Bedtime Stories.

 So we've just got done reading through the Twisted Claw* and I just had to include these bits I drew inside the covers from when I must have been 13 or so. 

We have no idea who Clawd is.

Niece and Nephews of Uncle Weedle.

The cats are from a bedtime story that my Mum and me made up back in the day. The three at the bottom are Taily, Waily and Tabatha, nephews of Uncle Weedle a sort of black and white cat version of Jacques Cousteau and champion fisherman. He ran a weird mix of an aquarium and fish raising bit on the coast. Totally drawn a blank at Clawd though, possibly a friend of the siblings.

The few world building bits I can remember is that this was a planet full of cats on a planet that had a runaway greenhouse effect. As a consequence the whole world was some giant tropical rainforest with a mix of hi-tech and primitive forest dwelling. There would be no roads as such as everything ran on teleportation. And that's all I can remember about it. I think they lived underground and the continent they lived on was definitely called Wederland .

Bark Brothers.

This is far more concrete set of tales I told. Imagine the Hardy Boys but dogs (really loved some non human protags in this). They solved mysteries and had access to a giant robot called Super Choop who lived in the mall in Barkington. It was a detective tale mixed with a Tokusatsu feel. They had catapaults and fired beans out to defeat the plans of C.H.I.C.K.E.N. the Central Headquarters of International Criminal Kind and Evil Notoriety. This lasted long enough for us to write up a mystery tale in Wordworth on the Amiga and submit it for a CU  Amiga coverdisk. There is also a big rambling tale written long hand about them coming to earth that mixed up drug trafficking and the Mayan transformer pseudoscience of Maurice Cotterell.  I know there is a few pictures and a rework in Blacks Editor text editor on Amiga that is about a quarter of the way done.  And no, I'm not resurrecting this.  

*Not the next book you'll get. That will be Tic-Tac Terror.

Skeleton Rocks

So the Ghost at Skeleton Rock. Or the Hardys do Puerto Rico. This is the first book I ever wrote up as a sort of review for English class at school. Not the first Hardy Boys story I  read (Melted Coins). But the first sort of review I did. Can remember Chet taking up ventriloquism as his hobby of the day. 

PLOT

Fenton Hardy gives them  a cryptic message about finding a Hugo purple turban, which just so coincides with Chet Morton picking up ventriloquism as a hobby. His doll from the toy shop is almost hijacked by thugs when he comes to collect it, and when they finally pick it up they find a coded message for Cabezona N in the Spanish instructions. 

A few more clues brings them to Puerto Rico, via the small island of Tropicale. The Cabezona clue largely brings them to the pineapple growing regions to the south as there is a Punta Cabezona there along with a sugar central (processing plant). They find that the plane leads due north, and as a hunch hire a boat and find that there is a small island being used by a Durling Hamilton leader of the bad guys as base. Although charming he tries to get the local Carib Indians to kill off the boys and when that fails sabotages his boat and then gets them to sail back to Puerto Rico for help and watches them sink.

So where actually is Skeleton Rock then, and what about that ghost? 

19 chapters in we finally find out that Skeleton Rock exists in the extreme north of Hamilton's island as a dread place of ritual for the Caribs. The ghost of a long dead Cacique actually a projection is being used to scare the Indians into compliance. 

Differences?

So far there are a few text edits to certain phrases and spellings in the English version, from the US original. But as it's based on the rewrite and the text file I have that purports to be original has fuck all differences between this and my UK copy, I'd like to get my hands on an original to see what edits were made (if any).

Edit. UK version Here and Original version here

Coffee time. With music

 A few odds n sods today. We got an anti poll tax record today (we have one already and it's shit) and a few tapes such as Summer Sounds Vol 2 Chartfile, a promo for Mobil Oil. And the sound track to Prospects an old Channel 4 show with Gary Olsen in. Hazel O'Connor sings in this and we have a few other things to put up on discogs once I get round to listening to them. 

Coffee break.

Don't know if anyone else has done this, but had the notion to put black pepper in my brew the other day. Was in McDonalds and they had the pepper packets on the side and thought... Wouldn't it be great if I could put pepper in this. Its sort of spicy and goes well with the  taste of the coffee which is already kinda bitter. 

The site I've linked to has some sort of health benefits with it but for me I just wanted to know what it would taste like. If I have any pepper packets around and get coffee, will definitely do it again. 

OBS

 We've finally reinstalled OBS as it didn't recognise our capture card (got picture no sound) and have a load of lottery type tapes and joy of joys some play your cards right with Brucie. 

One of the new tapes is causing some trouble. It won't play in OBS so far but does on the main TV with  the other VCR. It's some dubious health tape featuring Noni fruit aka Morinda citrifolia. Hopefully I'll have it capped soon and put on archive.org if it's not there already.

EDIT looks like my capture equipment can't handle commercial tapes.