Thunder-punch He Man's Ebay selling tips

World of Crap has a Facebook page!

Like my page please minions, and help me take over the world with my weird food memories and constant posts about Geoffrey Hayes. I'm also thinking of doing videos soon, maybe when I can be bothered to brush my hair.

www.facebook.com/jennysworldofcrap

In the meantime, here is a picture of a Fisher Price tape recorder

A poem about Geoffrey Hayes

It was Geoffrey's birthday last month, so I consider this a belated tribute. It is a masterpiece that took me up to four minutes to write. It is completely serious and not a joke or anything, and if you laugh at it then you just can't see all the symbolism, or something.

Oh Geoff

If you were a chef

You wouldn’t have time to be on Rainbow

And you wouldn’t be able to wear hotpants

Or a dress, sometimes

Oh Geoff

If you were a chef

You’d have to do cooking all the time

And not wear boxes on your head like a robot

Oh Geoffrey

I’m glad you’re not a chef-rey

Because then you wouldn’t be in Rainbow

And I might not have a blog

Although that might not be a bad thing, because my blog’s a bit rubbish.

Home on the range (and the living room floor) - how to build a den

We all have a nesting instinct. Our homes are our castles, which is why it is legal in some countries to shoot an intruder/Avon lady/Jehovah’s Witness.

Everyone needs a place to call their own, but what do you do when you're too young to earn a living and buy a homestead? You build your own!

The good thing about dens is they're not subject to planning regulations and council tax. They're normally only subject to whether or not your mum needs the dining table that day.

Build a den, and you can claim your own private sanctuary - a place where you can meditate, have some quiet time, and play with your Barbies in peace.

Materials -

You can make a den out of almost anything, although there are a few preferred building materials. These include sheets, boxes, and furniture, or for maximum points, a combination of the three.

Use your imagination – you're ideally going for a roof, two side walls and a back wall. For this purpose, a sheet or two draped over a table/two chairs is perfect. If possible you want a front wall with some kind of opening for a door. But this is extremely difficult and should only be attempted by experienced den architects. However, if you're using the sheet method, there's nothing to stop you using another sheet for the front wall, and just climbing underneath it when you want to get in and out. Do not attempt to cut a door in your mum’s sheet – she will not thank you.

Boxes are a good second choice, but they must be huge boxes – think fridge-freezer delivery boxes. Alternatively you can cut boxes up and tape them together to make one large box, if you have really good scissors/an infinitely patient parent.

It's easier to create a working door with the box method, as you can just cut one in. however, be sure to make the door big enough, as getting stuck in it will just result in the whole thing falling over.

Outdoor dens -

Building a den outdoors becomes more common as you get older, although to some people it is standard practise. Popular locations for outdoor dens include -

- in your shed/garage

- in a hole in a big hedgerow (they always seem to do this in books, but I’ve never seen anyone do it in real life, ever)

- your rich friend's wendy house (inviting your rich friend along is optional)

Decorating your den -

Even if you are a boy, you still have to pay some attention to the inside of your den. This is because if you invite your friends round to sit in what is essentially a cardboard box, they will think you're a bit strange.

If space will allow, add some seating. Unless you already have carpet underneath you, flooring is a must (especially if your den is built on grass, as this is a surefire way to get ants in your pants). If you want your den to be homey, cut out a nice window (do NOT do this with your mum's sheets). Lastly, if your den is really big, add a table, around which you will hold all your important meetings.

Things to do in a den -

Obviously, the main purpose of a den is to hold your club's secret meetings. All members of your club must have a password to enter. This is the law.

The first rule of your den – you do not talk about your den.

In the meetings you will discuss important topics such as how to raise money for your club (ideas like “sell my dad's car” and “hold a bring and buy sale for charity – all proceeds go to the club” - both of which are equally unlikely to work).

Keeping intruders out -

This is by far the most important aspect of a den, and as such must be treated seriously. Guns, cannons and boiling oil are illegal when you're a child, which is a shame. Instead you must rely on the following tactics -

- tape a note to your door that reads “KEEP OUT” No one allowed without the password!!!!”

