Alternative Easter Eggs

Easter on the horizon, a time to spend time with your younger monsters. Try these - We have just taken delivery of a few Scooby Doo lines. A lot more than just board games

Mornings, Peace and Serenity, and “La Weekend” to follow :-)

I love the mornings.
To "pad" around the house when everyone else is asleep, to have time for a cuppa and reflect, pure heaven made all the more enjoyable when opening the curtains to a cloudless sky. This morning was no exception, besides scaring the heron off as the curtains opened and startling the starling as it bathed, to be greeted with the view of the Magnolia at the bottom of the garden in all its glory, the low sun picking out the subtle colours of the flowers, with little green foliage to distract was a magnificent sight

We do so agree with the article in yesterdays paper by Dinning In “Do Children Really Need More Easter Eggs?” especially when Sheffy states “It's lovely to sit round the table with your children, no television on and have a chat about what everyone has been doing that day.”

A game we used to play with our lads when very small was to hide Easter eggs (small ones) all over the lounge and the eggs they found they kept. With a lot of judicial finger pointing, miraculously they always ended up with the same amount, sometimes finding one hours later - To ensure equal distribution ;-).

We discouraged sweets, but their Grand parents made sure they had their fair share of the sticky sweet sort. One of the results was, until girlfriends came on the scene, both the lads were able to make their Easter eggs last well past their sell by date by rationing themselves.


The game aspect of Easter lasted transferring itself to board games. Every year a new game was bought, played and enjoyed. All the old traditional games were introduced, Monopoly, Risk, Scrabble etc. This year we will play Outrage! In keeping with the “Royal Theme” or Qbits to tone up the brain.:-)

Are you planning a BBQ or street party for the Royals big day? We can off a little something for the youngsters in your party. The sort of silly keep sake that may crop up from the back of a draw or old dolls house, when they have their own children.

Excellence in kit form

As a youngster from the colonies, newly landed in a small Welsh seaside town, there were many delights, many, many new experiences - and very cold winters with loads of fluffy white stuff. Porthcawl had small Woolies, A store bigger than any shop I had ever previously seen. It was on a visit to Woolies that I came across my first Airfix model, A spitfire in a plastic bag with a paper header, It was a love at first sight, in fact an affair that become a business. 50 years have past and the models have changed, becoming much larger, more varied in subject matter, and far larger varied price range. One of the newer examples seen here.

Bring History to Life

So many of the subjects we were taught at school were boring and lacked imagination. Occasionally one came across an inspirational teacher who made the subject come to life and suddenly, without realising it - you flew. We had one such teacher – a history teacher, whose techniques were revolutionary for the time. Remember 50 years ago we did not have “Whiteboards” or computers, TVs were expensive and still finding its feet. Holidays abroad were a novelty – many of the popular resorts of today were no more than a fishing village with a harbour, and if you were lucky a medieval ruin in the background.

War games have been played for many millennia, in many in countries all over the world in different forms. In China flat stones marked on side, in Africa depressions in the soils and the moving of shells; In Persia to Egypt pieces moved on a board; Then drafts and chess relatively new examples. The came models of armies. Wood and paper figures were replaced in Germany by two dimensional tin representations of actual armies painted in regimental colours.

Famous and intellectual giants often played “war games”. H.G.Wells; Edward Woodward were amongst some of the unexpected exponents of the War Game.
In an age before computer games a table top re-enactment could be exciting stressful, emotional, and full of drama. Our history teacher encouraged and often arranged inter-school tournaments. The battle grounds varied from biblical battles; to the medieval period to the Second World War. None of us realised, and at the time and it was not important, the battles re-enacted often were for a period in history that would be covered the following year or term and even “O” levels.

The Uniforms, pre-WW1 reflected the need to be seen by generals some distant away, so were colourful unlike today’s camouflage styles.

Season Shift?.

In response to Sefffy’s blog in The Netsellers Daily http://t.co/YkPLP91 I spent time going through last years The NetSellers forum, the Garden Centre section, to see how the season compares with last year. I felt it was far more advanced this year, but it would appear not.
Our Tomato Growbag greenhouses seem to have started to sell earlier this year as has the Tomato upside down planters.