First Edition Vinyl
Sargeant Peppers Lonely Hearts Club Band....nuff said
( Supersam11 Can I go on the slides please?, Mon 18 Aug 2008, 16:57, 3 replies)

WARNING!! Sentimental bollocks to follow
Apologies, but i realised i lost something incredibly important without noticing or doing a damn thing about it.

I have completely thrown away my childhood.

Bear with me, but i realised with adulthood very quickly approaching (buggers) that when i'm older, and my son is sitting on my knee, and he asks me 'Dad, what did you do in your childhood?', i will have no answer.

I have no amusing stories, or tales of adventure, because i've never had any of those experiences. I would be completely silenced. And this has stunned me.

I blame no-one else for this. It's my fault. I let it slip through my fingers.

Apologies for length, but it was only 16 years.
(General_Manchego, Mon 18 Aug 2008, 16:36, 4 replies)

Wish my mum had never thrown my Spectrum out
Anyone over the age of thirty knows that as far as pure gaming goes, retro is where it is at. In my day, an X-Box was an impolite term for the recently vacated post of "girlfriend" (not that we had any back then of course, we were too nerdy busy blazing a trail through the very first virtual worlds, before it became cool).
This is a picture of the awesome Speccy +2.

Amazing isn't it?

No doubt some of you are wondering what the tape recorder thingy is for. Well, you put your cassettes in it, type LOAD "", press play and then wait ten minutes before the fucking thing crashes, getting you a beating from your mother because you yelled "You cunt!" in abject frustration as you were forced to rewind the tape and repeat the whole process again teaching you much about anticipation and patience in the meantime.

Grand Theft Auto IV? Pah, you think GTA invented gratuitous automobile related violence? Ladies, gentlemen and geeks I give you the wonderful Turbo Esprit, from 1986

Okay, the games may have lacked a certain amount of sophistication, but what you lacked in True Colour graphics, you made up for in imagination.

Strap yourself into the state-of-the-art Lotus Esprit, in this realistic simulation of high speed urban driving with not a GATSO in sight as you hunt down the ruthless drug dealing scumbags.

Ah, bugger... It's still loading isn't it...

Right okay, forward on a few frames... Better not pay too much attention to the aesthetics of the menu screens, every byte is precious and all that.

Ah, here you go... Right, we're motoring now... You can gun down innocent pedestrians and drive recklessly around virtual streets and avenues.

Retro gaming and original consoles are worth a fortune, I'm beginning to wish I'd never thrown out my trusty +2 eighteen years ago. I wonder how much it's worth now?

Better at least give this new fangled GTA IV a bash then.

Arse.

In retrospect, my ancient Spectrum is probably better off in the skip where I left it. I think I'll stick to emulators if I need to get my retro gaming fix.
(Bicycle Repairman "you're also a bit of a wanker", Mon 18 Aug 2008, 16:28, 10 replies)

Can I just point out:
In my mum and dad's house, there is a complete collection of every 2000AD comic, annual, monthly, special edition, graphic novel and collected work. My parents are vaguely sane and know not to throw anything out without asking me or my brother first - something they must regret since my brother's stuff fills the loft and one of the bedrooms - he's 35 and the comics are his.

Nothing of mine remains in the house, I went to visit a little while back and they gave me the last of my stuff. In a shoe box. There was all kinds of random crap in there that was pretty much worthless and should have just gone straight in the bin but, as my mum put it, "it's not mine and I don't know what it's worth". Sound.
(ScousersPet, Mon 18 Aug 2008, 16:21, 1 reply)

Last year
I accidentally threw out a pair of jeans that had a fiver in the pocket.

In today's money that would have been worth at least five pounds.
( TGB checking Off Topic is still shit at, Mon 18 Aug 2008, 16:21, Reply)

Bastard Parents
My mother and father are bungling, throwing away, incompetent, shit blankets.

I have had a whole load of stuff either chucked away by my dad, or ‘tidied’ away by my mother. She then forgets that she has tidied it away and then openly questions my sanity as to whether or not I possessed it. In one situation I was forced to find a picture to show her that I used to have it. She still didn’t believe that she’d tidied it away.

Good stuff I have had ‘tidied’away.

- A signed copy of HR Giger’s Necronomicon. This is fucking priceless nowadays.