That's about it.

If you're really lucky, your mum will let you have tea in your den, which means one of two things. Either she will bring you and your friends sandwiches and pop to devour at your leisure, or you must eat whatever you can forage, which is usually Claire's half eaten packet of Polos.

Home sweet home!

Um Bongo!

Look what's back!

I just bought this triple pack of bad boys from Asda, and they're delicious. They also still contain all the fruit mentioned in the Um Bongo song -

I just thought this was important and that I should share it with the world. Maybe next week they'll bring back Gino Ginelli ice cream!

Your lunch box - childhood currency and cool points

I really miss packed lunches. If I try to make a packed lunch for myself these days, it tastes rubbish. I suppose that's why Greggs does such goes business. It definitely isn't because people like the food there.

These days my lunch tends to be coffee and cigarettes, and doesn't require a lunch box. That's good, because lunch boxes too have begun to un-evolve. Now kids have 'lunch bags' – a terrible American invention that's absolutely no use in a fight. Or to stand on to reach stuff.

Nit picking aside, I guess I should be saying that it's what's on the inside that counts. And I guess it is. I don't really recall any lunchbox related bullying going on in our school, although I'm sure it must have gone on in some places.

There was, all in all, a lovely feeling of equality at our school. Packed lunch-ers and school dinner-ers would mix quite happily, breaking bread together around those gold metal water jugs.

So this won't be a dos and don'ts list for packing a lunch box (although my obvious judgemental nature might claw its way out of my soul).

Lunch box

Obviously, only if you were a packed lunch-er. This goes without saying, although I still feel the need to say it, in case you guys are stupid.

The cartoon or heartthrob of the day was the best thing to have on your lunch box, although there was a tomboyish attitude prevalent in our school which meant having a Take That lunch box might get you branded a 'girl'. Even if you were a girl, this was unacceptable.

For a good few years at primary school I had an ace Rainbow lunch box, and then I don't remember what I had so it must have been rubbish.

Sandwich

No exceptions. The main meal of the day for packed lunch-ers everywhere. Cut into halves or quarters, and wrapped in a food bag. Sometimes your sandwiches were wrapped in tin foil, but that was always gross for some reason.

My sandwich – peanut butter or Dairylea

What kids have today – pastrami on rye, with a side of lobster

Crisps

Big area for debate here, but generally crisps were the norm at our school. Nowadays, of course, kids are forced to have carrot sticks as a “treat”. The parents that pack carrot sticks in the “treat” area of the lunchbox are the same parents who take their kids to McDonalds and then make them have a fruit bag, when all they really want is a Super fun happy choco e-number sundae. These parents will, in later years, force their children to become self righteous busybodies, and ultimately to become Gillian McKeith, and no one wants that.

My crisps – Walkers, or Square crisps, or Frisps, or “Fish n Chips”

What kids have today – fucking carrot sticks.

Pudding

The hard line parents described above might actually give some leeway here – if you count leeway as 'allowing your child to have a strawberry yoghurt when all the other kids have Penguins and Blue Ribands'.

However, yoghurt of any kind will never come in for the same abuse as carrot sticks, on account of not being EVIL.

My pudding – a chocolate biscuit or a Munch Bunch 'Charlie Chocolate' yoghurt

What kids have today – a diet grapefruit or something

A brief aside – I realise something is missing from this post so far – the subject of 'swaps'. Swaps never really took place in our school, and certainly never with me. Personally, I always found the idea of eating food other children had handled repulsive, with their snot and their wee and their sticking their fingers where they didn't belong. Eew. I suspect all the other kids had the same form of OCD, and that's why no one really swapped at our school. It didn't occur to us that A) sandwiches were wrapped and only touched by parents, B) crisps were in bags, and C) puddings were (mostly) wrapped. We still didn't risk it – germs are everywhere.

