The fairer sex often chide us guys for being like big kids. On my trip to RSD in London yesterday I thought about my obsession with music in its physical format and mused that most if not all of my acquaintances with this same obsession have been guys. Then I recalled all the things I have collected throughout my life and though records/cd’s has been by far the most enduring obsession there have been many others. I will try to remember them in some sort of chronological order:-
Airfix soldiers
Airfix model airplanes
Marvel Comics
Football programmes
Aircraft reg numbers (as a plane spotter)
Train number (as a train spotter – only a brief deviation from my obsession with planes)
Beer mats
Brooke Bond tea cards
Aircraft Pictorial magazine
So guys (and girls) what have you collected over the years and what do you still collect?
Beany says
Started with Marvel comics in my early teens, moved to records, followed by CDs and assorted rock memorabilia along the way. Then Disney *stuff* took over my house, particularly Disney pin badges by the thousands. Over the last year I have been slowly selling some of my collection as part of my self-employed status and to get back into my record collecting obsession again.
The pin badge below is the Sprite from Fantasia 2000. Limited edition 100. I’m looking for offers of $1000 when I do decide to sell. Just think how many bad/good records I can buy with that!
Sniffity says
I’m not doubting for a minute that you know your market, Beany, but I’m slightly gobsmacked…are you really confident someone will pay $1000 for that thing?
Beany says
Dear @sniffity, someone has already paid $1000 for that pin in the past. Some Americans are a bit bonkers about Disney merchandise. For one set of special pins (limited edition 300) sold from the Disney Store on Hollywood Boulevard some addicts started queuing from Tuesday night for that week’s Saturday morning releases. That’s why I’m getting out of the hobby. Well that and the counterfeiting/scrappers from China.
mikethep says
Brooke Bond tea cards for sure, plus stamps of course. I was a plane and train and bus spotter, the latter passion coming in handy when I was a bus conductor for a while. (Would rather have been a pilot or an engine driver though.)
I had a curious late cigarette card moment when I collected Craven A Black Cat vintage cars in the mid-70s, and smoked some truly awful fags into the bargain.
I ‘collected’ (ie never threw away) things like NME and Private Eye for years. (Not to mention Q, Mojo and Word.)Ditto ‘records’, as I believe they used to be called.
Mostly, though, it’s the books. It took me about 30 years to collect the complete set of Traveller’s Library, all 225 volumes of it: http://thedabbler.co.uk/2015/03/the-travellers-library-series-a-snapshot-of-literary-fashion/
A bit less time to collect all the King Penguins: http://www.penguinfirsteditions.com/index.php?cat=king_penguin
The collecting instinct goes deep – if I come across a book I like, or a writer I like, or a series I like, I immediately want to collect the lot. T’internet has made it all much easier, of course – you can collect someone’s entire oeuvre in a matter of hours, if you have the money. I try not to do that, though – it seems a bit unsporting.
SteveT says
I forgot about my Penguins with the orange spines and prior to that as a young whippersnapper my love of Ladybird books which was actually an obsession.
Know what you mean about collecting artists and authors – on the author front Elmore Leonard (but strangely not his Westerns) and on the music front Jackie Leven and Martin Stephenson to name but two. The MS one died a little when he started releasing stuff that had been recorded in the Woods and in Churches and that was less than Hi-Fidelity. My love of his music still remains though.
Moose the Mooche says
Stamps…. I used to love the German ones (East and West). I now use the beautiful Industrie und Technik series as artwork for my Krautrock compos in iTunes.
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Serie_Industrie_und_Technik
Unbelievably, I am married.
Baron Harkonnen says
Never really considered myself a collector , yes I`ve done the comics, beer mats, football programmes thing. Now I buy CDs/LPs but I don`t consider myself a collector, others might. I don`t go specifically for collectable stuff, I`m happy with the regular CD/LP as opposed to, say a picture disc.
I think you`re right Steve it does appear to be male dominated although there are ladies around here who appear similarly `hooked`.
pencilsqueezer says
Wrinkles.
Moose the Mooche says
Wrinkles can rankle. Speshly wrinkles on yer winkle.
Sewer Robot says
Unbelievably, he is married.
Moose the Mooche says
Pssst… wanna see a stamp with Frankfurt Airport on it?
