Gold

In an incredibly generous gesture from a friend I was given over the Christmas period two coveted books, the Boys Own Annuals from 1907-1909. Way before anything Internetty, information was gained as a child from books such as these, they are the google and YouTube of their day, packed full with information you would be hard pressed to get anywhere else and stuffed full of what to do in the long evenings devoid of television and play stations. Lost knowledge, the stuff of fun.

My they are thick, each one comes in at a whopping 824 pages and weighs a ton but for me the information within is priceless, I mean, where else could you find out how to make a Bunkum Booth to fool your friends and how to train a dog to remove your hat for ladies on the same page?

Some of the articles have massive full colour pull outs illustrating everything from boats, trains, letter seals of the British Empire to a selection of famous moments in history captured on canvas.

Can you imagine a child of ten today deciding to take on this task of building a Trolley-Car using nothing but brute force, saws, hammers and chisels, it'll be fun it says as it gleefully tells you how to angle your chisel to remove a square piece of wood rather than your fingers and left testicle.

Some of them will be incredibly useful to me, there is a complete ventriloquist tutorial so you can throw your voice like this, see I have learned something usefull already. Other articles that I will be trying include how to make a Kokonutina, seriously, a musical instrument from a coconut. Reading the weather from the angles and posture of cats and dogs in front of an open fire, a lethal looking snowball catapult, face reading and how to spot a cad, the use of flowers to send a message, for example a white Camellia in your buttonhole signifies 'loveliness' whilst a small piece of fern means 'fascination'. Obviously not to be confused with the £4.99 garage forecourt flowers which mean 'Sorry' or 'I forgot didn't I?'

My favourite is The Athelete - An Amusing Toy. Amusing that is if you enjoy cutting raw tin into shape, riveting using a home made gas jet and balancing your model over the top of a fuel filled lamp being careful not to set fire to your hair or indeed the rest of your house all in the pursuit of seeing a little tin Athelete bobbing up and down on a revolving platform. Needless to say I will be in the garage all day creating this diversion and you will find me at A&E sometime around tea time.

It's also full of top tips, these are all real by the way, A Chat About Armour by Frampton Blewitt, Treasure Hunting Underwater For Boys by Owen Asche, Fancy Poultry For Boys and How To Read A Monkey, a guide to monkey management in captivity.

The Boys Own Paper was published from 1879 to 1967. Primarily aimed at wealthier children its diverse mix of sport, nature, science and entertainment was delivered by some great writers of the period. Jules Verne and Arthur Conan Doyle both contributed to the issues as well as famous people of the day such as Captain Webb, swimmer of the channel and ultimately of match box fame, Robert Baden-Powell, founder of the scout movement and W.G.Grace who's name will be synonymous with cricketers everywhere.

So these two volumes join an increasing collection of ephemera helping to shape the new selection of Lost Impossimal stories as Back To Front starts to come alive over the next six months. I'm off to build a submarine out of wooden crates and a bit of old tin, I'm sure it will work and allow me to indulge in my underwater treasure hunting fixation I have. The weather looks like it will be fine as my dog is laid at 53 degrees to the cat in front of my roaring log fire under my indoor tent created out of bed sheets, so ta-ta for now folks I'm off out on my perambulator.

Spiffing!

 

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