Drink

In a Thermos flask that matched your lunchbox. Generally squash. Not pop, because the gas would make the top of your flask fly off/explode. A few exceptions -

Bringing a carton of juice or a Capri Sun

Getting water from the gold jug

That's it.

My drink – squash

What kids have today – vodka and coke (probably)

Some weirdos used to bring soup in their flasks. This is not acceptable but I will say this – have you ever tried messing with a kid holding a flask full of hot soup? Nope, because you don't.

Watching The Fly - a childhood ambition fulfilled

In THIS POST I talked a bit about how, as a small child, my parents wouldn’t let me rent The Fly, starring Jeff Goldblum, from the video shop. Instead, I had to rent some bullshit video about a grizzly bear. The bear fell down a hill or something. It might have been called The Bear, I’m not sure, I can’t even be bothered to look it up. If it was, then that was probably the reason my parents made me select it. ‘After all, Phil, flies, bears, what’s the difference? They’re both films about animals. And this one looks so much cuter’. ‘Okay Ann, I’m sure The Bear is just as exciting as The Fly’.

I’ve had ample opportunity to watch The Fly since then, but somehow I just never have. Just one of those things. Yesterday, though, I did. And it was brilliant.

Even though I loved the film, I have to reluctantly agree with my parents’ decision to stop me renting The Fly as a four year old. But I’ve also been wondering about the exact reason for their refusal. The more I’ve thought about it, the more items I’ve added to my list of potential reasons for them spoiling my fun. There are so many things in the film that would have been wrong for my four year old eyes to see, so I’ve decided to make a list of the most likely suspects. If you haven’t seen The Fly, I’ll warn you that there are major spoilers in this post. But I dare say that I’m probably the only one in the world who hasn’t seen The Fly, and now I have, so there. I will also say that my Word and Blogger today are conspiring against me, and no matter how hard I try I just cannot get the text to all line up, so it goes a bit wonky towards the end. But I am nothing if not unprofessional.

1. The sexy bits –

For a film about a man that gets fused with a fly, there’s a surprising amount of steamy sexing going on. First Jeff Goldblum’s nerdy but brilliant scientist does it with Geena Davis, then his brilliant but deranged and 30% fly self does it with some random hooker he picked up. Plus, there’s a hefty amount of side boob going on. My four year old self might have just thought that’s how flies eat or something, but it might also have forced my parents into having “the talk” with me. While watching The Fly.

2. The bit with the baboon –

The teleportation machine wasn’t always a raging success. Before Jeff Goldblum ‘successfully’ teleported himself, he was kind enough to give a baboon (let’s call him Mike) a shot at being a scientific pioneer. This didn’t really go according to plan, unless the plan was to turn Mike into a quivering pile of gristle. The four year old me seeing Mike pound a bloody limb against the glass door of the teleporter might have caused me to bring my chicken nuggets back up.

3.The bit with the arm wrestling –

Before our hero takes the previously mentioned random hooker home, he must first arm wrestle for her honour. By this stage, he is at least one third fly, and apparently flies are known for their super strong arms, or something. Anyway, our guy has super duper upper body strength, and during the arm wrestle he accidentally-on-purpose rips his opponent’s hand off. I suspect that I, impressionable child that I was, would have refrained from using my hands for anything ever again, in case they accidentally come off. I probably wouldn’t have realised that it was super fly strength that did it, I would probably have just thought that these things happen, so I should be more careful.

4. Geena Davis’ delivery room dream –

Not only would the whole ‘I’m pregnant with a half man/half fly’s baby’ thing have prompted me to ask all kinds of awkward questions, again, but the fact that she gives birth to a larva would have convinced me that all women gave birth to larvae, so I must have started out as a larva. Like I’ve said before, I was a stupid kid. I’d have probably checked every time I went to the toilet to see if any larvae had fallen out. You can never be too careful.