JustB says
I think there’s a gene for this, and – as I’ve mentioned before – I don’t think I have it. I went through a period of expanding my effects pedals setup until it reached slightly ridiculous proportions, but that wasn’t because I wanted more pedals: it was because I was searching for a particular sound, and when I realised that the sound in my head probably didn’t exist, I sold them all. I don’t suffer from the guitarist’s disease – GAS, or Gear Acquisition Syndrome – at all.
When I was quite small, I had a few of those Burago replica cars, which various relatives kept bringing back for me from Duty Free (not sure how that got started). Apparently you were supposed to keep them boxed and on display. I didn’t understand that. My Star Wars and Action Force men ended up driving them and they got crashed and chucked about just as much as my Millennium Falcon and X-Wing. And in any case, it was my relatives collecting them on my behalf, not me. Never did stickers, cards, trains. I don’t even do records, in the sense that I don’t hoard them, and can happily go for weeks and months without buying any music.
I also don’t like competitive sport. I’d hypothesise that maybe the two things are linked, except that @dogfacedboy loathes sport far more than I do (I’m simply not interested: no active hatred) and he’s got the collector gene in spades.
Baron Harkonnen says
You`re right it is an illness but I don`t have it, I`m not a collector I just spend all my spare dosh on box sets, LPs and stuff. There`s nowt wrong with me. I`m OK.
JustB says
I didn’t say it was an illness!
Baron Harkonnen says
I couldn`t spell jean!
DogFacedBoy says
It may not be an illness but collecting is an addiction as moreish as crack
Sitheref2409 says
I tend to be a ‘completer’ – find one, get them all.
Authors, musical artists, graphic novel collections. It all started with Panini in my childhood. Sharon calls it hoarding, I call it ‘the story of my life’ and now we’re ‘debating’ what to do with it all when I move in.
RubyBlue says
I can’t really work out if I’m a collector or not.
I used to be a fairly obsessive vinyl collector until it was all burgled, and I just didn’t have the heart to start up again.
I can be fairly obsessive about wanting particular individual things but not necessarily collecting other items in the same ‘family’. So I might like a Chanel perfume but not necessarily feel the need to have all Chanel perfumes (although I know people who do).
I do something similar to that mentioned above with authors- if I like a book by a particular writer I usually will subsequently get everything they’ve written. Similarly with music; if I like a track I will more than likely binge-buy, steal or borrow all their previous work.
I am a fairly obsessive collector of all things fitness, particularly dumbbells and kettlebells. They come in such pretty colours! This makes me sound weird. I need a new hobby.
I did go through a phase of collecting cake-making and decorating equipment. I had to have everything.
I feel this thread is doing me no favours. 😀
Moose the Mooche says
I have to say Rubes, since I sacked Facebook, I’m missing the dispatches from Splits Newsdesk…
RubyBlue says
🙂 Not a huge amount to report, I’m afraid! Slow progress.
Moose the Mooche says
I quite like the idea that everybody else now thinks you’re on some kind of Yugoslavian adventure…
minibreakfast says
Thankfully, I don’t seem to have the collecting gene, although lately I’ve been displaying signs of T.A.S. (Tijuana Acquisition Syndrome).
Moose the Mooche says
It’s Tijuana Lady!
This would be a cue for that record by Gomez, except it’s rotten, so I won’t bother.
Locust says
I wouldn’t call myself a collector, I just buy a lot of stuff and some of those things just happens to be in the same category.
My “collections” as a child only lasted for a short while before I got bored or thought I had enough of them to be managable; stamps, cards of film stars, “bookmarks” (I can’t quite remember what you guys call them, we had a thread a while back where I think some Scottish members recognized them as “scraps” or something similar?)
Yes, I buy a lot of records, but I’m very far from being a completist. In fact I sometimes avoid buying albums by a favourite artist because I fear disappointment!
I buy tons of books, but I’ll buy ANY books really! But since I started going to charity shops I’ve started to obsessively buy the books written by a favourite Swedish author of mine; P C Jersild. Because I discovered how extremely prolific he’s been and how diverse his books are and almost always brilliant, so after finding one or two new ones in the beginning it sort of became a sport to find all of them. But the one that I’m actually always looking for of his is yet to be found! I bet it’ll be the last one I’ll find…
Some people would accuse me of collecting stuffed toy animals…I don’t, I just find it almost impossible to not buy one if it’s cute enough…
And I do buy a lot of stuff right now that has to do with Stockholm, my home. Because I’m making it a theme in my living room, with pillows, trays, table cloths, artwork and photographs, etcetera. Tasteful designs, not touristy schlock! And a bit subtle, I don’t want it to resemble a gift shop at the airport! Just enough things to make a statement, but not crossing the line to become tacky.
retropath2 says
I thought music the only thing collectable; for me it’s cover versions (that I like, huh, I’m not Beany!) and sufficient representative stuff (that i like) over the decades, plus my own faves, you know Chumbas, Fairport, Leven, Van, Costello, Dylan, REM, Burritos/Byrds, o the list goes on.
