A Time of Magic

As Christmas approaches, parents everywhere will be trawling the shops for toys.

Usually, they’ll hit the big toy shops and so be presented with an identical range of toys to choose from as all the other parents. These days the supermarkets will have a reasonable selection and, usually, with lower prices than those in the specialist toy shops.

However, for something a little different I find that it’s always worth having a look round Maplins which is a specialist electronics store. Now, 99% of the stuff is electronics components but for various reasons they always have a substantial number of toys too and ones that you’ll usually not see elsewhere. For example, the remote control hovercraft of last Christmas was there and there’s always a range of surprisingly cheap remote control cars. In fact, for remote control toys it seems to always be the place to go. At the moment, it’s the only place I’ve seen remote control diggers, tanks and assorted sizes of cars ranging from one inch models through to things that would be almost large enough for our little guy to ride on.

I always find it odd that so many people have kids who they claim they can never get to go to sleep when they’re young. Our two went straight to sleep from the day they came home for the first time.

But sleep aids are big business these days. One big factor in that is worry with the economy remaining in the doldrums and so many people either losing their job or living in fear of losing it.

The problem with any of the sleeping pills is that you effectively get addicted to them. Not so much because they are addictive themselves but that their effects are: you get to the point where you take them because you’re scared of not being able to get to sleep without them.

Isn’t it sad the way that people always take a “do it somewhere else” attitude to things?

Just this afternoon we were driving through the countryside and passed by a field that clearly wasn’t being used in any way at all. Not just fallow, quite simply not being used, with weeds growing as high as they can grow. It also sported a sign to the effect that it wasn’t to be used for ATVs. Why not? It certainly wasn’t being used for anything else.

To be fair, it would be better if some Polaris Accessories place were to buy the field and let it be used for what it seemed best suited for but it’s very rare that the sensible things happen, isn’t it?