Mum: ‘looked scary and cheap and I never saw you reading it.’

- A rare numbered Viz mug that I won in a competition. It went missing, presumed lost. Later I found it, minus its handle, in my dad’s toolshed, full of dirty paint brushes.

- My Neo Geo cd with about 10 games. Arrrrrgh! This cost me fucking £400 just for the console never mind the games!

Mum: ‘well I was clearing out your room and I thought that the charity shop would like it’.

Me: ‘how can a charity shop like anything, it’s a shop! Arrrrgh!

- My entire mint condition boxed transformers collection!

Mum: ‘well that nice lady down the road came for lunch and brought her little boy – he had a great time playing with your little robots and I said that he could have them. You are a little bit old for them now.

Me: Mum! I am twelve!

- My collection of Viz comics from 3-48. As soon as I was told that my dad had taken them down to the car boot sale with him, I raced down there and tried to take them back. My dad made me fucking pay 10p each to have them back! The fucking cheek!

- Countless, countless books. My dad is like a magpie when it comes to books. Since he has retired, he reads voraciously and goes down to the second hand bookshops to buy and trade. If I don’t nail a book down when I visit my parents, he will have it to trade at an unfavourable 2:1 ratio with the man who owns the book store, ‘Hissing’ Sid.

- A car! A fucking car! My next door neighbours once wanted to get rid of an old banger, and said that I could have it. I was 16, it was an amazing opportunity. I was away on holiday at the time, but when I got back, erm, no car. Mum: oh we didn’t like the car cluttering up the drive and besides, you haven’t passed your test yet.’

Me: MUM, I AM 17 NEXT MONTH! WHAT DID YOU DO WITH THE CAR?

Mum: oh we gave it back to the people next door, and they gave it to the boy down the road, you know, he had your transformers…’

Me: ARRRRRRGH!
(powervator and NONE SHALL PASS, Mon 18 Aug 2008, 16:04, 9 replies)

A Honda C90
Not a childhood toy, no sentimental value.

But I was still absolutely gutted that some utter arsehole thought they could walk into my back garden and take it for a joyride.

Especially as I was due to ride up to the Lake District on it the next day, and I had all my tools, camping stuff, and guitar strapped to the back.

The real clincher was that when they'd finished ragging it across a field, they didn't think 'Oh, we'll put it on the sidestand at the side of the road and leave it'. No. They cut all the wires, slashed the seat and tyres and then ripped my topbox off, which contained £50 worth of tools and parts.

After being found by the police, it was then 'recovered' to a place 10 miles away, despite being found less than 5 minutes walk from my house.

Had I been stupid enough to pay the recovery fee and get it back, this would have cost me £170. For a bike that cost me £200.



It sounds like a small thing, but I spent days working on that bike, on my hands and knees covered in oil and grit, to get it in reasonable shape.

Do kids nowdays have no respect? When I was 13, I was out doing E's and drinking 2-for-1 pints at the local rock club, not nicking bikes.
(Half of Stephen Fry's right buttock pissed on your dog on, Mon 18 Aug 2008, 15:39, 5 replies)

Everyone
who misses their old consoles (me included) and doesn't want to pay the exorbitant fees for the 'classic' re-releases should definitely get on the emulator scene, I've relived loads of my old memories of the 6128, through to the Megadrive, old PC games. Not looked so hard for PS One stuff, Gamecube or xbox though, well not yet anyway!

I do find that I'll play for about 10 mins then realise that today's offerings are always much better although I still have a pang for Sword of Vermilion and the Phantasy star games which I will one day complete!

Amstrad is still owned but no longer works (Boo!)
(Fuckarma was masturbating into your handbag, Mon 18 Aug 2008, 15:30, Reply)

If they were truly yours...
I love video games and I mean that in the truest, saddest sense of the word. My memories are inextricably tied to what I playing at the time. Primary School was the BBC B with Brian Clough's Football Fortunes, Starship Command and Elite. Boarding School was Street Fighter 2:CE, the Sonic collection and Micro Machines 98. University was GoldenEye, Mario Kart 64 and Lylat Wars. I've had the Xbox 360, Wii and PS3 since their respective launches and my spare room is populated with a Mega Drive, a SNES, DreamCast, N64, Game Gear, Mega CD, Saturn and a few others.