Are you allowed to collect tastes and flavours with nowt tangible: I HAVE to try new ales I see in the shops, but I don’t soak off the labels and scrapbook ’em.
I used to keep all my receipts of memories, but that stopped a couple of marriages ago. Too ephemeral, and I can remember what I need, at least so far.
So, it’s music.
And it’s ultimate indulgence is cooking of a sunday with Mr Random on the pod.
Bliss.
If she doesn’t like it (usually jazz) I tell her there will be another one along in a minute or two. (Mind you, some of these Blue Note choons are looooong!!)
Hey, Hank is just playing, must shout her in from the garden. She hates vintage country too!!!
Did the airfix soldiers, @stevet , even painted ’em with blobs of flesh-coloured paint, Humbrol was it?
pencilsqueezer says
Righty-ho just decided on a brief break from the paint for the day before the drawing shift starts this evening. A few hours off! How exciting.
I used to collect records of the vinyl variety but sold the whole bally lot a few years back. We needed the money and the space. I still have some CDs but I keep those in wallets and I chucked the packaging into the recycling bin.
We needed the space to accommodate a burgeoning DVD collection. As many of you are aware my much adored wifey isn’t in the best of health much of the time so our social life has bitten the dust. We needed and continue to need to bring entertainment in house.
I have always been more involved with music than Donna. Her passion is film and television. Her needs come first with me hence goodbye record collection, hello ridiculous amounts of DVDs.
We both adore reading and prior to moving to our new drum we had rather a lot of books that we had amassed over the years. The vast bulk of them, well over six hundred titles went to charity when we moved. We kept a few that we couldn’t bear to part with. The upside is we received a letter from the charity involved the other day informing us that the sale of them had raised seventy odd quid so far. This made me smile.
Anyway with Kindles and digital storage for music we still have access to the things we love so we don’t feel too bereft.
Baron Harkonnen says
The wife and myself take lots of stuff to `Mind`, they also send us letters letting us know how much it has raised.
It does give you a good feeling and encourages you to do more – that`s the good bit.
fatima Xberg says
I used to deny it, but recent adventures with office moves made it pretty clear: I’m a collector.
Apart from all things musical (LPs, cassettes, CDs, minidiscs, box sets…), it started with DC comics (Catwoman and Harley Quinn got the ball rolling), then the French Metal Hurlant mag, and later Will Eisner.
I also collect ceramic coasters. And vintage lingerie. Concert tickets. Magazines (each spring I take last year’s Mojo, Songlines, Spex etc. to the bookbinder who turns them into hardbound volumes). Books about record covers.
On the other hand, I don’t collect shoes. Or handbags. Or recipes.
fatima Xberg says
fatima Xberg says
fatima Xberg says
fatima Xberg says
minibreakfast says
Success!
fatima Xberg says
😉
About time, too. I was already thinking about joining the Hoffman forum…
mikethep says
Deep envy.
davebigpicture says
Those coasters are ace.
mikethep says
You bind your magazines! Respect! If a year’s worth of Mojos looks like Encyclopaedia Britannica, how can anybody force you to chuck them out?
Rigid Digit says
Stamps – got given a Stamp Album, Stamp Hinges and a “Starter Pack” one Christmas. Stuck the Stamps in the album, and then thought “now what do I do with them”. Kept it going for about a year, but completely lost interest.
Found a pile of old Football Programmes at a Jumble Sale – a ready mad collection which was only marginally added to.
Badges – mostly football and music related, but again lost interest
(Are you noticing a pattern here?)
Car Badges – this was pre-Beastie Boys/nicking VW badges, but it was that that put a stop to that (I’m not doing anything vaguely “fashionable”).
Plastic Carrier Bags – original intent was to get (at least) one from each shop in Reading (for reasons that I still can’t fathom).
And then the Record Collecting bug kicked in – now that I have maintained the conviction to continue.
Milkybarnick says
Not much really. I did have a crack at Football ’87 but ended up with an 80% complete album and at least 12 copies of Mike Fillery.
