I wasn't kidnapped by aliens...

I’ve been on holiday!  (Not for a whole month though.  Some of the gap between this blog post and the last is just down to laziness.)

One of the good things about the place we go and stay, in glorious Cornwall, is the peace and quiet, and the fact that it’s miles from anywhere.

One of the bad things is that the owner has decided not to have wi-fi installed, so the only internet I can get while we’re there is the tiniest sliver of 3G on my iPad.  Getting a signal usually involves hanging out of the bedroom window, or standing on the patio, waving it around in the air.

At least you’ve got a nice view of the sea while you’re doing it…

Not very conducive to blogging though.  That’s my excuse and I’m sticking to it.

Anyway.  What news?

There’s something quite odd about the Isle Of Wight.  (Yes, I know we went on holiday to Cornwall, but bear with me.)  There’s a kind of time warp in the Solent, so that when you get on the ferry in Southampton say, or Lymington, it’s 2013.  But when you get off in Cowes or Yarmouth… suddenly it’s 1976!

Seriously.  We’ve had a couple of short holidays on the IOW in the past few years, and I swear I’ve found food (1) that I haven’t seen since I was a kid in the supermarkets.  You see things like MkIII Cortinas and Austin Allegros on the roads, whereas I thought they’d all disintegrated years ago.

So what’s this got to do with Lego?

Well Cornwall’s not like the Isle Of Wight.  Bits of it are very up to date indeed - they’ve got a branch of the Tate Gallery in St Ives. (2)  However, bits of it, rather than being back in the 1970’s, are sort of… back in last year.

Well I assume they are.  Because on the way down, we stopped off at the Waitrose in Saltash to do a big food shop for the first week or so.  Now unlike our own, local branch of Waitrose (3), which sells foodstuffs and the usual supermarket-y non-food stuff, like clingfilm, lighbulbs and what-have-you, the Saltash branch has a moderately-sized homewares department, and that includes some toys.

Now I’ve had the Lego habit long enough, that when I’m in a new shop that sells toys, I nip off for a quick look.  

Just in case.

Most of the time it’s to no avail, or my hopes are raised when I see some Lego, but then I find that it’s just the regular stuff and not Technic.  But it’s always worth a look.

So I left my wife trying to choose between about four different types of Cornish butter and wandered off to the toy section. 

Well there’s some Lego alright, and… wait a minute!  That’s Technic!  And not a Technic box I’m familiar with!

As luck would have it, it was an 8068 Technic Rescue Helicopter which, according to some later research, went EOL at the end of November last year.  But here it was, in a mint box, and better still, it was reduced by a fiver.

Mrs Boo, being the personification of loveliness that she is, walked up, rolled her eyes and laughing, said ‘Put it in the trolley.’

The Technic 8068 Rescue Helicopter

Extinct in London, but occasionally spotted in the more rural parts of the British Isles

(Image courtesy of Brickset.com)

In accordance with my previously mentioned idea of building the smaller sets and working my way up, the Helicopter came down to our holiday barn for a couple of weeks and has now come home, without being opened.  All I’ve done is spend a good 20 minutes trying to get all the ‘reduced’ stickers off without damaging the box, which I think I managed pretty well.

Having added it to my Lego spreadsheet (4), I realise that there’s actually quite a few other items that I’ve picked up over the past couple of months too.  I shall get up to date in the next post.

Meanwhile, I have a bulldozer to dismantle…

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

(1)  Findus Crispy Pancakes.  Nutrition-free, and somehow Findus engineers have come up with a product that, after following the specified cooking instructions, has an internal temperature approximating that of the surface of the sun.  You never forget your first crispy pancake, mainly because of the second degree burns.

(2) It’s an offshoot of Tate Modern, and thus has many works of ‘Modern Art’.  I was there recently.  I wouldn’t give you 10p for the lot of it.  Utter, utter tosh.

(3) Other supermarkets are available.  But they’re nothing like as nice.

(4) Item, location purchased, date purchased, price, any applicable discounts etc.

Yes, it’s very sad.