But the very first console I had was the Atari VCS, complete with two joysticks and two paddle controllers. I spent more hours with my brother playing Circus, Tank, Breakout, Space Invaders and Pac-Man than it took to put man on the moon. Then (and stop me if you've heard this one before) my mother got rid of it, donating it to some relatives. Do not be too hard on her, this is one of only two known acts of cruelty by my mother. But naturally the loss of my original console has always left a hole inside that no amount of ultra HD graphics nor violent sadism could ever truly fill.

Flash forward to last Christmas. My aunt and uncle come over with their children and we do the traditional family things, playing on the Wii, falling asleep at inopportune moments. After the meal, my aunt announces she has an extra little present for me. The uncle comes back into the house with a huge box and plays down my expectations, insisting it's just a minor thing. I unwrap the cardboard and there, inside the battered and heavily taped original box is my Atari VCS. I think I managed not to cry.

It still worked and we played it for five, maybe ten minutes before deciding that the memory cheats and the games were awful (especially Pac-Man - I thought it was arcade perfect; not so much) but that didn't matter, I love that machine from its rubber joysticks to its wood finish and even though I let it go, it came back to me.
(johnson, Mon 18 Aug 2008, 15:21, 3 replies)

I have the opposite concern
My mother once returned from a day of jollity to find that her mother had donated a sizeable portion of her belongings to the local army folk. This having been in about 1960 and a less-than-affluent household, these things were not to be easily replaced and included a number of original runs of Superman comics and assorted others that are worth a fair bit now.

Having had to chase down her erstwhile possessions and claw back whatever portion she could (including a now very threadbare but lovable stuffed dog which still lives with her), she is adamant that nothing of either mine or my sister's shall be discarded without our respective permissions.

Or, in fact, with them. Toys in assorted states of repair fill my mother's loft to straining beams. I have stated that I no longer want any of them, have checked the prices for items in similar condition and have concluded that selling them isn't worth my time and is not something I'd enjoy. My mother, however, would enjoy doing so, for reselling old things for which one has no use is surely the ultimate in bargainaciousness.

Many times have I told her that I am happy for her to sell them, give them to charity or use them to construct a death-machine in order to take over the world. I haven't even asked for a cut. Yet whenever I phone (which is about once a week, for I try to be a good son) I hear complaints that the house is too full and I should sort through it and determine what I want to keep. I haven't even seen it for over ten years. I can probably live without it.

Hmm, neither interesting, funny nor on topic. Well done me.
(ThomsonsPier consumes, Mon 18 Aug 2008, 15:06, 1 reply)

Games, games and more games
Not so much "thrown out" as "sold for beer money":
[*]I sold my C64, 1541II disk drive and hundreds of games for about £40 in 1993. Have been looking into getting another one ever since.
[*]Same deal with my SNES, Woldcard and 200+ games. Sold that in about 1995. Have rebought my collection again in the last couple of years, costing my much more than the £40 I got for it 13 years ago.
[*]I also flogged a stack of PS1 games that I had ammassed during my first few years in the games industry for 50p each, not realising that some of them were worth more than their original price - not that I'd paid for them in the first place. The vast majority were worth 50p, but I reckon maybe half a dozen of them are worth £50ish. My biggest regret with that one is that I didn't keep any of the ones with my name in the credits.

Oh, and all my Star Wars toys went at a car boot sale 20 years ago. 10p each, or thereabouts. I even had the Luke in a Stormtrooper outfit, complete.

On the flipside, I've just had a rather cathartic week clearing out tonnes of old PC parts, cables, games and other junk that I've been hoarding for the last 20 years. I spent most of the time I was clearing it out saying "why am I keeping this crap?" I stuck some stuff on eBay (boxed games, original (G1?) transformers), some went to charity (anything that didn't sell on eBay), some to FreeCycle (anything that charities wouldn't take) and three binbags went the tip (anything left). I have an almost empty room in my house to fill with the next twenty years worth of crap (or the wife's shoes).
(ScousersPet, Mon 18 Aug 2008, 15:02, Reply)

geekhood
Not so much thrown away, but denied.