My daughter is collecting the Kinder egg Disney fairies. If anyone has a Fawn going spare I’ll happily swap a Periwinkle…
Twang says
I don’t collect anything in particular, but I develop intense loyalty to things otherwise worthless. I have knackered old paperbacks from when I was a teenager I’d be inconsolable to lose even though I haven’t read them for 20 years and probably never will. I also have piles of special magazines I could get rid of overnight but don’t for some reason. I periodically have a CD purge to the charity shop (and books too) so it’s not unstructured hoarding – certain things just seem to acquire heirloom status then their dust gathering potential is assured.
Moose the Mooche says
“I develop intense loyalty to things otherwise worthless” – you sound like the wife, BOOM BOOM!
Twang says
My mrs has no loyalty to old stuff she no longer cares about – in the bin liner and off to the charity shop it goes. I’ll know when my time is up, and go quietly.
Moose the Mooche says
You don’t look your best in a binliner.
I’ve found.
SixDog says
Toto Coelo rocked it.
https://youtu.be/YqCTGoWMZcQ
And Mugatu’s “DerelÃct” campaign had the fashionista’s gagging for more bin type finery.
mikethep says
‘special magazines’…Moose?
Moose the Mooche says
Wahey!!!
Morrison says
Like most on here collected records – James Brown and various offshoots and particularly UK editions of Philadelphia International 7s (about 10 short before I gave up) – and also stamps and “Skinhead” books but now just generally hoard stuff…
Actually, also red/maroon Penguin travel paperbacks – and King Penguins – but now mainly modern first editions by people like Raymond Carver/Richard Ford and for some reason I’ve acquired almost a full set of Beryl Bainbridge, Alice Munro and Anne Tyler’s somewhere along the way for my wife (for me really).
Build up a decent collection of Sheffield Clarion Ramblers handbooks when I lived in the steel city. Small – tiny even – densely printed 60 page plus little annuals from the turn of the last century detailing the activities of the socialist walking club – mass trespasses and all that – around the Dark Peak – Kinder Scout, Bleaklow and beyond. Written by all round polymath GHB Ward they include incredibly detailed histories of obscure peak district names and places with hand drawn maps showing, amongst other things, local field patterns before the flooding of the Derwent Valley to create Ladybower. Published every year until the 1970s – may be beyond that – never see any now but used to find them in book and charity shops and have 30 or 40 of them somewhere.
Paul Wad says
My house is a bit overrun with various stuff I have collected. I sometimes feel like I’m the curator of my own museum. As well as having far too many CDs, DVDs/Blu Rays and books I have all sorts of stuff that I’ve been a bit obsessive with at various times. Problem is, my little boys is showing similar signs, firstly with his Thomas the Tank Engine trains and now with Star Wars figures.
My stuff is heavy on Barnsley FC (amongst other stuff I have every home programme since 1954 apart from four that I am still tracking down). And comics, or Batman in particular, with a few thousand Batman comics/books and over 50,000 comics of all kinds electronically. I have around 200 Batman model vehicles knocking around the house and on various shelves, as well as figures, original artwork, all sorts.
And I have a pretty large James Bond collection too. Books, magazines, lobby cards, model vehicles. In fact, I have a very large James Bond and Batman trading card collection, with over a hundred signed cards, including a few of the Bonds, Christopher Lee, etc. Loads of old football trading cards and completed Panini albums too.
One of my favourite book collections is the complete run of the Wildlife Photographer of the Year books. They’re brill. And I have loads of horror books/magazines/films. And, music wise, ridiculously large Beatles, Pet Shop Boys and Stephen Duffy related collections.
I suppose it will all make a few quid for my kids at some point when I’m dead and gone.
badartdog says
tons of stuff. I loved anything cartoony. The Lucky Luke plastic figures from the early 70s are remembered fondly.
Uncle Wheaty says
I was a collector/completest before I had kids for a couple of artists – Waterboys and Del Amitri. I still have a complete set of the first 200 Q magazines in the loft for some reason (obviously I will read them again one day!)
Since then the money has gone on child care and kids stuff and I subscribe to Spotify premium and digital editions of Prog and Classic Rock.
Sad but modern!
Diddley Farquar says
Not much of a collector. I’ll only buy what I’ll use. I see little point in getting a DVD of a film I’ve seen unless it’s something suited to re-watching like Spinal Tap or something I don’t remember too well that I saw a long time ago. I have little interest in new music by acts who are past their best or for previously unheard,unreleased versions of classic songs, or limited edition, keep it in original packing collectors’ items, like sci-fi toys, that will be stored on shelves by nerds who won’t grow up…better stop there, said too much.
