Spudmatic!

Talking of toys, there was a mention in the magazine about spud guns.

I used to have one of these Spudmatic guns. It was a cap gun - you could cock the hammer and it would happily bang caps and you could use it as a water pistol by placing the red cap over the barrel. This, sadly, never seemed to work very well on my example but it didn't matter too much because the whole point of a spud gun is to fire little chunks of potato at your mates, family, or whatever!

You jammed the gun barrel first into a potato and then snapped off sideways so that the barrel became plugged with a chunk of potato. Pulling the trigger pulled the front part of the barrel backwards, building up air pressure inside until the piece of potato shot out.

Wonderful! Sticking ears and eyes and noses on potatoes was for wimps! I made a shoulder holster for my Spudmatic out of a leather comb case and some strips of polythene cut from a carrier bag. It went to school with me, under my blazer and woe betide playground bullies who tried it on with me. PING! A little potato pellet would get them right between the eyes!

"Who are you?" girls would say admiringly.
"Burke..." I'd say, in my best Sean Connery accent, "John Burke..."
"Why do you keep a shrivelled potato in your pocket?"

Girls... They just don't enter into the spirit of the thing do they?

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