Whilst wandering the aisles of Woolworths and Whsmiths the mini mrgibbles was always denied star wars toys, optimus primes', copies of 2000AD, light sabres and han solo dolls with life-sized retractable manginas

Thus was my destiny as a geek cut-short, and a world of less introverted pursuits opened up before me.

thank fuck for that.
( rofl harris, Mon 18 Aug 2008, 14:58, Reply)

Sexy Sky Magazine Kylie poster
A good few years ago, I used to read a magazine called Sky. I don't know why it was scrapped as I recall that it wasn't too bad. Anyway, one issue featured Kylie Minogue and had poster of her in a very sexy pose (see here for a pic of the front cover).

I somehow lost my copy but my mate kept his on the wall of his toilet for years (it remained remarkably stain free in that time). When he got married, his missus insisted that Kylie had to go so, being the great mate that he is, he donated it to me. It was a very emotional moment and I was dead chuffed to receive such a wonderful gift. He had tears in his eyes but he knew that she was going to a good home.

That was until my missus, took offence and threw it away. I was, unsuprisingly, very annoyed about it, but not as upset as my mate who was horrified and didn't speak to me again for a while. It has been about 5 years now and I still don't think he has forgiven my missus.
(Tom Jones's Mojo Hasn't had any since, Mon 18 Aug 2008, 14:35, 2 replies)

Tricky - Black Steel
I love Tricky. I love that he invented a form of intelligent music under the umbrella of hip-hop lending the genre much needed credibility along with more commercial but equally creative artists as The Roots, Common, Mos Def etc.

I have a 12" version of Tricky (along with the fabulously monikered and gorgeously voiced Martin Topley-Bird)'s version of Public Enemy's 'Black Steel'. Therein was a limited edition poster which whilst on my Erasmus year in France some years ago, my little brother gave away as, "I wasn't using it".

grr.

On returning from said Erasmus year, I managed to smuggle an air gun into the country (this was before they built those two skyscrapers in the flight path to JFK).

He gave that away as well.

He is currently in possession of my complete 'Fabulous Furry Freak Brothers' collection, having cited his not being "a stupid kid anymore" as good enough grounds to trust him.

I must be dense.

rafter!
baz
(bazmorningstar efil4nat3b, Mon 18 Aug 2008, 14:13, 1 reply)

It was my fault
but when my sister and I were little our prize shared possession was an enormous poster of Larry Wilcox and Eric Estrada in CHiPs (California Highway Patrol for those of you who were imagining a glossy poster of men in a bowl of french fries) CHiPs was obviously the best show on TV and even now when I get hold of a tape-measure my automatic reponse is to extend the tape by an inch or so and give the CHiPs call-sign as if it were a walkie-talkie.

Anyway, we had the lovely poster having saved up to buy it in Boots and it dominated our small bedroom. One day, not that long after we had got it, I was having a small child fit about something which has been long forgotten and, to emphasise my righteous anger, I kicked my slippers at the poster, striking Ponch and John squarely in the face. Sadly for me my mum chose that exact moment to pass by the bedroom door and my shoe kicking did not impress her. As a punishment she took down the poster, ripped it up and put it in the bin. (Which, now I think about it was a bit hard on my sister who had done nothing.)

CHiPs was gone, I had learnt a harsh lesson and I was a sadder and wiser child. Then my sister got a replacment poster of Adam Ant who I didn't like at all. I no longer throw footwear around in anger.
(Innogen, Mon 18 Aug 2008, 13:52, 2 replies)

2000AD
All this talk of "2000AD has made me nostalgic. Reading the posts on here, I think I must have been one of the few girls reading it.

I've even recently been on Ebay checking out the prices of old copies.

Unfortunatly my grown-up head won't let me spend my hard earned cash on old comics.

Bugger!
( girlinthehole, Mon 18 Aug 2008, 13:36, 2 replies)

Hand built ZX81
one of the kits they sold for about £70.
And my bloody Commodore VIC20, sold for a tenner.
Silly bitch.

(1981, oh noe i hav the oldness)
( FeralCatMan Unusual disease collector., Mon 18 Aug 2008, 13:35, Reply)

Hey, the guy that did Warhammer Fantasy Role-Playing is on this site I think
so um, yeah, my Mum threw away my huge collection, if you wanted to send signed replacements that'd be great, thanks!
(apeloverage committed the vile act of onanism on, Mon 18 Aug 2008, 12:56, Reply)

Not quite lost
When Ma and Pa Jugular first got together, Pa Jugular had a fine collection of vinyl.

