You have a good memory Robert, Thor Heyerdal was the skipper wasn’t he?
bumped
Memories of Meccano
As a nine year old child my mother and father both worked full time to pay the rent and raise the three of us.
In the winter we tried to stay with friends or relatives after school , rather than go home in the cold & dark that was our house. Latch-key kids comes to mind.
In the summer we spent most of the holidays with my mother’s sister. I imagine my aunt felt rather put-upon, which she was.
My older brother was often there as well, I can’t remember where my sister went. Probably to one of my fathers 3 sisters.
I digress…….
Meccano……
At my aunt’s house my older brother and my cousin Alan spent hours indoors playing with Alan’s Meccano.
I was banished to the garden or nearby fields. Good grief nowadays we would have had social workers swooping down on
Us.
I wasn’t allowed to touch the Meccano , that was a big gripe on my part so I played endlessly with plasticine out in the garden, sniffling continuously from hay fever and constructing marvellous tableaux of my brother and cousin being subjected to various grisly endings. Being boiled in a huge cooking pot by cannibals was my favourite, with impaling a close second .
They called me Roberta, just to annoy me . I didn’t know it at the time but they were both Left handed and dyslexic (not recognised in the 1950s) and resented the fact that I was an advanced reader & had a good vocabulary & they didn’t…
Being thought ”Clever” was a handicap in those days of my life.
Fifty years later I often went out with my bro in law to antique fairs and one Sunday found us a TOY fair, old toys that is.
I espied a large display of Meccano and was disappointed to find it as under glass,
“Excuse me” I said “ I want to look more closely at your display, will you lift out a couple of trays please”
I suppose I was fingering the stuff for a good ten minutes before the stallholder realised something was amiss and he gently prised from my grasp the lovely Meccano pieces .
“Why thank you so much” I whispered “ I have been waiting over fifty years for this moment”.
Bro in law carefully led me away to a safe place looking over his shoulder and rolling his eyes at the stallholder.
I had a similer experience Robert.
As a child I had to walk on egg shells for fear of a scolding whenver I was near to my Mother valuable Crystal Goblet. I never knew why it was valuable but there you are…it was and I grew to loathe that chunk of glass.
Over the years the goblet disappeared and I cared not where until a few years ago I was browsing a penny charity stall and there was a goblet just like the mentioned piece, chipped, cracked and available for the price of one penny.
I paid that penny, brought it home, went into the garden and deliberately dropped it.
The sound of that breaking glass swept away all those egg shell moments from my past. 
I love your story solo.
It is as if it was meant to be waiting for you to wind up that chapter of your life.
I had a lot of pleasure smashing that object with you.
I wonder if everything gets sorted before we are summoned[RIGHT][RIGHT][/RIGHT][/RIGHT] to glory
You’re on a nice little roll now RJ, fair play to yeh.
The only thing I ever envied in me life was the young fella next door when he got a set of Meccano for Christmas back in 1953, I was 8 at the time and he used to bring me into his house to watch him assemble things, but I was not allowed touch anything,
it was like that old ad for Carlsberg lager when a visitor brings a bottle of Carlsberg to a prisoner who’s behind bars, when the visit is over he says to the prisoner “Goodbye now, and I won’t forget to bring you another one to look at next week” Oh God the torment of it. 
And Solo was having a smashing time of it.
Robert I would think many who are summoned be it to glory or infamy never get to complete their laying of ghosts or winding up of past matters. Life has a way of denying many unresolved issues no matter how patient one is.
No doubt there are good reasons which mean something to someone but are a mystery to most of us. For me…a simple chipped and cracked goblet was enough though for worse crimes I would cheerfully settle for a long trip down a short flight of stairs. One has to be a tad forgiving doesn’t one.
Jem imagine the prisoners glee if he had been tea total. What do they say "revenge is a dish best served cold"or similar vocabulory to that effect only known by prisoners
I hate to keep banging on about it, and pinching a little corner of your thread Robert But solo’s piece got me thinking…
Possibly the most influential occurrence in my life was at the end of it, almost!
On that sunny spring Sunday morning on the 30th May 2004 as I lay gasping for breath outstretched on the lounge carpet, and the realisation that I was suffering a heart attack and may never see my wife, or indeed, this world again an uncanny feeling of calmness and total relaxation overcame me.
