November 2004

Dad had promised to take me to a boot fair on Sunday morning. “You’ll have to be up early or all the good stuff will be gone,” he said. I was hoping to find some of the little McDonalds toys to complete my collections, but while we were eating breakfast it started to pour with rain

“I don’t think you’ll be going to a boot fair this morning,” Mum said, “But maybe you can find something else to do as you’re up so early.”

Dad went to find the local paper and started to search through the adverts. “There’s a jumble sale at the church hall…and the Scouts are having a bring and buy sale,” he said. I scowled. “Hey, wait a minute. What about this? There’s a toy fair in the big hall at the sports centre.”

When we pulled into the car park we could see a queue of people waiting to go in. “Looks like it’s pretty popular,” I said to dad. We waited in line to pay our 50p entry fee and as we walked into the hall I couldn’t believe my eyes. There were toys everywhere.

A huge train set wound its way round all the stalls and I could hear people saying things like “I haven’t seen one of those for years” and “Have you seen the price of that? I had one of those when I was a boy”.

Dad headed straight for a stall packed with old cars and wind-up toys made of tin. The paint was chipped off most of them and they looked really, really old. “These were the sort of toys they had when your grandparents were little,” dad said, “They didn’t have plastic in those days.”

On the next stall there was a beautiful display of dolls. Some of them were made of china and their faces looked all cracked. “You had to be really careful with those,” dad said, “If you dropped them they smashed into hundreds of pieces”.

Dad spotted a few toys he’d had when he was little and then he suddenly stopped. Leaning against the wall in the corner of the hall was a Chopper bike just like his old one. “Look at that,” he said, “It’s a real beauty.”

Dad started chatting to the man running the stall. They talked for ages about the old Chopper bikes and how the new ones just weren’t the same because the gearshift was on the handlebars and not the crossbar.

When we got home dad disappeared. A few minutes later he came back with a dusty old cardboard box. “That toy fair reminded me of this box I’d put up in the loft. Take a look inside Dot,” he said.

It was crammed full of dad’s old toys…Blue Peter albums, cars, a rather bald looking teddy bear and an Action Man with a patch over his eye. I sorted them all out and in the afternoon I set up my own stall and invited Genie round to see.

“That was much better than a boot fair,” I told dad, “I’m glad it rained after all!”

If you want to find out more about Brownies and Guides in your local area why not visit their excellent web site:

www.girlguiding.org.uk