The collection included a number of first press Beatles records, an early Japanese Elvis import, and most importantly, a Duane Eddie album where they had spelt the name wrong on the cover. All of these records were worth decent money then. They'd be worth a mint now.

One day, Ma Jugular decided to thoroughly clean the house.

She washed all of Pa's records in the kitchen sink, as if they were plates, and then left them to dry.....ON A RADIATOR

When Pa Jugular came home and saw a good deal of his collection bent over the heating like some sort of Dali painting, he cried!

After a few years, they would laugh about the incident, until he saw the Duane Eddie record in a collectors fair going for a couple of grand.

The Jugular Family no longer discuss this incident.

The radiator? Honestly!
(Jugular, Mon 18 Aug 2008, 12:52, Reply)

Why is it......
that everytime I clean out the garage and think 'that would be usefull to keep but haven't needed it for the last 5 years so I may as well chuck it' do I suddenly need it 2 weeks later?!?!?!? Can't remember ever being on the verge of suicude due to having lost/thrown away anything of value, but that feeling of remembering that I threw away the perfect tool for the job............uuuuuurrrrrrrrrgggggghhh....f**ck!!!
(Studentken is looking for motivation on, Mon 18 Aug 2008, 12:52, 3 replies)

Comics
I used to collect 2000AD, this was back in the day when Star Wars came out in the cinema.(1977 for you young things) I had them all from the very first one up to number 160 and then we moved to London.

I never thought anything about it untill after everything was unpacked I couldn't find them. Much ranting later I find out that my dear old parents had decided, that despite the fact that I read them all the time, that I didn't want them and through the lot in the skip that had been hired for dumping the rubbish. I was not a happy bunny!

Well I continued to collect them and a few years later I decided to get the issues that I was missing. Cue trips to collectors fairs, Forbidden Planet, and anyplace else I could find that had them.

I did in the end get them all back but it cost me about £2k to do so. The good thing was that I got to be good friend with Alan Grant, and he gave me a personally signed copy of the 1983 Dredd annual, and he named a City Block in Megacity One after me (It was nuked in The Apocalypse War), which I then got signed by all the rest of the 2000AD staff writers and artists of the time. The include John Wagner, Brian Bolland, Alan Moore, Carlos Ezquerra, and Dave Gibbons to name but a few.

But it still pisses me off to this day that I had to spend all that cash though!
(Herr Doktor Lemminge Is bored, so cheer me up!, Mon 18 Aug 2008, 12:20, 1 reply)

Easy Cum...Easy Go?

I only ever had 3 Star Wars Figures…and I inherited them…but they were ‘limited edition’ and therefore very special to me.

They were hand-crafted by Italian master sculptors and were made from core materials extracted from the Nakhlite found in Antarctica that proved the existence of micro-biotic life on Mars.

Each one was encased in purest Rhodium, and when switched on had advanced Artificial Intelligence, animatronic technology, fully functional weaponry and the real ability to use the Force.

My favourite was ‘Ley-Mi Broco’ – The rarest of all Star Wars Characters. He was based on the bisexual love interest from George Lucas’ very first teenage wet dream. Ley-Mi actually features for 0.42 seconds in the Muppets’ Star Wars Special; where he can be spotted behind Fozzie Bear, tenderly fondling a Neomosian goat-pig.

Amongst his list of included accessories was an actual No.1 Edition of 2000AD, hand drawn and signed by José Ferrer on the back of a penny black stamp, shrunk to Star Wars figure size using radioactive miniaturisation techniques outlawed after the famous 'Wilton Midget' incident of the 1950s.

Most impressive was Ley-Mi’s lengthy detachable phallus that only worked in conjunction with my one-of-a-kind Princess Leia ‘Bondage-meat’ figure. She came equipped with capacious vaginal cavity, bendable knee-joints for ‘backdoor battle-damage’ and some genuine pubic hair from Carrie Fisher herself (trimmed without her knowledge during her spacked out, cocaine fuelled ‘Postcards From The Edge’ years).

The Droid I had was ‘4Q2B-atch’, who was a cheeky chappie made from melted down signed vinyl prints of ‘Dark Side of the Moon’. He was capable of showing a holographic projection explaining the meaning of life, the location of Mapungubwe (the lost city of gold), but more importantly detailing the exact whereabouts of the lay-by in Slough where my pr0n collection was stashed.