5. The end scene –

I’m a grown woman, and this scene reduced me to tears, embarrassingly. I felt myself welling up a bit when faced with Geena Davis’ anguish at having to shoot the man she loved, but what really tipped me over the edge was when Jeff Goldblum (or special effects pretending to be Jeff Goldblum) pointed the gun at his own head and asked for her to kill him. This would have probably made me cry even more as a four year old – I was an overly sensitive kid. I once dissolved in floods of tears over the Tom Jones song “Green green grass of home” (about a criminal waiting to be hanged), because it occurred to me that the guy might be innocent. Let me tell you, my parents have never let me live that one down.

I'd say that The Fly is one of the best films I've ever seen. But I do have to begrudgingly admit that maybe my parents were right when they made me rent that stupid bear video. Had they relented, I might not have grown up to be the productive, well adjusted individual I am.

3 spoiled bitches in UK adverts

Right now, there are loads of adverts here in the UK that piss me the hell off. All the stupid Match.com and E-harmony adverts that feature beige women talking about how they’re single. Let me tell you, I’m not surprised any of you are single. At all. The weird Confused.com advert that rips off Y.M.C.A., which makes me mute my TV every single time. Anything to do with Oak Furniture Land. Oh great, the bloody Confused.com advert is on my TV even as I write this.

But there are three adverts that really wind me up, not because they’re bad adverts, but because of the spoiled, whingeing, self-important heifers that feature in them. Every time, every single time, the women in these adverts make me want to throw all my pans at the TV. And I have five pans. Let’s see if I can get to the end of this post without combusting with rage.

Spoiled cow #1 - Trivago

This woman’s boyfriend is taking her on holiday to Barcelona. That’s nice of him isn’t it? Apparently not. Apparently he’s a prick who hates her because he dares to suggest hotel rooms that might be below her exacting standards. First she gets pissy because he might accidentally book a twin room rather than a double room. That’s sort of understandable, although I bet he really did want separate beds, because she snores and stinks of piss. But what really gets me is when, once he finds a double room, it’s still not good enough for Her Majesty because she wants something "more stylish”. What? Pardon? So your nice boyfriend is taking you on holiday, and you’re going to sit in the hotel room and moan that the wallpaper is the wrong colour? Do yourself a favour boyfriend, dump this bitch and take someone else to Barcelona. Someone like, I don’t know, Suzie Dent from Countdown. She seems nice. Anyway, how much time is his dumbass girlfriend planning to spend staring at the walls of the hotel room? I hope she ends up spending all her time doing just that. I hope she eats a bad paella, or gets a sunburnt arse, and has to lie there looking at her lovely beige walls while he’s out having fun with Senoritas. 

Spoiled cow #2 - M&Ms

This bitch isn’t ill, and she doesn’t appear to be pregnant. She’s just laying there on the sofa, like the lazy-assed skank she is, watching World’s Stupidest Boyfriends (which her boyfriend is starring in). The only effort she ever expends is craning her neck so her Stepford boyfriend can get sucked in by her puppy dog eyes routine. She gazes at him with her eyeballs, and says “I could really go for a snack.” No please, thank you, nothing. And, like a programmed manservant, he goes and has a fight with some M&Ms to obey her order. So you want a ‘snack’ do you? Why, been tiring yourself out laying there watching Sky Living?

When the manservant presents her with her ‘snack’, she just looks at him, as if to say “well, it’s not going to chew itself is it?” I hate her.

Spoiled cow #3 - Nescafe Azera

Here we have it, the last in a triple bill of women expecting the males they’ve acquired to run round like well trained dogs. This one’s lazier than the M&Ms woman, because she can’t even be bothered to get out of bed. Which I bet she’s pooed in because she’s so lazy.

This time, not only is there no please or thank you, there isn’t even a question. She just turns to her boyfriend/butler and says “Guess what I want.” I know what she wants, but unfortunately I don’t know where she is to be able to give her a slap.

She talks to him like Barbara Woodhouse would talk to an Alsatian. I wouldn’t have been surprised if she’d then started shouting “And fetch the paper, there’s a good boy! Good boy!”

