[Karan]: Our daughter, Mia (aged 7), thinks dinosaurs roamed the earth when I was at school, and once asked me what we used before cars were invented, when I was little. I kid you not. It's a bloody good job you can't sell kids on eBay, is all I can say! Cheeky little Minx.
I am keen to point out that I wasn't born in the Mesozoic, or any other prehistoric era for that matter, but I am a child of the 1970's; which is feeling more and more like the Mesozoic era the older I get. To make matters worse, I saw an online article recently celebrating all the "must have" toys of my bygone age, and Mia took pity on me as though I was neglected as a child or something. What I have tried to explain to Mia is that SIMON was our version of her Nintendo DS, and I was thrilled when I got it for Christmas in 1978: my parents may have lived to regret their repetitively noisy present choice, but I most certainly didn't.
Another of my all time greatest presents was the Stylophone. Now, as a mother of two rampant and rambunctious children, I can only assume that my parents were clinically insane to have given this to me in 1976 - what were they thinking?! Have you heard the God awful noise this contraption creates? For those of you denied the special privilege of having heard the special tunes created by a tame Stylophone, I can only describe it as sounding like a bag of cats being slammed against a wall. But I loved it as it allowed me to be "creative" - along with my banging wooden spoons on pots, pans and my brother!
My deepest regret, the one thing I always wanted but never got was the Raleigh Chopper bike, complete with a gear lever. My friend Simon Hodge had a red one and I coveted it unashamedly, but I was bought a girlie Flyer instead (no, I hadn't heard of one until then either) - a brown one at that - BROWN?! No nine year-old child asks for a brown bike, and you should see the groovy haircut I had at the time when photographed on said brown bike. No, I'm not showing you. The Raleigh Chopper was the epitome of a bike, it was the ultimate - you were somebody if you had a Chopper - everyone was your friend, mostly so they could get a ride on your bike. I didn't get any requests to ride my brown Flyer [sniff].
May I also take this opportunity to register my utter disgust that when the Chopper was relaunched a few years ago it was sans gear lever - how could they do that?! I know why they did that; on Health 'n' Safety grounds, but we children of the 70's survived, and there's nothing (much) wrong with us...I heard that!
My brother and I were not in the least bit neglected at Christmas, whatever Mia may think; we had great Christmas', where our parents went all out for a wonderful day, with great food, mountains of presents and our family around us. Our parents subjected themselves to hours, days, weeks and months of Stylophonic Greensleeves, because that's what parents do at Christmas, isn't it? It's in the children's charter that they are required, by law, to be noisy and rampant on Christmas Day, so that their parents are fraught and exhausted husks by nightfall.
Stand by your beds fellow parents, the day is almost upon us. This is where our own parents laugh at the memories of how we used to be, and delight in the deliciousness of karma, as our ears ring from the cacophony and our last nerve strains to hold out: I'm looking forward to it already. Good luck people and please remember me fondly.
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