Further ramblings of a self-made pauper

From time to time, this journal tries to answer the really important questions in life. In the past, I have covered such definitive questions as who is the classic Avengers woman and who is the greatest Dr Who. I believe that I have also touched upon Captain Scarlet.

Today we examine the first great question on 2009. Which is the best of the various TV or movie Batmobiles?

On the scale, 1 is rubbish, 10 is unsurpassed genius.

Since it appears that it is impossible to include pictures in a poll, I have placed reference material ( here, behind this cut: )

[Poll #1332807]

Today we disappeared down to Brighton. It was originally supposed to be for the day, but ended up being for the afternoon. This time of year and when you are not about to invest large amounts of wedge in entertainment, an afternoon to see the sea and potter is about right.

Having walked down the street from the station, ellefurtle and I walked along the prom a whiles before going down on to the scree slope that passes for a beach along much of the south coast. Walking on loose pebbles is frankly knackering so we amused ourselves like five year olds and sat down preparatory to hurling stones at other stones. This entertained us for much longer than should really be admitted by two adults. We wandered over to the pier (the one still standing) and took a stroll around the comatose amusement area - it's a bit early in the year for much to be happening, but as at least one kiosk was open, we obtained four sticks of Brighton Rock: the real stuff with Brighton written through it, before wandering into The Lanes in search of a pub lunch, which we finally had at a splendid little hostelry called "The Cricketers".

One fish and chips, one chicken goujons and cheesy chips, plus two pints of San Miguel later, we were ready to explore The Lanes, which are a little bit like a gestalt version of Covent Garden as imagined by the Islington Set and placed in an English provincial town. They are also built on a Moebius Strip, so that you can pass the same place several times despite not obviously turning back on yourself. We discovered this by walking in what appeared to be a direction away from The Cricketers and past The Brighton Armory - a militaria antique shop. That was nice, but we somehow ended up back at our starting point and went past both places twice without obviously turning around. Luckily, by keeping the sea off to our left, we were able to break this loop by walking through what, if the amount of jewelry shops is any evidence, is actually downtown Antwerp (or Antwerpen or Anvers depending upon your linguistic preferences).

Truly I am a Prince of Amber.

Finally we made it back to the station by way of Model Zone where I purchased a Corgi 1960s comics version Batmobile, thus:

for the princely sum of £6.99 in their sale.

Back to London Bridge by 17.00 and back home by just after 18.00. A bit of a lie down to recharge the batteries and now off to find some further sustenance and maybe an episode of the X-Files.

I love lazy holidays.

I didn’t want to get out of bed this morning – the old eyes really didn’t want to open and yet right now I feel very chipper indeed.

Of course it helps that from this evening, Furtle and I are off until the Tuesday of Easter week, giving us ten full days away from work. We are hoping that on one of the days at least we will get to Brighton (or, it has been suggested, Southsea) for the day to see the sea and take in a little of the old ozone. If the weather stays like it is now: cool, dry and not too windy, Brighton (or Southsea) is not going to be a problem.

It has been a rather busy morning as I get rid of bits and pieces that will fall due while I am away and bury others for eternity somewhere down in the Pre-Cambrian layers of my in tray. In a few months when they are suitably fossilised, I shall dig them out and recycle them. I include in that two more petitions that we have received and sent off the usual desultory acknowledgement.

In the meantime, let me entertain you with this piece that I found during my never-ending quest to find a TV style Batmobile:



( and another )

When I was a kid I looked after my toys. They got the odd chip in the paintwork from being played with if they were particular favourites, but by and large they didn't suffer much damage. Some of the more fragile plastic ones would get glued together when inevitable accidents occurred, but even they would not be harshly treated until the signs of obvious repair became to great to meet my exacting standards¹.

Once a plastic model had deteriorated to the point of no return, it was fair game for destruction in the back garden with games involving stones, marbles and as many vocally-generated Ba-booms as I could manage. In Telford there is even a house with a busted model of Stingray built into its foundations, though that was accidental as it hadn't quite reached the level of degeneration required for toy martyrdom,² and somewhere out on what the locals call the cinder-hills if they haven't been built on yet, there is a very weathered 40 year old catapault-fired Fireball XL-5 glider I lost when I was 7. I think it disappeared into a gorse bush, but that's only a guess. I never found it again much to my annoyance.

Anyway, the point is, that the metal toys, being generally more robust tended not to meet this sort of fate. When I finally grew out of toys, several neighbours' kids and junior cousins inherited a fair collection of toy cars and such pretty much in full working order, and only partially scratched or chipped.

Except for my Batmobile which one day fell victim to an unexpected and still unexplained bout of vandalism involving a claw hammer, a bottle of lighter fluid and a box of matches. I have always rather regretted that act of destruction, and have never properly explained to myself why I did it, other than noting thatI wished I hadn't done it almost as soon as I'd finished smashing it to smithereens.

Now, nostalgia is a wonderful thing, and I do have a fair collection of pointless if not worthless goo-gaws and totems around the house (excepting, of course, the TARDISes, which are neither worthless nor totems)³. It occurred to me that e-bay is the place to go to acquire a nostalgia-fuelled replacement for the toy I destroyed all those years ago. It would look nice collecting dust on the shelf along with John Steed's Bentley⁴. So I looked on e-bay with a view to bidding on a 1966 Corgi Models' 267 Batmobile (It had to be the 1966 version 267 as the early 1970's re-issues did not have the red bat-logo on the wheels, and some had towing hooks for the Batboat, for Heaven's sake. My standards haven't fallen that far).

If I still drank strong liquor, I should have had to calm myself with a double scotch.

You should see the prices even quite tatty models are fetching out there! It's insane. All the more so when I consider that the toy I had probably cost my parents around 5/- (25p) back then. Even allowing for forty years' inflation, that does not work out at £399.99 as I have seen a couple going for (I doubt they'll sell with an opening bid at that price, but I have seen them creep up in bidding wars from around £30 to well over £200). I still occasionally look to see what they are currently fetching on e-bay -this weekend in fact, thus this post- but this ritual has turned into a sort of morbid curiosity, which is laced with a deeper regret that I smacked the bejasus out of something that would have netted me a handsome profit all these years later.

Thank the Lord that I managed to hold onto all my old Lee & Kirby Fantastic Fours from the 1960s!



¹Exacting to the point that I wouldn't mix toys of different scales beyond a certain point. I could just about accept a 1/72 scale Airfix aeroplane in the same game as an 00 scale Corgi car, the pilots were just rather tall, which of course they should be, since being a fighter pilot was a very glamorous job; but I looked with contempt at those kids who played happily with a 1/100 scale Matchbox double-decker bus and a 1/48 tank in the same game. What were they thinking?

²Someday archaeologists will wonder about the significance of this little plastic "ritual" object. If only I could be there to see their faces.

³Not in my little world they're not, thank you very much. Stop giggling at the back.

⁴It is a sign of how far my standards have slipped since I was 10 in that it does not worry me that the Corgi model of the car is based upon the 1927 Bentley in British Racing Green, whereas John Steed actually drove a 1935 Bentley in British Racing Green.