Re: New Series; confessions of a retired SHOPKEEPER
Memories of Meccano
As a nine year old child my mother and father both worked full time to pay the rent and raise the three of us.
In the winter we tried to stay with friends or relatives after school , rather than go home in the cold & dark that was our house. Latch-key kids comes to mind.
In the summer we spent most of the holidays with my mother’s sister. I imagine my aunt felt rather put-upon, which she was.
My older brother was often there as well, I can’t remember where my sister went. Probably to one of my fathers 3 sisters.
I digress…….
Meccano……
At my aunt’s house my older brother and my cousin Alan spent hours indoors playing with Alan’s Meccano.
I was banished to the garden or nearby fields. Good grief nowadays we would have had social workers swooping down on
Us.
I wasn’t allowed to touch the Meccano , that was a big gripe on my part so I played endlessly with plasticine out in the garden, sniffling continuously from hay fever and constructing marvellous tableaux of my brother and cousin being subjected to various grisly endings. Being boiled in a huge cooking pot by cannibals was my favourite, with impaling a close second .
They called me Roberta, just to annoy me . I didn’t know it at the time but they were both Left handed and dyslexic (not recognised in the 1950s) and resented the fact that I was an advanced reader & had a good vocabulary & they didn’t..
Being thought ”Clever” was a handicap in those days of my life.
Fifty years later I often went out with my bro in law to antique fairs and one Sunday found us a TOY fair, old toys that is.
I espied a large display of Meccano and was disappointed to find it as under glass,
“Excuse me” I said “ I want to look more closely at your display, will you lift out a couple of trays please”
I suppose I was fingering the stuff for a good ten minutes before the stallholder realised something was amiss and he gently prised from my grasp the lovely Meccano pieces .
“Why thank you so much” I whispered “ I have been waiting over fifty years for this moment”.
Bro in law carefully led me away to a safe place looking over his shoulder and rolling his eyes at the stallholder.