Most of my lonely childhood was spent blissfully bashing my beef bazooka as I watched Ley-Mi go to work on Leia, teaching her a lesson she sorely needed on her wobble-able right buttock with his rolled up copy of 2000AD…as 4Q2B-atch filmed the glorius, intergalactic goings-on with fervent glee…

So as you can no doubt imagine, these toys were pretty important to me.

However, not even 5 minutes after I had left home for technical college, my mum drugged the Dobermans, bribed the guards with offers of sex, swapped the tapes on the high-tech, night-vision infra-red surveillance cameras, and did a ‘Catherine-Zeta-Jones-esque’ gymnastic number to avoid the complex laser-guided security system; before lifting my collection from its sensor pad, cunningly swapping it with a Tesco Value box of dumpling mix to counter the weight, then twatting the lot into the nearest council skip.

My collection was worth the equivalent of the Japanese National Debt, and upon discovering what she had done I was quite understandably upset…but my mum simply insisted that she 'didn't realise' it meant that much to me because I 'didn’t play with it anymore’, and besides...she ‘needed the loft-space’.

It is only now, as this QOTW has forced me to recall this repressed memory from all those years ago, that I finally understand…and actually… she did have a point...

I mean, they were only toys after all.
( Pooflake braces for an onslaught..., Mon 18 Aug 2008, 11:34, 11 replies)

Beano!
Miss Spanky Pants just reminded me of my Beano collection.

When we were still living in America, when I was about 4 or 5, I'd occasionally get copies of the Beano posted over to me by my godmother.

One day, my babysitter (also English, one of my father's grad students) said he had a few copies of the Beano from ages ago, and promised to get his mother to send them to me.

Well, the day arrives, and this HUGE parcel arrives for me. When he said he had a few, he actually meant he had every single copy published between 1981 and 1986, or something.

When the time came for us all to move back to the UK, the Beanos came with me. I read them quite a lot, leaving them scattered over my bedroom floor. Well, that annoyed my mother. She hated mess. The vast majority of the times she boxed my ears was because of my room being untidy. One day, she snapped because I'd gone to school leaving my room a tip. So she got all my copies of the Beano and took them to the recycling. I was really upset, because the older copies were so much better than the ones they were printing by that point.

They'd have been worth absolutely bugger all I think, but it still upset me for at least a week.
(The Empress it seems you CAN polish a turd!, Mon 18 Aug 2008, 11:23, 2 replies)

Not really thrown out...
But I was on the Wide Awake Club when I was 11. My then baby brother and sister decided to take felt tip pens to my WAC PAC.

cunts.
( Kung_Fu_Russ ran out of amusing signatures on, Mon 18 Aug 2008, 10:44, 1 reply)

On the flipside of the coin
I went to the tip on the weekend, such is the exciting life I lead, to dump some DIY detritus as I was walking back to my car I pass a man carrying a box full of children's books. I have a 3year old so I stopped him and asked if he was really going to chuck it, he said yes, so I just took the box off him with a cheery thank you.

Loads of books all in top condition, all my daughters age and slightly above I am saved from reading "the snail & the whale" for a bit anyway

I just don't get why you'd get in the car to dump a box of books into landfill when you could just as easily drop them into a charity shop
(sittingduck Attention seeking, bullshitting fuck-knuckle, Mon 18 Aug 2008, 10:41, 1 reply)

Thanks, pops
I lost something I never had but dearly wanted.

In the 1970s a British comic (it might have been Whizzer And Chips or Cheeky, I cannae mind), announced that an upcoming issue would come out with a free joke book. Oh, the joy this brought to the young Calgacus, a connoisseur or whichever publication it was.

The foreknowledge of the arrival of this encyclopedia of wit had me quivering with excitement. I experienced sensations of excited longing and desire that I would not feel again until puberty. Seriously, this joke book was Christmas in June.

Then, after what felt like years of frenzied anticipation, the Saturday of the great free comic book arrived. Oh the glee, oh the joy.

And then I committed some very minor boyhood indiscretion and my father stopped my pocket money for a week. No cash = no comic = utter despair,

We're not talking arson, murder, theft or swearing here, the indiscretion was on a par with answering back or not sitting still.