She demands that the poor boyfriend goes out in the pouring rain to get her a cup of coffee. This is despite the fact that they have a kettle at home, not to mention she has a body with which to take herself out for coffee. But then, why should she go fetch her own coffee when Fido’s there to do it for her?

This advert’s one slightly redeeming feature is that Fido doesn’t actually go out to get coffee – he just makes some coffee in the kettle and lies about it. This is sort of ok, but what he really should have done was thrown her out of the window into the street and shouted “There, now you’re closer to the coffee shop than I am. While you’re out get me a Mars Bar, thanks!”

Wow, I guess I did make it to the end of the list without exploding. Well done me. I shall reward myself with a nice cup of coffee, WHICH I SHALL MAKE MYSELF, AND WHICH I SHALL NOT USE ANY OF MY FEMALE LEGS AND BOOBS TO GET.

Me attempting to do a handstand - a photo story

I've written quite a few posts about my inability to do anything that involved any physical skill whatsoever as a child. This post possibly sums up that ineptitude nicely, and you also get to laugh at my hair. As a child I could never do handstands, cartwheels of any type of stuff that involved being upside down/not being a moron. That didn't stop me trying; like a plucky little soldier I never gave up. And one time, my lovely parents decided to capture the experience for posterity. Let me guide you through my epic tale - "Some kid tries to do a handstand".

1. The journey begins

Look at the determination on my deluded little face. There I stand, rubbing my hands together with confident glee, safe in the knowledge that I'm definitely going to bloody do it this time, despite having failed the previous four thousand times.

2. The dramatic build up

Yay, I'm doing it! I'm actually doing it! I have up to one leg up in the air already! Nothing can defeat me this time! I am so glad my parents had the foresight to capture my moment of glory on film, I shall show this moment to my grandchildren! I'm so proud, I, I...

3. The conclusion

Oh wait, no. It ends by me falling on my face, as usual. My parents still took the photo. I'm surprised they managed this, since they were undoubtedly laughing so much at this point. And since they also changed angles, for no apparent reason. Look, I fell so hard on my face that I actually made the sand around me explode.

4. Epilogue

And - she's ok! Back to my plucky little self, probably about to attempt the whole bloody thing again. Or maybe I'll just go off and eat some prawns.

Pass The Parcel - like taking candy from kids

Who doesn't enjoy winning free stuff? Not I, even if it's only a plastic whistle shaped like a football. The winning is made even better when you have beat all the other children to claim the coveted reward.

There are two games that are guaranteed to bring out any child's latent competitive streak, for better or worse – Musical Chairs, and Pass the Parcel. I was never massively good at Musical Chairs, being neither too athletic nor handy with my fists, so sod Musical Chairs. But since Pass the Parcel requires no skill at all, and is little more than a game of chance, I was pretty good at it.

(Disclaimer - none of these children are me. I was never clever enough to be a scout.)

Winning at Pass the Parcel depended on two things. Firstly, on whether or not it's your party, and therefore your parent controlling the music. Secondly, on whether you got the parcel at just the right time to be able to slow down to not passing it at all, or to be able to snatch it from the child next to you at the right moment. Either move generally sets off a reaction like this -

It's also wise to time these moves, waiting until a reasonable number of layers of wrapping paper have been removed. If you perform the ‘too slow’ or the ‘too fast’ move more than a couple of times in each game, people will complain and you might end up being 'out' - the ultimate dishonour. To avoid this, use your moves sparingly. Please see below for recommended number of layers.

Recommended number of layers.

Of course, the above moves can only be executed if the parent in charge of the music has decided to be scrupulously fair and have their back to the group, thus avoiding the temptation to just let their child win. If the parent insists on watching you all like a hawk, never mind – at least you still have your party bag, which is often better than a crappy whistle. After all, whistles aren’t full of cake.

