Extracts from the Toy Box

Well from the least expected places there seems to be more girls like me from what I've seen so if you're reading this for the first time, welcome.
To business now, following on from that bit of a resorting of casual sporty clothes I found a few things from my childhood I want to share.

I loved the wombles at the time, really I did having pictures, records and having watched the Tv series and here's my Great Uncle Bulgaria which is a late 1990's version as I think I lost the original like you do.
Also I found a C70 battleship made by Lesney of England in 1976 which is in very good shape with just a few marks on the underside. I wasn't really into war related toys  much so I think someone bought it me (kinda forget who just now) so I just kinda took care of it putting it on a shelf so it wasn't played with unlike my dolls or thumbed like my annuals.

I gave it a bit of a dust before taking this picture

Am I too old to play with toys?

It's bin an eventful week over here obviously as those of you who have seen the news since Tuesday afternoon will have seen as we're all affected by it in differing ways.
Today though I'm going to be talking about something that you might be going through or maybe it happened to you in your childhood that I think matters.
Most of us grew up with our parent(s) or a very close relative rather than say being with foster parents, in care or adopted and generally they oversaw how we grew up including the things we did or played with.
Every so often there was this talk about  the toys we had like if we still wanted them, could a sibling or cousin have them and sometimes they might of said something like "You no longer need Millie, Jo. You're a big grown up girl now and you don't play with dolls."
If you were really unlucky, you'd come home from school and just find your toys decimated and probing why would produce the answer "You're too big for them now so I took them away"   which tended to be what happened with mine. That sucks!
Actually they could well be wrong especially as it applies to younger teens and a few months back a girl wrote in to the American Girl dolls magazine with the following question to which they wrote this reply: 

This is actually pretty interesting and I have little doubt influenced by children's welfare 'experts' who see so much pressure on acting more sophisticated, in many ways trying too hard at being grown up, being too serious for our own good.
Writing this as someone who is legally an adult I like what they have to say about maturity a  lot which is really what we mean by  being grown up which is more about how we treat others and how we  run our lives. In a word, being responsible which we can struggle with and I won't lie to my younger readers that I haven't had this  too but that is all it is.
Growing up and even being Grown Up doesn't mean we should not enjoy play or doing something creative, indeed only this week gone, someone who isn't an age regressor like me just came out and said they were going to make a Lego model and did, showing pictures to our circle of plain adult  friends. I said life's too short not to do the things we enjoy and they agreed.
If you feel like it, then don't be afraid to especially if you are feeling stressed.

I posted this in part as a response to the young people, mainly French around this age group who were injured in Wednesday's tragic terrorist  incident in London, Great Britain who are in need of our love and support right now.

Bonds

There's a couple of posts in mind before I next go off for a couple of days one of which may be a bit more technical but anyway here's the first.

Well, I can remember doing this, carefully wrapping each strand of wool around the circle almost in a trance before making the final turn followed by fastening off and cutting both at Grans and also in school as they were rather into art and crafts. 
Talking with some of you on Tuesday's chat kind of reminded me about these things and some ideas around how we learn about each others personality, interests and needs of which the act of playing together I feel is important be it a word based imagination in chat or face to face where we may play with things as that's where it happens.
Sharing is super important cos it makes what people have go further and it help to build bonds between people cos we share and play together so it's nice to bring something with you when we do get together so we all can do that.

Card Games

Hi folks!

How many of us can remember and for that matter still have playing cards from our pasts?

I sure have!

Some of my earliest memories of playing cards were of playing with Gran, who's sadly passed away several years back, such games as Snap during school break up or when my folks had to deal with groan up stuff and granny had to look after me.

I didn't have much to do with Grampa cos he was a bit crotchety and he couldn't understand my English.

At school recess we also payed card games but from the Top Trump range where from one themed pack you'd choose one subject and whoever got the most  of some criteria or other won the round and you'd begin again.

Actually when was having big problems my school friends took me to a store to buy some to help me re-intergrate with the group.

I stil have those cards and several others I've collected down the years such as these cards from the Fox TV series The Simpsons from around 1990 that came in a set of 88 cards.

The have cartoons on the front and questions on rear to ask your friends about all the characters in the show.

Enjoy.