Kid Dynamite says
I completed the Panini sticker album for Return Of The Jedi. Beat that.
I have my passions, but I don’t really collect them. If there’s an author I want I’m happy having the books in any form, and I’m not fussed about first editions or anything like that (although if anyone does know where I can get a hardback copy of The Rebel Angels by Robertson Davies then please pipe up). Civilians would probably say I collect records, but I’ve met proper record collectors, and I really don’t.
Cookieboy says
I was a hoarder rather than a collector. If I bought something I kept it and over 30 years things really add up. One day I just decided to ditch it all.
I threw all my magazines into a recycle bin and took all the books to a charity shop. The process took MONTHS. The only things I still have are my records and DVD’s. The records I hope to sell one day and the DVD’s to watch one day.
Now I give books away once I’ve read them and the mags I just toss in the bin.
Now I collect golf clubs and weirdo rock and roll stuff like the Elvis chess set, the KISS branded six pack of beer and the AC/DC wine. I don’t seek them out but I get them if I see them.
retropath2 says
Rock star beer; is it me or are the Madness, Iron Maiden, Status Quo and Elbow ales all pretty bogstandard shite?
On a related, have spent years looking for (Jackie) Leven’s Lament, a whisky he claimed to have had branded. I asked in all the learned whisky shops about Embra and the north, all to no avail. Then I learnt, probably from this site’s pre-predecessor, that it was a hoax. Like many of the pubs he fondly mentions on LP sleeves.
Baron Harkonnen says
That was our Jackie, always pulling our legs. He`ll be laughing up there at us even now, a great man.
Phil Pirrip says
I don’t collect but tend to aimlessly acquire these days. In my earlier years I did Airfix kits, plane spotting, bookmarks, beer mats, stamps, petrol station football coins, bubble gum/cigarette/brook bond cards. There are several years of Aeroplane Monthly issues from the mid-seventies still in the loft. That said, my charity shop trawl to build a full set of Rebus novels has currently realised 17 out of the 19 books.
thecheshirecat says
Maps. I don’t just collect maps; I collect collections of maps. Here goes :
GB at 1:50000 recent
GB at 1:25000 recent
E&W at 1 inch to the mile, Old Series reprinted
E&W at 1 inch to the mile, Revised New Series reprinted
E&W at 1 inch to the mile, Popular Edition reprinted
Ireland at 1:50000 recent
France at 1:100000 IGN 1990s
Switzerland at 1:100000 recent
quite a lot of Italy and New Zealand as well
and my pride and joy, prompted by a disposal from Leicestershire County Libraries, with subsequent gleanings from second hand book shops, mainly in the Welsh borders
GB at 1 inch to the mile, Seventh Edition, originals
Then there’s the book collections – a full set of Wainwrights, Pevsners and the Hoskins’ Making of the English Landscape series – those counties that got published.
Finally, a quite unnecessary range of 1980s Tour de France team strips.
Well tooled up, me.
Dodger Lane says
Wow, that’s a great collection of maps @thecheshirecat. Me too, I have gone back to collecting maps, particularly the OS Explorer 1:25 series. They really are things of beauty. I also need to have maps/plans/small topographical prints from wherever I visit. I did have a thing with pens, my last craze was with Lamy pens, interesting bits of stationery (a habit I picked up in Japan where the manufacture of stationery is almost an art form). I have a ridiculous amount of books, but look most favourably on old paperbacks which are still in better condition than most recent books. Used to collect postcards and would keep newspaper articles (mostly political, travel articles and would always keep anything written by James Cameron or Norman Lewis) in scrapbooks, still have these. When I were a lad, like a few here, it was Airfix. Also Lego, The Monkees cards and, oddly, sweet wrappers particularly Bazooka Joe bubblegum.
H.P. Saucecraft says
First actual collection (ie for its own sake) must have been pin badges/club membership cards. Red Ray The Space Raynger. Marvelman. Harold Hare. The Ovaltineys. Then Beatles bubblegum cards, the first series; beautiful thick, glossy b&w photographs with a jigsaw piece on the back (made a big poster when laid out on the carpet). Then the unforgettable Civil War bubblegum cards with fake Confederate money. A little later, Marvel Comics. Then magazines, books, records. And wives.
And apart from a wife, they’ve all gorn, gorn, like straw in the wind. Now, I collect minor physical ailments.
man.of.soup says
(can I just say): fine username, sir!
