RAMBLING POST ALERT There now follows a sanity preservation announcement. Rather than get straight to the point and show photographs of my latest purchase I have elected to waffle on about my youth first, in an attempt to justify my own strange superstitions. Those of you who are reading this post due to an interest in Lesney Matchbox are advised to reduce the risk of falling asleep mid-read and skip straight to the picture.
I gamble on ebay all the time. Bad photography, brief descriptions and even 40 year old repaints - I get caught out by them all. I would put this down to being on a learning curve, but in all honesty it's probably a personality trait and for as long as there is £s in the PayPal and power going to the PC I'll be doing it. Until now though, I never, ever gamble on a Sunday.
The reasons for this are both long and boring, but I'll explain anyway
. Although currently residing on the cosmopolitan Isle of Benbecula in the Outer Hebrides I was born and raised on the more northerly Isle of Harris, and back when I was a lad, it was a fiercly religious community, and one of the cornerstones of this was Sabbath Observance. Nothing moved in Harris on a Sunday. No shops, no pubs, no buses, planes or ferries. No washing on the clothes line and no kids playing football in the street. Some of the guys I went to school with weren't allowed to watch TV or listen to the radio on Sunday, nor read a book that wasn't the Bible. Like most of my contemporaries when I hit my teenage years and started to observe the behaviour of those 'adults' who preached this stuff at us, and even better hear the stories of all the things they got up to when they were young, I dismissed it as a load of hypocritical bs, and just another method for the older generation to keep control over the young. It did however, leave the occasional little nagging doubt in the back of the mind on certain subjects, and at the age of 17 I experienced something to back up one of these little nagging doubts....
When I was 17 those from Harris who wished to study the final 2 years of Secondary School had to do so on the adjoining Isle of Lewis, boarding in a school hostel from Monday to Friday and returning home for the weekend. Being away from home at such an age was not so good for our grades, but was fantastic for learning about life in general, and amongst the delights we discovered was the bookies. Knowing nothing about horses I became a keen player of the football pools, and in particular one particular pools game where you attempted to predict the results of 2 games out of 5, in 5 different sections. Bookmakers being the clever folk they are, 4 of the sections were dead easy and the 5th was damn near impossible but I was not to be outdone. Pouring over league tables and form guides I would usually get 7 or 8 predictions right and believed it was just a matter of time before I hit the jackpot.
One weekend in particular I thought my time had come. I had selected my 10 games and handed over my 50p, from which I stood to make the grand total of £464 if I won. Now even in 1989 50p wasn't that much, but £464 was - I could have bought a HUGE carryout for that and still had change for a Ford Cortina or a Mk2 Escort. I finished work as usual at 6pm on Saturday - straight home to check the football results. Result 1 - I got it, Result 2 - I got it, and so on for 9 results, including the 2 from the 'difficult' section. One game left to go, an in form top of the table team at home to an out of form mid table team, foregone conclusion (or so I thought), but I'd have to wait as it was a Sunday kick off........
You can see where this is heading can't you (if you're still awake)? I spent the next 24 hours spending my £464 in my head, dreaming, planning and picturing it all. A car, a party, girls, it was all within reach. Sunday afternoon, I could barely contain myself, TV on, check the results
0-0 draw............................ I never gambled on Sunday again. Just in case. Till today.Am I right to have changed my ways - look at the picture and tell me your thoughts. Is it an ancient repaint, bad photography or extreme sunfade? Or is it a pale blue M7 tractor unit? I promise I'll let you know no matter what, I don't mind egg on my face if I'm wrong. We may have quite a wait though, the seller uses Hermes..........
- Blue M7a Tractor Maybe.jpg (39.63 KiB) Viewed 1082 times
