Time marches on relentlessly towards another Christmas, I'm busy with few breaks for thinking or procrastinating...quite useful really. Any way here's a titbit gleaned from the Guardian, file under Confessions of a Toy Shop Owner:
" I’ve become a connoisseur of tantrums, from the foot-stampers to the fling-self-to-the-ground-and-scream brigade. But this time of year a different generation chucks their toys out of the pram: the parents. We have sold out of singing Elsa dolls. Yes, it’s hard to accept, but it’s true: there is nothing I can do. We sold the last one weeks ago to a collector who will keep it in its cellophane box for ever. Every year is the same. A rush for the latest craze and the inevitable broken parents who haven’t managed to secure the ultimate must-have. I have seen grown men crying, knowing they will be a disappointment to their daughter on Christmas Day. At the other end of the parenting scale are the righteous ethical consumers, who buy only wooden bricks and ant farms when their children want guns and plastic tat. Their smug expressions as they put them in their hemp totes makes me want to slip in a couple of Nerf guns and a Barbie. Their children will be in therapy for years because their hessian loom bands were rubbish. But such thoughts are counterproductive. I am the jolly toy shop owner. Ignore the beads of sweat on my upper lip. I’m a little tense because Christmas is our only chance to make enough money to keep afloat the rest of the year. So roll up, deluded parents. Buy your tots the elaborate toys when they would much rather play with the wrapping paper. Roll up, the divorced fathers, who buy too much stuff to assuage their guilt. Roll up, grandparents who are hopelessly out of touch. And roll on the new year."
I particularly like the references to divorced fathers, ethical consumers and out of touch grandparents, all sad but funny and from my own experience true.
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