I used to take a deep breath, close my eyes tightly and almost explode with the effort of forcing my wish to become reality. I gave up on wishes long ago or perhaps they gave up on me, who knows. Childhood is now a distant memory, but with a huge physical effort I can reach back to the extreme edge of my memory and grasp tiny fragments of my life. They are not static memories like fading photos shut away in an album; they are more like lost fragments of video, a tantalizing glimpse through the window of time.

My first home was above my parent’s Newsagent shop and many of my earliest memories are centred on the shop. My father had big plans for his business and while I was still tiny the shop was extended and a modern glass frontage proclaimed that this was a main road business not a little back street shop. The tiled floor in a light grey provided a playground for me. I had to avoid stepping on the lines between the tiles because of some long forgotten childish superstition. I could hop or jump from one tile to the next or I could walk importantly with my hands behind my back as my grandma did when she was helping a customer to choose a greetings card.

Beyond the large display of cards at the far end of the shop was my favourite area, the toy section. I was forbidden to touch, but I could look at the beautiful Wendy Boston bears gazing out from their display boxes. High above me tricycles, scooters and dolls prams were displayed where eager little fingers could not reach them. There were dolls large and small, dressed and undressed; baby dolls, teenage dolls, talking dolls, walking dolls, even dolls that wouldn’t eat their greens! There were tea sets and printing sets, sewing cards and fuzzy felts. Matchbox cars, Corgi and Dinky toys and Airfix models were there to tempt little boys of all ages. There were all sorts of games from the tried and trusted snakes and ladders, flounders and tidily winks, to the new and extremely popular Mouse Trap.

At that time no one thought that toy guns were unsuitable for little boys, and cork guns, cap guns, and guns in holsters competed for attention alongside bows and arrows and feathered headdresses. The brightly coloured feathers were very attractive to my young eyes and my toy cupboard already contained a rather splendid Red Indian headdress, a bow and arrow and a cork gun that made a rather satisfying popping noise when fired. Toys in those days still reinforced gender stereotypes and my grandmother who made disapproval a way of life tried by fair means and foul to ensure that I had suitable ladylike toys. I always preferred teddy bears to dolls, but soon after I was born my Grandma had bought me a soft bodied plastic doll with moulded hair, I called her Elizabeth and she became my favourite. I enjoyed dressing and undressing her and I remember pushing her around in a little doll’s pram, but my strongest memory is of her doll’s blanket which had a silky edge and I liked to hold it when I went to sleep.