The Wheels of Lilliput

The Wheels of Lilliput

Beneath ancient oak beams holding up the neat thatched roof of a Suffolk long barn, negotiating a maze of shelved nooks and racked crannies laden with not so antique forgotten household items and so-called curiosities, the contents of one alcove pushed my nostalgia button.

A multi-story carpark in miniature, displayed chipped and scratched classic vehicles in their affordable sizes. A model of the dustcarts that were once filled by men humping stinking battered dustbins. Fire engines, tractors, forgotten London buses, Rollers, Jags, Fords and Austins.

Pedigree Dinkys and a few mongrel Corgis. A brightly coloured hodgepodge of scruffy reminders representing all walks of another time. Each one had its price, even the two-tone De Soto with bent axles after someone’s long dead Nan trod on it, sixty years ago.

None of those examples would grace the hallowed halls of expensive auction houses, they were too real, too charming. Actual toys, actually played with. . . . Cough up a tenner and take home a piece of Granddad’s past.

Well-heeled middle Class nerds and speculative purists seek out perfection. Pristine examples inside mouldy yellow or blue and white striped card boxes. They pay well because they are, “works of art.”

Not a concept shared by capped schoolboys in uniform blazers and fifties grey shorts; grazing their knees and scuffing sensible shoes as they shoved miniature vehicles across cracked paving stones or sent them tumbling over the granite precipices of roadside curb stones.

To some these four-wheeled pets were a source of inspired imagination. Pushed across any available surface: carpets; bedspreads; backyard concrete and footpaths became superhighways; small town high streets; country farm lanes and even major airports. Dad’s freshly dug vegetable garden, a construction site or warzone and his neglected weed patches, dark forests hiding winding tracks. The possibilities endless.

Others had more energetic uses in mind. Speed races, oiled wheels carrying the little wagons as far as they could travel with one push. Bets were made and winners took all. These tiny machines used as currency for bartering, exchanged for balsa wood aircraft that actually flew, Jettex cars or Ian Allan train spotting books as tastes and fads waxed and waned.

Unwanted gifts for bookish kids or sporty types, in love with leather and willow, remained unopened or untouched. Stored in sheds and lofts they created a valuable motherlode for future “art collectors.”

Those that survived untouched, unscratched, unused for their intended purpose are now valuable windows to the past. Sterile museum pieces (private and public) destined to spend eternity displayed in glass cabinets or stored in dark vaults alongside Lowrys and Van Goughs. Future owners ignorant of the pleasure they gave or the world they opened for millions of young minds.