.... may not need "stinking badges" but I do. So my new
collection continues to grow apace. By hoodwinking Brian into believing I was popping out from the office last sunday in order to pick him up another packet of chocolate digestives, and telling Tamsin we were right out of the herbal potion she laughingly calls "tea" then I bought myself an hour to run around another antiques fair. This is the result.

Let's start with the one I know nothing about. "pop" minerals adventure club. presumably it's from the 50's and aimed at kids who like adventures you can undertake with a belly full of dandelion and burdock sloshing around inside you.

The cigarette badge is from the 1930's featuring the famous wills's woodbine illustrated man and dog. I particularly like the grammatically correct use of the ‘s in wills's. Sadly I have to report that the dog died of passive smoking. The news chronicle badge is interesting to me because frankly I'd never heard of that particular newspaper. Turns out it was formed in June 1930 and lasted until it was "absorbed" into the daily mail in 1960. The i-spy tribe was based on the i-spy books, some forty small volumes that sold in hundreds of thousands. Each book covered a subject such as i-spy cars, i-spy on the pavement, i-spy churches, i-spy on a train journey, etc. As children spotted objects such as coalhole covers, oak trees, semaphore signals, fire engines, whelks, and so on, they recorded the event in the relevant book, and gained points. Once the book was complete, it could be sent to big chief i-spy for a feather, an order of merit and presumably a badge.

Finally before Tamsin and Brian got really suspicious I snapped up this rose hip collectors' club badge.

if you're a certain age you will know all about rose hip syrup. if not may I direct you to this article and recipe suggestion by hugh fearnley-wittingstall from the guardian.

Oh, and I forgot to buy the biscuits..and the tea.