Creaking Floorboards, or Why My Back Is Hurting

So, I've had twelve days off work just now. Bit of travelling, bit of fun, bit of adding to the pile of stuff...

Yeah, just a bit...

The first part of the time-off-extravaganza involved attending the Play Expo in Manchester. I was one of the volunteers, giving out information and directions to people only to realise that most of the information I was giving out was actually bogus. Still, fun times! The main part of any far-flung gathering is meeting up with like-minded individuals, some of which are for the first time (at least in the flesh).

It turns out that several of the people had brought along some presents for me! Which is fantastic and amazing and great. Here's what they were:

From the head honcho over at RetroCollect (well, his dad) is a near-complete set of Garbage Pail Kids stickers from 1985, in plastic wallets and everything! Also some Adventures of Sonic The Hedgehog VHS tapes. THINK I've got the lot of those now.

From another of the nice RetroCollect people is this enormous box full of various toys - Monster In My Pocket, Mini Boglins, MUSCLEs, CUTIEs, all sorts! Bloody heavy it is too. The bumbag was in there too. And also a nice big Super Creepies boxed set.

Next up's a huge pile of stuff from a Welsh man I've been speaking to online for years, but we only met for the first time over that weekend.

Four issues of Game Zone...

Two issues of It's Wicked!...

Three annuals...

A big stack of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles comics, including a few from the current series and a bizarre Archie crossover...

A beautiful hardback, full colour Usagi Yojimbo book with embossed cover, and Space Harrier II on the Mega Drive.

Can't even begin to describe how grateful I am to these people, so a little blog tribute seemed the best way. I got all that stuff into my hold-all somehow, along with the NEC PC-FX that I took along anyway. Must've been about... 16kg perhaps? Seemed like it anyway. Anyway, got it all home, had three hours kip then trekked off to London for a week.

Oh, it turns out they have shops in London.

The first of these was 30th Century Comics in Putney. Nice little place, with every comic-lover's dream basement. Boxes and boxes and boxes upon shelves and shelves and shelves filled with comics, all organised by title and number as well.

I got four issues of Sparky, one School Fun (mostly for the David Mostyn wrap-around cover), one Plug and four issues of Cracker (one of which I already have, whoops)...

Four Cracked special editions...

A Mad special edition (includes a Gremlins parody and loads of Basil Wolverton stuff) and Frisky Frolics, which I assumed to be one of those underground things, but turns out to be an interesting anthology of sorts.

Next up was a visit to the Cartoon Museum, which everyone should go to (understandably, no cameras allowed!). This was my second visit since 2010, and there wasn't one thing in there that was there last time. Rotating exhibits, the key to keeping your museums interesting! They have a nice little shop in there too, which includes a box of small press comics. I got these ones:

Always good to see more from Doctor Simpo, and finding a third issue of the Bedsit Journal was a nice surprise too. The Zoom! is written and drawn by an 11-year-old. How many other people have got themselves onto the comic racks at that age? Well done to him!

Greenwich is a really nice part of London, home to the Cutty Sark (world's fastest tea clipper or not, I'm not paying £12 to look underneath it), the atomic clock, a chippy that charges £10.45 for cod and chips (tourist trap, maybe?) and a nice little market.

They sold me a book about robots, the 1974 Cor!! annual...

...and a milk bottle from the 1980s. Not sure what to do with this, it was an impulse thing mostly. Still nice though.

Notting Hill was visited with the intention of visiting the Museum of Brands, Packaging and Advertising, but I couldn't find it. The address wasn't on the map outside the station, and none of the "locals" had heard of it, so it remained unvisited, which is a bit of a bugger. Cheered up a bit when I found the Notting Hill Book & Comic Exchange, just outside the tube station.

Could've stayed in there all day, but it was nearly closing time. Still, I got away with this lot:

The 1961 Popeye annual, one of Gary Larson's Far Side galleries, the Spitting Image Giant Komic Book, a Dandy Beano classics book (already had this one, but my one's got a few pages missing), Raymond Briggs' When The Wind Blows, the complete Harris Tweed, and the first two Willy the Kid books (already got these, but at just £3 each, flogging them on eBay will probably pay for all my purchases combined!)...

...A couple of old issues of Fortean Times, the 50th issue of Viz, a comic called Duck Soup which I've heard of but never seen until now, and Forbidden Knowledge, one of those "underground comix" which can delight and disgust in equal measure - sometimes at the same time!

The next "port of call" was Orbital Comics, a very friendly place indeed. They had a big stuffed Stripe from Gremlins but it was priced beyond what I was willing to pay for an object of that nature. Instead I got... More comics!

A bumper-sized issue of Deadline, Buzzard which was bought for the cover by Steven Cerio, and an issue of Pure Entertainment...

...Godzilla Legends with a nice drawing of Hedorah on the cover, a Popeye reprint which sees him visiting Ghost Island, an old issue of Ghost Manor which sees hippies terrorised by a witch, and three issues of It! The Terror From Beyond Space...

...four issues of Dim-Witted Darryl...

...and another small stack of indies. Haven't had a chance to get through ANY of this lot yet, but Fred the Possessed Flower says "Hardcastle" on the cover. If it's the Hardcastle I think it is, it's going to be good!

Mega City Comics in Camden was the next place. I'd never seen so many issues of 2000 AD in one shop before - but that's not what I was after. Instead I got these:

The newest issue of the Comix Reader, and two interesting looking small-press titles...

Three more Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles comics and the first three issues of Shade - The Changing Man. Never heard of it before, but the covers were enough to justify the 50p (!) asking price.

Also in Camden was a nice little place called David's Collectables, which is a VERY nice place indeed. More on that soon, but I only bought one thing there:

A Sparky book!

I was staying with relatives in London (free accomodation plus travelling on the MegaBus means it could POTENTIALLY've been a £14 holiday), and before leaving, one of the relatives pulled some stuff out of the attic for me:

A stack of VHS tapes filled with various cartoons recorded off the telly many hundreds of years ago (when classic cartoons were still shown between programmes), and from the labels, there's a few episodes of Tony Robinson's Stay Tooned! on them as well! I could only carry ten of them, but there's a crate full still there, to be taken at a later date. There was a Sega Game Gear up there too, but it had been destroyed by leaking batteries, so I just got the game from inside it (The Ottifants)...

There was also this stack of odds and ends... some Real Ghostbusters postcards, a Sonic Spinball poster, an absolutely ENORMOUS Sonic 3 poster, a promotional poster for Raymond Briggs' The Snowman, and a small stack of pictures I'd drawn in that house a couple of decades ago.

ALL THAT STUFF was put into my hold-all, as well as a week's worth of clothes, and then carried on a bus, two tube trains, a coach and then another train back to my place. Which is why I can't feel my back, neck or shoulders anymore. Back to work tomorrow for some good old-fashioned manual labour, yes!

Apologies that this post has been boring and not very Halloween-ish (there's some ghoulish comic covers at least), but it had to be done.

To make it up a bit, here's a few pictures of what can be seen in David's Collectables:

Hey, I used to have that lunch box! etc.