4 toys I always wanted but never owned

I’m continuing on with the nostalgia kick today, and looking back at how utterly spoiled I was as a child. I found a load of old photos starring me on various Christmas days, and in every one there I stood, with my bizarre child’s mullet, surrounded by various tributes from ‘Santa’.

Yet despite all this, there are a few toys that slipped through the net. And wouldn’t you know it, it’s these toys that have been etched into my memory the most firmly. Of course, as an adult with money and stuff, I could just buy them for myself now. But this is stupid for two reasons. One – it’s not the same unless you tear wrapping paper off it in a screaming, mullet haired frenzy. Two – shut up.

1. Tomy Tutor Play Computer

I used to resort to things like mugging other children to try and get this. Once we stayed in a hotel in Wales, and the son of the owner had a Tutor Computer. I demanded to have it, and tried to smuggle it out of the hotel. Who cared if I then had to leave my parents and go on the run? Fuck that, I had a real computer!

Obviously that plan didn’t work, and it wasn’t a real computer anyway. It was just a series of pictures you could flip round by pressing buttons. But to my four year old mind, it was the fucking Enigma Machine. Possibly the reason I never got this was that by the time I was begging my parents for it, they thought I was too old to be learning words like ‘cow’ and ‘plane’ in a fun way. Oh I’m sorry, I shall just take my four year old self off to recite some Socrates from memory then.

2. Baby changing unit (any brand)

My rich friend, who had every fucking toy ever, had one of these. Mind you, she also had bright orange eyebrows, so I win. I shared a room with my older sister around the time I wanted one of these, so I think there just wasn’t room for a full doll changing unit. Never mind, I improvised – I put my smallest baby doll in an empty Ferrero Rochers box, and let me tell you, that was just as ace.

3. Petite Typewriter

I remember exactly why I wanted one of these. At the time I used to read loads of Peanuts books, and I was always captivated by the strips where Snoopy would sit on the roof of his kennel, writing the first page of his great novel (“It was a dark and stormy night…”). I guess even back then I wanted to be able to write utter crap that no one in particular would read. As such, what I wanted more than anything was a proper, grown up looking typewriter of my very own. I would have loved that typewriter, I would have cherished it, I would have written about three sentences on it before I made a mistake and decided the whole idea was stupid, actually. Maybe my parents were sensible.

4. She-Ra Crystal Castle

This was the big one, the one I always dreamed of owning, throughout all my career as a child. It stood in pride of place in our local toyshop, priced at about £30. Quite a lot of money back then for what was essentially a lump of pink plastic. But I did have all the She-Ra figures, and it was my responsibility to make sure they weren’t homeless. I failed them in this, and they had to spend their lives living in makeshift hostels built from boxes and toilet roll tubes. It was a squalid life, full of disease and violence, and eventually some of the dolls turned to drugs and petty crime. Not She-Ra though – she got adopted by the Eternia royal family, so she turned out ok.

The Packard Bell/Windows 95 software bundle - hang on to your hats, it's a wild ride!

Since I wrote THIS post, I find myself becoming a bit obsessed with my old Packard Bell computer; more specifically, the software bundle it came with. So I did a bit of digging, and I think I have enough memories to write a post, with a bit of help from Google.

Since my mind is now so old and flea bitten, I’ll probably miss out huge pieces of these games, like how to actually play them. Just try and humour me – I’m doing the best I can.

As I mentioned in the earlier post, I spent a huge amount of time as a teenager dicking about with the CD-Roms that came free with our computer. This was because I was a bit weird and didn’t have stuff like friends or a life. We had roughly a dozen free CDs - some of them were shit and uninteresting to me, like Elle 2000 Recipes and Telepower Pro, but some of them became my very best friends. Admittedly, I think these games were mostly for five year olds, but when you’re a sad lonely 13 year old and you have no money, car or boyfriend, you must improvise in order to entertain yourself.

Let me take you through the glorious world of software from the mid-90s that probably no one would have bought, so they had to give it away for free. I bet you can’t wait to get started.

