The river of Poppies.

This is just a short lived thing up town out by the Tower of London, remembering all those that have fallen in battle in world conflicts.  Covering the moat area outside the Tower and various areas including spilling down the wall at one point its a poignant reflection on war and loss.  We were going to write about something else (an update on some old topics) but thought you would like this trip out instead.

First of all the Oyster card I had was plain out refused as it was blocked and didn't realise until I went in to Woolwich, luckily I was only going to use it for one trip before getting a travelcard for the rest of  my journey, which is a bastard but can't be helped. Next up we shared a train with a pop eyed spaniel like a full brown King Charles which was cute and set us up for the rest of the trip as it was full of dogs.  More spaniels down by the river, small schanuzers, big labs, dogs being carried, dogs on boats and a Fred Basset (incidentally I actually laughed at a Fred Basset strip this week, something to do with accidentally tossing the salad leading to much hilarity which is normally alien in his button down mundane world.)

I didn't think much of the river of poppies it was really crowded and there wasn't much space to take photos. A much better idea is taking a photo from a height such as from the park above the main areas, trust me it'll look better and you won't be crushed to death by 6 billion tourists.  The other reason I was down there is that we have a giant wooden hippo moored up at St Katharine's docks.  Its by a dutch artist and is very nice, its called Hipopo Thames and reminds me of the little guy from Liquid Kids or  a massive Kinder Happy Hippo.  Want to know how awesome he looks well check it out here.  Apparently the guy behind it has also made a giant rubber duck which I really must google.

Champions

I'm still coughing my lungs up but hopefully, its on remission.  We've, got a new drink, a tradtional English drink, for when you are sick.  Its called Lucozade and maybe marketed as sports / energy drink, was for a long time delivered glucose energy to the poorly, hence me grabbing a bottle.  No glass bottle this time, its fully plastic and as its a limited edition is a cola.  For Americans or just damn lucky Brits, it tastes a lot like Jones Cola, which is a cane sugar coke which is wonderful.  As its Lucozade its a lot easier to get than Jones Soda here so if you come across it and are in need of energy don't hesitate to buy.

Captain Tsubasa

For some of you this will be familiar to you, but just goes to show how the UK missed out especially in the mid 90's.  The original game was done by Tecmo and was sort of a football game which takes place entirely in box out shots describing the action.  The game came across to Europe but I don't remember seeing it on the shelves.  Most NES football games are of course completely evil and shouldn't be touched with a bargepole.
Unless is Technos Nintendo World cup, which is still shit but allows complete carnage.

In fact this was a long running franchise that included Manga and Anime.  The Anime was localised for Europe under the name Campeones and had a big following worldwide.  There is a link to a version in English called Flash Kicker, but just leads to dead ends and clearly non English versions.

This is the best we can do, English subs that you can imagine sung by the players of the day, Maybe even Glenn Hoddle.

Flash Kickers licence was owned by Enoki Films, they seem to have a long list of obscure Anime, like Inspector Fabre, based on the Entomologist of the same name and got a total WTF when I saw it on Spanish Kids TV.  They also hold most if not all the Captain Tsubasa licenses which they license to  Mainland Europe.    England loves its football and when they came out in the late 80's noone knew what Manga was save for Robotech and Lensman on Premiere (later Sky Movies).  Mainstream was a bust, Channel 4 showed only the violent stuff at Midnight, and Sci Fi Showed some tamer stuff, If you consider Mangas Sweary version of Appleseed, orHell City Shinjuku Tame.  Sky one or Nick would have been your only home for kids manga.  With Foxs Peter Pan and Tokusatsu shows like the Power Rangers.  Nick had the updated version of Speed Racer which came to the BBC. 

Flash Kicker would have certainly have entertained English kids.  Most of us grew up playing football with jumpers for goalposts in a local green space.  I've yet to see kids do that now, but 80's kids were different.
Depending on the dub, whether American or English (likely in the early days, but not now), I'm sure it would have taken off either as Flash Kicker or simply renamed as Champs, it would only take a forward looking BBC or ITV to add it to their afternoon schedules, maybe even have Andy Crane Introduce it.

But it didn't happen, it simply rattles around the continent in various dubs, ITV did actually licence a football Cartoon, but its only the barely remembered Hurricanes.

Lately there is Inazuma Eleven by Layton Creators Level 5, but its dubbed by yanks (who know nothing of real football) with various Japanese names left in.  What I saw was a keeper use a punch shot which he called a Fire punch,  which was subbed as Fire Kobushi, an entirely unnecessary elaboration.

One of these days they'll show Champions dubbed, but I'm getting its a long day in hell.

Spooky Blog In Spooky Vision.

Happy Halloween loyal reader. Heres some google excellence, in which some meddling kids are unmasked by Scooby doo on the Google logo.. If for some reason you're late to the Halloween Party then they'll be here if you wanna look.

Though we don't really do scary movies and that, this pwned my dreams back when I was 6 or so.

We had a proper old school TV unit, basically a brown cabinet unit on wheels, (you may remember these from the Otis and Marvin bit from the Smell Of Reeves and Mortimer) and Dark towers was part of the schools programming on in the morning. They always had a butterfly testcard type thing preceding it and because I loved butterflies as a kid, classmates would ask me what species it was.

Of course Dark Towers main aim was to teach you Maths and English but to make it interesting they added the drama too, which is where the main problems started. It involved ghosts and one in particular the glowing ghost of a knight, boom voiced and accompanied by thunder scared me shitless and pwned my dreams for about 4 weeks later. Looking back it still gives me the creeps but now I can appreciate the sheer beauty of the Radiophonic Workshop score and chuckle that its really the guy who played Chewbacca in the knight costume. Also Derek (Heads and Tails) Griffiths sang the end theme which wasn't so bad.

We don't remember anything else about Dark Towers except the name which I thought was called Dark Tower for ages, and that there was another programme involving backwards writing spacemen.
But that wasn't scary so it doesn't count.