Sunday, August 16, 2009

Edwin and Angelina the newts.

The author collected a pair of newts from a neighbouring pond.
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'They fondled each other, waltzed round their glass home, played hide-and-seek among the pebbles, and became so tame, they would eat any day from their keeper's hand. Alas! a day came when that keeper had to leave home for a short time ; in other words, the aquarium must be left to the tender mercies of a housemaid more zealous than wise. So when I returned, there was much to hear, though rather less than usual to see, for Edwin had disappeared altogether, and Angelina had laid a golden egg, which the foolish housemaid swept away by mistake!'

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'No wonder the poor thing pined for the loss of husband and child ; indeed, she died at last, I thought, of a broken heart, and was immortalised in spirits of wine, with a suitable epitaph written on the label outside an old scent-bottle.'

*Images and text from:
S.M. Crawley Boevey, Chapter II, 'My Aquariums', Sunday Reading for the Young, Wells Gardner, Darton & Co, 1892

Wednesday, August 05, 2009

Koala Shoes

As a kid growing up in the 1980s I collected stickers. For a while anything with a sticker would make it into my sticker book (which I still have) including the labels from fabric softener, shampoo and assorted fresh produce. On each visit to my local shoe shop I got at least one Koala Shoes sticker. I only ever stuck the ones I had doubles of. The rest I collected loose and there are a lot of them. Here are scans of the most adorably dated ones. I'm not sure if they still exist as a brand.

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These ones predate my own collection and were bought second hand at some point. However the one on the lower left was much later, maybe early 1990s?

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Celebrating Australia's win of the America's Cup. He's so cute! I drew koalas like this for a while, with those eyes. Willy, Australia's mascot from the LA Olympics in 1984 looked a lot like this.

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So 1980s :)

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In the late 80s they changed from the circle, tabbed shape to squares.

It's rather ironic that most of the koalas - and this goes for the rest of the series as well - aren't wearing shoes!