Phoenix's Future Plans

Discuss all the girls comics that have appeared over the years. Excellent titles like Bunty, Misty, Spellbound, Tammy and June, amongst many others, can all be remembered here.

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Phoenix
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Re: Phoenix's Future Plans

Post by Phoenix »

I agreed finally to sell my house yesterday afternoon to a couple who had already been round it twice in the last three weeks. They are even paying the full asking price. That's unheard of up here, given the reputed tightfistedness of the inhabitants of Merseyside, Lancashire, and the North West. I'll be going down to Cornwall shortly to source its replacement. Naturally I will have to come back here, albeit reluctantly, and hopefully not for too long, but my primary concern will be to get my books, comics, computer, furniture, records, tapes, CDs, DVDs, television, and hi-fi equipment transported to secure storage somewhere in the south of Cornwall. Not forgetting my filing cabinets and the desk where I am writing this post, of course. In some respects I will be sorry to leave the area because I have lived in Lancashire or Merseyside all my life, apart from my four years at Birmingham University, six months spent in Spain and Portugal as a university student, and getting on for two months in Germany (based in Frankfurt) as a professional singer, in a trio with a university friend and his sister, and a full year, more or less, in Madrid teaching English as a foreign language to Spanish university students and in private classes, during which Lynne, my then wife, worked as a very well paid secretary for a firm of lawyers who had a large number of clients in the USA who required their mail to be sent to them in English. So before I do leave definitively, I will make nostalgic visits to Lancaster, where I was born, Morecambe, Preston, Bolton, Chester, even Lincoln, and I may well drive up to a couple of favourite places in the Lake District because I know that once I have upped sticks I won't be coming back.

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Re: Phoenix's Future Plans

Post by Lew Stringer »

I hope all goes well, Derek! :cheers:
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Re: Phoenix's Future Plans

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Lew Stringer wrote:I hope all goes well, Derek! :cheers:
Thanks, Lew. Much appreciated. :xfingers: I'll report back as and when.

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Re: Phoenix's Future Plans

Post by comixminx »

Well done for getting the sale agreed! Hope the next steps are straightforward with no problems. And enjoy the 'farewell tour' too!
jintycomic.wordpress.com/ Excellent and weird stories from the past - with amazing art to boot.

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philcom55
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Re: Phoenix's Future Plans

Post by philcom55 »

The North's loss will surely be the South's gain. Good luck Derek! :)

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Re: Phoenix's Future Plans

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comixminx wrote:Well done for getting the sale agreed! Hope the next steps are straightforward with no problems. And enjoy the 'farewell tour' too!
philcom55 wrote:The North's loss will surely be the South's gain. Good luck Derek! :)
Thank you both for your kind thoughts and good wishes. I've written in some detail tonight on a different thread about my recent and future visits to Cornwall. Please don't ask me where I posted it, but with a little delving it should reveal itself.

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Re: Phoenix's Future Plans

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Rachel has just rung to tell me that when she took Marley, the family pooch, for his constitutional this morning, she decided to use a route that goes via the house I've put the offer in on, and apparently a surveyor was there. I asked her how she could possibly know that, and she said ''Well the word 'surveyor' was on the side of his van.'' :lol: Perhaps things might move more quickly than the Hayle estate agent led me to believe, so I'd better get reading that chess book I bought in Truro, and the one written by Hawkeye's son, which hasn't arrived yet, largely because I only bought it two days ago, and it is Easter. It's not as if I've got anybody here to play against anyway, so I can't therefore lose any more games. I do have a chess set though, made out of boxwood. The box has a sliding top on which it says 'Pieces En Buis', Lardy International, Made In France. I've just blown the dust off it, and the chessmen seemed to be waking up, no doubt excited at the prospect of breathing some fresh air for the first time in many a long year.

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Re: Phoenix's Future Plans

Post by Phoenix »

While going through stuff that has accumulated in my house over the 37 years I have been living here, in the hope that I can throw a lot away, I came across a comic that I had forgotten that I owned. See the front cover below. It originally belonged to Sharon Morgan, one of my late friend Colin's daughters. I know this because she filled in her details in the Question Time section on page 10. She was 13 at the time. It will be travelling with me to Hayle.
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Girl2firstcov.jpg

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Re: Phoenix's Future Plans

Post by Tammyfan »

Wow! The first issue of Girl 2! I wonder what the first stories were?

