don’t know anything about this then?” she asked brandishing the piece of ‘clinker’. For a moment our lives hung in the balance, would one of us crack in a moment of George Washington style “I cannot tell a lie”? It was Ross who spoke first:
“Cor! Is that a piece of meteorite? It must have come from space and smashed through the window. Lucky we were not playing in the garden it might have hit us!”
I’m not entirely sure if his mum believed us but without the proof we were innocent until proven guilty and Ross kept up the pretence by asking if he could keep the bit of meteorite so he could take it in to school the next day only to quietly dispose of the evidence just in case his mum had managed to invent DNA evidence twenty odd years ahead of time.
1 comment:
Excellent as always - and it's been a long time between drinks. Welcome back, hope you managed to find that balance. Work to live, not live to work. That's what we say down at the poorhouse!
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