I posted this many years ago but, with the festive (?) season approaching I'll repost an updated version as the memory of it all is still just as fresh and as seasonal.
I think that it was Lewis’s which provided me with one of my very earliest memories.
Christmas, either 1938 or 1939. I am lifted up off the floor in order to view at eye level a vista which seems to extend for ever: a wonderful display of ‘0’ Gauge Hornby Trains. An expanse of LMS red and GWR green, gleaming under the lights, all in movement, rattling and whirring past buildings and signals, clattering through tunnels and under bridges. A sight to gladden the heart of any small boy, and not a few grown up ones who are also crowding around the display. Somewhere else in the Toy Department, on the way out, there is another, smaller layout, a little silver, streamlined train whirring around and around on a small oval of track. Even to my wholly inexperienced eye, this is a poor effort compared with the Hornby. And after all, what in life could ever compare with Hornby?
I imagine the occasion was that of the purchase of my first train set, a red clockwork tank engine with two four-wheeled tinplate Pullman coaches and an oval of track. I have no recollection of the moment of its appearance but I loved it dearly (and still had what remained of it until three or four years ago when the pressures of a house move and the attractions of eBay became too much to resist). Not long afterwards, Hornby, Dinky Toys and everything else disappeared totally from Lewis’s and every other shop (including a couple of other toyshops which I recall from that time: Barnby’s in a city centre arcade and Benson’s - wasn’t it? - in Erdington High Street, both of which, together with Lewis's, seemed to me to be the nearest approach to heaven which Birmingham had to offer). All one could do was drool over images in copies of ‘Meccano Magazine’ and accept resignedly the message contained in the regular advert which said something like “Boys and girls, the Meccano factory is busy making other things and cannot at the moment produce your favourite toys. But be patient, we shall be back….after the war”.
I was lucky in that my Lewis’s set was supplemented one Christmas morning in around 1942 or 1943 by a wonderful cardboard box, brimming with second-hand track and rolling stock, its previous owner no doubt preoccupied at that moment with other matters, in North Africa or Burma or on the high seas. I often wondered who he was and what had happened to him. Gradually too I managed to get hold of my elder brother’s stuff after he himself had gone off to war. When I see the current values of such ancient bits and pieces, how I wish I had treated them all with greater care and reverence!
How wonderful Christmases were, through the eyes of a fortunate little boy protected by loving parents from a ghastly world.
Chris
...would not change my childhood for all the tea in china and because of my childhood all of my 4 children have never expected the earth as they understand the importance of family values...i am very lucky