Locust says
Hmm…are you The Artist Formerly Known As Burt?
minibreakfast says
Can’t be, there’s no mention of collecting Hummel figurines 🙂
Harry Tufnell says
Birds – well I don’t actually “collect” them as such, I travel the world in order to see and identify as many as I can. Sometimes I photograph them and I help other find, identify and photograph them too.
I’ve just checked and my running total currently stands at 3,842 and the last new bird I saw was a Lesser Antillean Pewee (Contopus latirostris) two months and six days ago.
Sniffity says
Sheesh, bit dull – don’t you at least try to get them to autograph something or get a photo taken with them?
mikethep says
This is very interesting @neil-dyson, because it goes right to the heart of the ‘collecting’ thing. Out of your 3,842 species (is that the right word?) there must have been an awful lot of what the RSPB calls ‘little brown jobs’, not particularly interesting to look at in themselves, and looking like dozens of other birds, but important to you because a box has been ticked. Presumably there must have been birds among your list that made your heart sing because they were so beautiful (like the rainbow lorikeets I see every day, common as muck round here)? There is a scientific aspect to what you do that I wouldn’t want to undervalue, but is that a by-product of your passion to tick off as many birds as possible? Do you have any idea how many already discovered species you’re missing?
I’m not being mischievous here, I’m genuinely interested, not least because I love birds but have probably not (knowingly) seen more than 250 in my entire life and am unlikely to get anywhere near 3842 in the time left to me…
Harry Tufnell says
Ah @mikethep, some of the beauty is in the detail and seeing and understanding why that bird is a Rustic Bunting and not a Reed Bunting. I’m not much of a twitcher however, hell lies in lining up with three or four hundred highly competitive (predominantly) middle-aged men wearing camo gear and sporting thousands of pounds worth of optics to glimpse a sad vagrant bird that has been blown off-course and will undoubtedly die soon in an alien environment.
I much prefer to see the birds in their natural environment, and it’s a hobby that means a lot of travel to places few get to (Papua New Guinea anyone?) with the added bonus of meeting lots of interesting new people, photographic fantastic wildlife and generally seeing the world. It’s not just about ticking boxes, I know that there are just over 10,000 species and I won’t see them all, I don’t agonize over the odd one or two I may miss in one place, the birds I have seen are more important than the ones I missed, and I’m also raising environmental awareness and contributing to some poor local economies.
I do know people who almost seem to suffer from birding, total obsessives who keep separate lists for everywhere from their garden to county lists, year lists, British list, world list, etc. They wouldn’t have had to look up how many species they’d seen, they know exactly how many – it’s probably the most important thing in their lives!
If you’re seeing Rainbow Lorikeets then you’re obviously in Australia which is a brilliant country for birding, there are about 830 species of birds in Oz and some real stunners amongst them from tiny Spotted Pardalotes to huge Cassowaries and Emus, and that’s where another part of the fascination lies – such diversity!
mikethep says
Ah yes, I love the birds here. The magpies don’t just sing, they riff, I’m getting to the stage where I can identify individual magpies. Shame about the brush turkeys, which are conducting a reign of terror in our back yard. Ugly, bolshie birds which scratch up all your mulch to build nests 1m high and about 4m square. Impossible to grow anything unless you build a cage round it. They were quite rare until they were protected in the 70s, and now they’re the bane of every gardener. Unintended consequences…
thecheshirecat says
It’s the song rather than the birds that matter to me, and the love of it all started in Australia. I lived there in the 80s and it woke me up to the natural world, only to return to the UK and in the first jetlagged dawn chorus, wake up to all we have here. It’s one of the things that tells me I’m in a foreign country, or even a different part of the UK. The birdsong gives the setting.
retropath2 says
Blimey! I saw more than 250 just this morning.
Mind you, they were all starlings………
SixDog says
I’m Toad of Toad Hall.
Start up a collection – get bored – give it away/leave in cupboard.
The only things that have stayed the course – records and music – forensically hoovering up everything MSP, The Stone Roses and The Smiths and football scarves – much less intense or time consuming – just get a scarf from every overseas club I visit and decorate the office with them….
Dull – I know…
man.of.soup says
Useta collect comics, records, books, CDs, stamps (when I was smaller)… Now, I just collect regrets.
*slumps on late night barstool, pretends to be Sinatra*
Sniffity says
But he only collected a few (too few to mention).
mikethep says
Up @sniffity!