A Nostalgic Look at Toys.

 A little lad in a toy pedal car is the prompt picture from this week's Sepia Saturday.  Cue for me to take a nostalgic look back at toys  in my life. 

  

My cousin's little son, learning to drive at an early age!  My brother had a very similar pedal car - but no photographs was ever taken.  

  

Not driving a car but a tractor.We live in a rural area and from an early  age, granddaughter loved seeing tractors out and about in our village.

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Funnily enough I cannot remember having any favourite soft toys, though presumably the one I am clutching in this studio photo must have been high on the list. 

Here I am, aged around two,  holdimg a soft ball, which I think is one my mother probably made.  She enjoyed making such balls from felt and embroidering the sections in contrasting colours with numbers, or motifs  for sale at village fetes etc.  Today the picture of my father smoking a cigarette close by me, would   no doubt,  be distinctly frowned upon!  

 I was a "dolly girl" -  I loved my dolls, which, as my mother was a dressmaker, were the smartest on the street.  With my best friend, Carol, we would wheel  our prams up and down  and put the dolls in their cot (an old box), with a crocheted blanket and lace trimmed pillow and quilt cover, again  courtesy of my mother, or set up the doll's tea set for a tea party.

My dolls were not particularly sophisticated, usually a rag doll that my mother made, though I had one that said "Mama" if you pressed it in the right place. My mother made rag dolls, but my very special doll she made me in 1953 for Queen Elizabeth’s Coronation, with a long fur trimmed purple velvet train, and embroidered, beaded dress.  I so wish now I had kept it as a family heirloom.   

                                           

I had a "Last Doll" for my 11th birthday, which seems in today's lifestyle, really old for a doll. The inspiration came from the book "Sarah Crewe or the little Princess", by Frances Hodgson-Burnett, where Sarah was given a grand doll with an extensive wardrobe on her 11th birthday.  I saw the book serialised on television and decided that would mark the end of my "dolly" era - it didn't really,  as I went on to collect costume dolls.

As for other toys, I  remember being  given (from the TV series) a Muffin the Mule and a Sooty puppet and these formed a major part of the "make believe" games we played.    We got a new jigsaw every Christmas.  The one I best remember was of a winter scene of skaters at the White Horse Inn, near Salzburg in Austria - 45 years later I actually visited the inn on holiday.    Games were popular such as dominoes, snakes and ladders, ludo, tiddlywinks and colouring books and join-the-dot books.
 

Puppets were a favourite pastime.  We would set up a makeshift theatre in the  front room with the clothes-horse and a sheet, and make simple glove puppets from felt and bits and pieces from my mother's trimming box.  I was usually the script-writer and my brother did the  sound effects, with  my father the hero or villain role and my mother and aunt the audience.  

I loved getting in my Christmas stocking a pristine notebook to write in, a blank scrapbook to show off my collection of scraps and a new pencil case, with new pencils, rubbers and sharpener to take to school at the start of the fresh term.  The really classy one that everyone wanted was wooden where the top swivelled round to show the bottom compartment - the only drawback was it was heavy in your satchel.

 

 I enjoyed playing at shops, so a toy till , with play money  was an ideal choice.   We also played at libraries, so I was in seventh heaven to be given  a date stamp - and I went on to become a librarian!

                                  

Books remained one of my favourite presents for any time of year, with an Enid Blyton at the top of my list.  I loved school stories, particularly   the Chalet School series. 

   

  For my brother it was  meccano, marbles, conkers, his train set, Dinky cars and Airfix models.  Outside, he had his pedal car and football, whilst  I had my tricycle and skipping rope to practice  "crossovers" and "bumps".  I always wantgd  a rope with bright red handles. 

 

And not one needed a battery

Looking back, toys seem very simple compared with the range today's children have in their crowded toy boxes.   I have happy memories of what we did have.  

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Onto the next generation and my daughter's favourite toy -

 donkey, ridden later by her own daughter.

 

 

 

 

 

Daughter   was never a particularly "teddy" girl - panda was her favourite.   Here is Scottie dog, with two owls perched on top of him and alongside  two pandas, a  koala  bear present  from Australia and a  Brownie, knitted from a pattern in "Woman's Weekly" magazine - a great source of ideas for home-made toys for children. 

 

Around the age of 8, she  had a collection of Cindy dolls - the British version of Barbie, I think - with a lovely wardrobe of clothes again made by  my mother.  

My  little granddaughter showed not the slightest interest in dolls but  she too  struggles to find  a place in bed amongst the myriad of soft toys.

   

Christmas Day - but there is as much fun in the box as with the presents! 

 

And if you get bored inside there is always pleasure outside. 

 

Kicking the leaves in autumn  

Helping Daddy cut the grass.

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Or helping  Daddy with the logs

 

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With  images courtesy of pixabay.com   

 Sepia Saturday gives bloggers an opportunity to share 
their family history and memories through photographs.

 

  

 

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