1. Batman Cartoon Maker -

This was weird, and I never really got the hang of using it properly, so all my cartoons were odd, disjointed affairs with tinny, distorted voiceovers and about a million Batmans (Batmen?) on the screen all at once. The workings of it were pretty similar to lots of animation games out there – you create your scene, then pick a character, and draw a line for them to follow. The idea is that your characters walk or run around, going from scene to scene, and some kind of story happens –

You could also add speech bubbles that would contain text, if you wanted your characters to talk to each other, and not just stand there. But also – and this was the really exciting bit – if you had your own microphone, you could add your own voiceovers!

Now that I think back, I did actually have one friend at the time. She’d come over to my house and we’d mess about with Batman, making incredibly rude, sweary cartoons. I think one of them was just a hundred Batmans (Batmen?) filling the screen, all shouting “bastard!” and “fuck!” Those were the days.

2. Casper Brainy Book

I always felt so sorry for Casper. He was just a little boy who wanted some friends. Not only did he have to put up with everyone running from him in horror, he also had to put up with his three gigantic bastard uncles, who these days would be locked up in ghost prison for the way they treated him. I don’t know what ghost prison is exactly, but it’s probably something like this

This was an interactive story book starring – yep, you guessed it – Casper the friendly ghost. I think it was pretty much just the plot of the movie, only in cartoon form. Embedded within the story were side games; I can’t remember if you had to win at them to continue with the story, but judging by my skill with computer games, it’s probably safe to say you didn’t.

Here is one of the mini games – I think the general idea was that the letters fell down, and you had to make words with them. Also you got burned with chillies or something. We both know I’ve only really picked this screenshot because it has the word ‘ass’ in it.

3. Sammy's Science House/Trudy's Time and Place House

These were perfect for my mental age at the time – that is to say they were aimed at ages 3 – 7. Sammy was a snake/worm thing who lived in a house full of science -

While Trudy was a crocodile in a frightening pink dress who lived in a house full of geography and time –

I don’t remember too much about every game, but there are a few I remember messing about with out of sheer boredom. Firstly, over at Sammy’s, there was a game where you had to assemble things like ships and helicopters that had been split into three parts. If you got it right (and let’s face it, you did), then a bee would come and ride on whatever you’d just built. Anyone who's played Richard Scarry's Busytown will be familiar with this concept. 

Over at Trudy’s there was a game where you played as an ant, and you moved around a map trying to find jellybeans –

I always found every single jellybean, and I felt so accomplished.

4. Thinkin' Things 2

This was the previously mentioned “pre-school collection of weird interactive games” from my last computer post. Normally, I hate to use such clichés as “it’s like X on acid”, but this software is like being on acid, while being on more acid. It certainly did make me start 'thinkin’ things'.

First up was a bizarre art/animation studio, where you could control the direction of some kind of worm made of dots. You could change the size, shape and colour of the dots, but essentially it was just a worm guiding game.

Stuck on where to make your worm go? Never fear, there is plenty of help at hand with the ‘ideas’ bank. Simply click the ‘ideas’ button so see a weird montage of assorted worms in assorted scenarios. Looking back, some of the ideas were actually quite groovy. For example, you could draw a slalom and have your worm ski down it. Or you could have your worm as water dripping from a tap –

I never really noticed before, but it looks like the artist spent about eight seconds drawing that sink in MS Paint.

Accompanying every clip was a different piece of music, ranging from cheery doo-wop sung by electronic voices, to sad pan pipe music that could be used in a Princess Diana memorial video.

Another ‘game’ was this –

Some type of bird playing a xylophone. Or should I say, you are the bird playing the xylophone. Of course, if you were tone deaf, there was always another trusty ‘ideas’ button, which would play well known nursery rhymes for you. Or, depending on the instrument, it would play terrifying, unholy and wrong things, like this –

Creepyness aside, this set up was always great fun-

Well, that’s the last of the tat for this post. I might write more as I dredge up more memories of old software. Or I might spend my time investigating my ‘Price-Drop TV are trying to kill me’ theory.