T is for TOYS

OK, I know I said that I would move on to a new letter today but we had been talking in class yesterday about how life will have changed in the next fifty years and how some of the things we possess now, will probably be obsolete or non existent by then. And then I got thinking about Creamola Foam and Anglo bubble gum and a pupil this morning told me that her mum remembered a chocolate bar called Bar Six and before long I'm back nearly half a century, no longer thinking about sweets and drinks of my childhood and early teenage years but about the toys that kept me transfixed in my youth. Somewhere out of all of this reminiscing, I'm suddenly transported to a red 'Give a Show' projector that was lit by several large cylindrical batteries and came with about sixteen filmstrips each consisting of seven or so celluloid frames on a strip of cardboard that you could feed through the projector and shine on any wall. SO I had my own Yogi Bear, Popeye and Huckleberry Hound shows in the relative lack of privacy of my own kitchen where the wallpaper was flowered and made viewing interesting.

Then I'm in the land of Subbuteo table soccer, complete with green cloth pitch that never lies flat on any table, especially where it has been folded, but who cares , because nobody has a table big enough for the pitch and, anyway, it lies much better on the sitting room carpet, with a few books at each corner to hold it in place. A small, plastic fence and two floodlights at diagonally opposite corners and, once everyone is sitting in the dark, the match can begin. Except, that in a hurry to line up a shot, my arm has accidentally trod on my number seven, who now lies motionless (as he always has done) and will take no further part in the game but looks like he might be out for the whole season. In Subbuteo, there is no transfer window, in fact there isn't even a substitute and as last week my number five fell victim to a heavy tackle from my right knee as I made my way across the pitch, I am now reduced to eight outfield players and a goalie. It's at times like this that I am thankful to the Subbuteo staff for making Subbuteo Rugby, which is meant to resemble the real game but does so in the same way that Cola Bottles sweets are supposed to be like the real thing. Anyway, like it or not my number fifteen, in red and white hoops, temporarily gives up his career as the Wigan full back and becomes a right winger with the England eleven. Now that's what I call a whole new ball game!

But before half time I'm again whisked away to where two cars are racing around a figure eight track with a little slot holding each in place, until after too many laps the connections are burnt off and the box doesn't come with any spares, so it's a DIY job in the pits with a few bits of bent metal that keep the race going just long enough until I grow tired and move on again. This time I'm stopping outside an old wooden fort, complete with wind up drawbridge, portcullis and ramp and a collection of very evil, medieval-looking characters, some on horseback with lances and most wielding swords and shields. As time passes, they become evicted from their home to be replaced by a bunch of cavalry, taking refuge from the Apaches and a horde of other redskin tribes, until a proper plastic fort, though much smaller in scale, but with its own lookout tower, arrives and the upturned fort now becomes a box for everything else.

And then I'm off again, marvelling at the little jewelled headlights on a gold coloured Dinky Cortina with opening front doors and a Britains Land Rover pulling a horsebox with working tailgate, while steering a Ford tractor in circles around a mat as it pulls a yellow Britains baler that is dropping off bales every few inches, but with only twelve bales in my total collection, it looks like the crop will be light again this year, in fact exactly the same as it was last year and the year before. And then it's the turn of the Lego bricks to reappear, nothing fancy , you understand, in fact not used for building as they once were, but now replacing the Subbuteo men as they take total control of the football pitch, shooting into the netted goals that have been trampled on so many times, they only now stand with the aid of vast quantities of sellotape at every joint. And before long I'm off again, reliving my childhood in the Scalextric set of my sons, the combine harvester that one of them pushes around the carpet on his birthday, Action Man, the Lego trucks, Thomas the Tank Engine railway, Thunderbirds Island, a karaoke machine, My Little Puppies and Chocolate money and suddenly life doesn't seem so long after all.

Paul in his writings in Corinthians says, 'When I was a child, I talked like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I put childish ways behind me.' And while that literally is true as we grow up into adulthood, isn't it equally true that to grow more in our faith requires us to move beyond the former things that once satisfied and to seek out a deeper understanding of our God and His love for us. And that's why Paul in his letter to the Hebrews writes, 'Anyone who lives on milk, being still an infant, is not acquainted with the teaching about righteousness. But solid food is for the mature, who by constant use have trained themselves to distinguish good from evil.' We need to move on from that initial childhood state after we're born again and seek the meat that is only found deeper in His Word.

I'll never forget the toys of my childhood, but I don't need them now. And I'll never forget my understanding of God as a child, but I've moved on. It's time to grow up.