To say pater and I are not close is an understatement. We haven't talked in quarter of a century. (Not because of the comic thing, well, not just because of it.)
( calgacus Non sum qualis eram bonae sub regno Cynarae, Mon 18 Aug 2008, 10:24, Reply)

Computer genius
It doesn't quite fit the bill, but the worst thing my mum has ever thrown out was my first fanzine webpage. After countless hours of writing up HTML in notepad (this was in the mid-ninties), scanning photographs and copying down taped interviews with bands, my mum found this option called 'export'. She was cleaning up the desktop and decided to put everything into this new, shiny folder she had created, and god knows why she thought that 'export' would put it in there. Possibly she'd expected an option to actually export it somewhere. Turns out, it would end up on the connected computer or laptop... If there had been one. For my next webpage, I made a backup copy, on a floppy disk. Oh the memories :D
( vanja, Mon 18 Aug 2008, 9:57, Reply)

"It's up for grabs now!" (at the chazza shop)
At the wife's behest - "it's not like you ever watch them or need them" - three weeks ago I donated a load of old VHS tapes to the chazza shop (they were collecting in our village, so we loaded up the bag and left it out for them).

To be fair, I hadn't watched a video for at least five years, and the VHS recorder has long been replaced by a digital recorder.

The following week, I got a call from a friend who is involved with an Arsenal FC fanzine, asking me if I can write a series for them this season - basically a retrospective of the 1988/89 season, which culminated in Arsenal winning the league at Anfield.

Now, the brain cells aren't as numerous as they once were, and the old memory isn't so hot. Plus, this all took place 20 years ago meaning that, the final game apart, the season's not that well documented online.

Hmmm. This might be a bit more of a challenge than I thought when agreed to write the articles.

But never mind, I'll just dust down the Arsenal FC Official Video 1988/89, which has all the goals from all the matches, and watch it a couple of times to refresh my memory before I start my first article.

Oh b*gg*r.

If anyone sees said video in their local British Heart Foundation shop, could they please send it back to me?
(Capo, Mon 18 Aug 2008, 9:48, 2 replies)

SO so many things.. :-(
My mum is a great woman.. but she was always chucking away stuff I loved..

There was the little red table and chairs set me and my sister had had FOREVER they tried to sell at a car boot sale that I hid back in the boot (and that was fairly recently too!!) and my first ride on car thing, that was a little dump truck that was front heavy and used to fire me off all the time.

Once my mum tried to throw out a tartan lumberjack type shirt. Admitted looking back now its hideous and made me look like a boy but I LOVED that shirt (f*ck knows why! It had holes in it and was big and baggy on me and smelled funny!) I found it in the bin and took it out and washed it!! It did go a while later, mum obviously got wise and waited till I was away!

But the worst thing my mum threw out was a collection of mint condition Beano comics from the early days, really old ones I'd happened across in the back of a primary school cupboard years ago; I'd been storing in the attic. She called me and said she'd chucked a box of my stuff and I could have cried cos those comics were already worth a fair bit.. they'd have been worth a fortune eventually! Gutted..

Also before I forget, the funniest one was my younger sister...

When my mum was due to have our youngest sister me and my younger sister were sent on holiday with my Aunt and Uncle. My sis used to have a security blanket and it was a bit gross but she'd go spare if it was taken from her, and that was just when it was washed. My uncle took it off her on the second night and she was hysterical, she remained that way until my dad came and got us.

To this day I believe my uncle still uses that thing as an oil rag, my sister adopted a furry stuffed toy instead...

Length.. years of loss and a good solid eight hours of complete hysteria from my little sis...!
(miss.spanky.pants .. is looking for a handsome prince..., Mon 18 Aug 2008, 1:33, Reply)

I can't put my fist in your childhood dreams
As a tyke, I had lots of toys. You name it, I had it. Teenage Mutant Hero Turtles. Transformers. Hundreds of MUSCLE men. I would play with them all the time with my brother (two years older than me, he is) and these're some of my happiest memories.

Then I get into videogames, so I sold my big bag of toys to a second-hand shop for £2 so I could by the latest Dizzy tape for my Amstrad CPC 464 (ah, those were the days...). TWO FRICKIN' POUNDS!

I always wince when I think about it. What a loss :(

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(mmmkay, Mon 18 Aug 2008, 1:23, 2 replies)