10. Describe an item you were incredibly attached to as a youth. What became of it?

My favourite toy since I was a toddler was a large golden soft toy bear that had a bell inside its ear and although I was a tall child I could stand behind it with its feet on my feet, hugging it around its middle with my head just hidden by its head. Now this was many years ago and it was nothing like as fancy as the teddy bear shown in the picture above – also probably a bit smaller.

Now I slept with my teddy almost every night and often ended up sleeping on top of it, so it’s nose got flattened over time and gradually its fur started to disappear. But I still loved it and it was my truly favourite toy when I was very young. I loved it! This will become apparent in the next paragraph.

This was in the late 60s/early 70s and one of my father’s benefits at work were ‘luncheon vouchers’, which he and his colleagues could use to purchase their lunch. However, when my parents were first married and had me to look after they didn’t have lots of money but my father was able to save up his ‘luncheon vouchers’ which could then be exchanged for items (perhaps money, I was too young to know). My father had to travel a bit for his work and over a fairly long period he saved up his ‘luncheon vouchers’ so that he could purchase my mother a present one time when he was returning home from a trip. Upon his return he proudly presented my mother with a present of Chanel perfume that she loved. She was so pleased!

With my childlike logic I quickly put 2 and 2 together and worked out that as my dad loved my mother he had bought her the perfume as a present and she was extremely pleased with it! Therefore, I loved my teddy and at the first opportunity of getting hold of the perfume I proceeded to sprinkle it all over my teddy emptying the bottle. I was so pleased because my teddy smelt gorgeous and I loved him!!!

However my mother soon found out what I done (probably because of the smell of my teddy) and she was furious! She immediately grabbed the teddy off me and put him into the wash-tub, before turning to me and giving me such a hiding all the way up the stairs. My dad was not pleased either, but he seemed to manage it a little better than her. Unfortunately for me even after the teddy had come out of the wash tub and being left to dry on the line he still smelt of perfume. So once again her fury was ignited and I got another spanking. I think she tried to wash my teddy several times, but every time the bear came out of the wash tub and even after being hung outside to dry in the fresh air he still smelt of perfume. Whoops!

We moved house (teddy coming with us of course) but she could never really get rid of the smell entirely and so it was a long held source of animosity between us. Fortunately, by the time we moved again, teddy was looking a little worse for wear and had lost most of his fur and I was now older (about 9) and so he was confined to the loft – no lingering smell.

I have continued to collect teddy bears off and on over the years, but I learnt my lesson early and none have ever been provided with perfume! I also collected lots of other soft toys and it was only recently (I’m now in my 50s) that my parents who now live in France and have a huge loft full of all sorts of bags of my soft toys that it was brought back to my memory, as they asked me whether they could give some of my toys to their neighbour’s grandchildren.

I don’t think that my teddy made it to France – he probably fell apart long before then, but some of my soft toys still remain and there are 3 in particular that I asked them to keep – a “Mrs Tiggy Winkle” glove puppet, “Rosie Posey” (my name for a particularly old small but realistic cow filled with split peas) and my Scottie dog who you will hear about in my ‘bibbysmith’ blog post.

(One final addendum for those considering purchasing koala bears for their young children. WARNING – I collected these too: All have been returned to me recently and the oldest ones either have no claws or some claws missing, because when I was very young I thought that these were made of liquorice and so I chewed them off – yep I ate them, but the plastic doesn’t seem to have caused me any ill effects!)