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Re: Phoenix's Future Plans

Post by Phoenix »

Well, wonder no longer, Briony. All you needed to do, as always, was to ask. In order of appearance, they were:-

Saxon And The Runaways [a 4-page photo story about a dog called Saxon]
Just Like A Fairy-Tale [a 1-page Special School Story in text form]
Little Darling [a 3-page drawn picture story : Yvonne Lamb is popular with pupils and teachers alike, but when her father gets a job as warden at a council reception centre for disturbed or deprived youngsters, and the family move to a small flat above the centre in Dock Street, she throws a bit of a tantrum. When she first goes into the centre, her comments about the problems some of the children have are crass and unfeeling. In a thought bubble she decides she had better make out that she adores "these brats or dear Miss Austin might suspect that I'd really like to throttle them". When one of the little girls, who is crying, tells her that her name is Julie, Yvonne tells her that she has a lovely name, but in the thought bubble says "Better not hold the beastly thing too close, in case I catch something." and so on and so forth.
House Of Echos [a 4-page complete photo story] under the general heading Stories From The Shadows.
Sparrow [a 3-page drawn story about an orphaned girl in London's East End during the war, being brought up by her grandfather. Tragedy strikes for her when he is killed by a bomb that falls directly onto the ARP (Air Raid Precaution) post where he was working.] Out of interest, my father was an ARP warden, and I've still got the metal helmet he had to wear.
Sally's Dance Of Sorrow [a 3-page photo story about a girl who has been a cripple since she was little more than a baby, but desperately wants to become a ballerina.]

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Re: Phoenix's Future Plans

Post by Tammyfan »

Thank you, Phoenix. And it was interesting to hear about your dad's helmet too! :)

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Re: Phoenix's Future Plans

Post by Phoenix »

I'm just waiting for Andrew, who is driving up from London with Aurora and Kelsey. They may be staying with me for a full week, so today I've been planning visits to local Play Zones. In return I'll teach them how to do the washing up, and how to hoover through. My Dyson is a fairly early model, quite heavy therefore, so as a consequence they might need to double up on that job. I spotted it a year or so back in a 'For Sale' column in my local paper for the princely sum of 25 pounds, and the seller even delivered it. If the little darlings get in any way awkward over the chores issue, the Play Zones plan will get knocked on the head. :lol:

Update Andrew has just rung up from London. He's not bringing the girls up tonight, but might make an early dart tomorrow. Then again he might not. Well I'm not doing the hoovering, and the dishes can pile up in the sink. When all is said and done, a plan is a plan and at some point tomorrow A and K will just have to find their place within it. :D Looking at the clock I see it's only just turned 10 so I can get a couple of hours reading in now. Currently on the go I have It Was Fun In The Fourth by Nancy Breary, and The School On North Barrule by Mabel Esther Allan. Unusually, the latter is set in the Isle Of Man. I'm also rereading some serials from my collection of The Hotspur, mainly from 1949. It's a good year too for the coloured illustrations on the front covers.

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Re: Phoenix's Future Plans

Post by Phoenix »

In the post above on the content of GIRL 2 the story title House Of Echos should read House Of Echoes. Sorry for the carelessness. I am tired so I'll get some sleep now, and roll on tomorrow when my two little dishwashing and hoovering playmates arrive. :D And their father of course! :)

Update:-Well here we are, 6.30 p.m. but no sign so far of Andrew and the girls. No contact either since a brief FaceTime chat this morning. I hope everything is all right.

Update 2:-They arrived at 7.30 with everyone in a great mood. Since then, it has been a riot of fun and laughter. Aurora has chosen this emoji. :grouphug:

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Re: Phoenix's Future Plans

Post by Phoenix »

I'm still here, with no moving date in sight, although my packing is pretty much complete. I had a phone call yesterday from my buyer, who told me that he has to move out of his house on May 11th. However, his solicitor hasn't had back all the results of the local authority searches so he is not yet in a position to discuss completion dates. So, as I will really need to be here in the immediate future, regrettably I will not be able to see Lois's ballet performances in Redruth on May 4th and 5th. I'll just have to make do with the official DVD.

On the plus side, I have decided that in addition to writing BUNTY AND HER SISTERS - The Great Stories, which I will start when I am settled in Hayle, as I have already promised so to do, I will be starting work on a companion volume, which will be called ADVENTURE AND HIS BROTHERS - The Great Stories. Where BUNTY has ten sisters, ADVENTURE only has six brothers, those being The HOTSPUR, The ROVER, The WIZARD, The SKIPPER, The VANGUARD and The RED ARROW. Before committing myself to crediting any of the heading-block artists I will be discussing the matter with Ray Moore. Nevertheless the above alone should keep me out of mischief, and will almost certainly be my final books.

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Re: Phoenix's Future Plans

Post by stevezodiac »

I may be moving in the near future. My sister and I will be combining our savings to buy a house in Kent. I don't drive but would need a garage for my collection once it is out of storage. It would be nice to have access to stuff I haven't seen for over twenty years.

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