As the light was disappearing from my eyes and sounds were fading at the end of a long tunnel, It felt like the struggle was finally over and all those unsaid things, the plans for the rest of that day, the rest of my life, the unresolved issues, the half done jobs, all melted away into insignificance and I felt at peace with myself, and at that moment, I willingly let go of my tenuous grip on life.
Thank you for sharing that wonderful experience,
This next passage by Christopher Isherwood explains it exquisitely
A few times in my life I’ve had moments of absolute clarity, when for a few brief seconds the silence drowns out the noise and I can feel rather than think, and things seem so sharp. And the world seems so fresh as though it had all just come into existence. I can never make these moments last. I cling to them, but like everything, they fade. I have lived my life on these moments. They pull me back to the present, and I realize that everything is exactly the way it was meant to be.
I can relate to that Robert, both from a mental and physical perspective. But like ‘Hens Teeth’ they are very rare…
Oh well, at least he had a sweet spot for her. :-p
[I]Those were the days, my friend.
LRC goods in a general store?
I used to sell typewriters in Grace Brothers (JLP), way back in the day. I was demonstrating an Olivetti lettera 32 to a glamorous gal, when her elderly partner interrupted with a question.
“We spend the winter in France. Can you supply one with french letters?”
I ignored him. He wandered on to the sports department & I was informed later that he had a question for them too.
"i’d like to exchange a tennis racquet, for my wife.
“Seems fair” said the manager.[/I]
I often wonder when I’m out and about and visit the toilet and you see one of those doors that announces: ‘Baby Change’ what do mothers usually swap them for? Another baby more pretty than the original or perhaps one in a different colour…
Deep calls to Deep.
Trouble
Life at “Grace Brothers”(JLP) department store wasn’t all a bed of roses… Like other retailers we had problems with thieves. I purposely avoided using the euphemistic term “Shop lifters” for two reasons. Firstly because this term suggests it is a hobby rather than a serious crime and for which paying customers in the end underwrite. Secondly to avoid confusion with “Shirt lifters” which is an altogether different activity.
My favourite shoplifter was Danny McG, a polite regular who made no secret of his intentions, even chatting to the plain clothes store detective trailing him .Unfortunately he had a violent streak which came out of nowhere & we kept a distance but had a police squad car waiting outside of the exit nearest the betting shop. His aim was to go back to prison where he felt most at home.
His last visit to the store was in December of 1973 when he stole a cine projector, annoyingly, because I was demonstrating it to a customer at the time. My plea of,
“Come on Danny-give me back the cine projector” was met with a look of incredulity and the softly spoken reply,
”What cine projector?”
All the while grasping the object even tighter under his arm with its plug & extension cable trailing out of the carrier bag he had stuffed it into.
I hate to say it but a good deal of thieving was done by staff members & young Mr Grace used to say , when another staff member was caught.
“ I am seldom surprised, but always disappointed.”
Many years later I bumped in to Danny again in a city centre pub. He took me unawares & I hope you will understand that for a short while I genuinely couldn’t think where I knew him from.
It dawned on me after exchanging warm pleasantries who he was & I sped on my way politely as I could. The joke wasn’t lost on him for he called after me.
“Know where there are any cine projectors going cheap Sir?”
He then fell about laughing.
Another good read Robert, thanks…
I worked in Retail for a short while, and was very good at it, but, to survive long term, being a people person was a bit of an hinderance:-) so it was Industry. Met some fascinating folks like Andrew (aka The Little Sh1t), his favourite trick to liven up an otherwise dull day was to leave a spoon in a boiling cup of tea for a couple of minutes, then, when a contractor driver came into the office to sign his documentation, placing one hand, face down on the desk to support himself whilst writing with the other, he would turn to talk to me, accidently placing to spoon on the back of the geezers hand. Another favourite of his was, if a geezer bent forward, and, inadvertently exposed a bit of bare back between shirt and belt line, he would walk past, stainless steel Teapot in hand, and, accidently again make a milliseconds contact, just enough to encourage an ARRRRRG, followed up with a “Sorry Mate”.
I wonder if Andrew ever got his comeuppance.
Happy days
long weights, elbow grease, large punch, et al
Happy days
I am enjoying this thread Robert, long may you continue your stories
Always enjoy these stories gents.
Funny how there always seems to be one company ‘Little s**t’ no matter where you work :-D:-D:-D
Its all part of the English experience.