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Popping back to ebay every now and again to check out how
the latest auction is going (the Punani sticker album and Oh Frig I'm 50 DVD are going pretty cheap, especially as they are your last chance to buy and I am hopeful that rare Radio 4 hoodie will bring in a bit more) but it means I keep looking at things to buy myself.
Like most men in late middle-age (and with the best will in the world I think I might have to move on from claiming to be in that bracket soon. I've got 10 years left max) I mainly end up looking at the toys I used to have and didn't hold on to. I remember being desperate to own the Matchbox Fighting Furies pirate figures with a little button in their side that would move their arm up and down so they could sword fight. Because as any fencer knows fighting with a blade is all about jerking your arm up and down. The genius of these figures was that you needed to buy at least two. After months (maybe minutes) of begging I got the bald guy with the hook and the one with the wooden leg with a map up it.
I loved them. For a bit. Then forgot about them. And like my space hopper Buono, I have no idea where they are now. Am I prepared to part with £50 or so to get someone else's?
Not this time.
As documented many times, as well as playing snooker against myself for hours on end as a teenager, I spent even more time playing myself at Subbuteo, doing many seasons of multiple divisions, cup competitions and keeping stats on the whole thing and using the Shoot magazine league ladder to chart progress. When I supported Leeds they won everything, when I switched allegiance to York, they were suddenly champions of everything, but I am sure that's just a coincidence. What kind of life would it have been to waste years fixing the matches that only I would ever witness?
I couldn't even flick to kick.
Why did I go along with this sham?
I had so much Subbuteo stuff, many of the players stuck together with thick glue that threw off their entire balance. As a young kid I remember smashing up some of the players on purpose, but that was just childish stupidity. As I got older players were broken by an elbow or knee (though I didn't kneel on them once the snooker table became the arena for Subbuteo).
I have many regrets in my life and have made too many errors to remember, but one of my greatest regrets is giving all my Subbuteo stuff away to charity when I was about 22. I'd kept it til then and had it once I moved to London, but clearly I decided that I had to put away childish things (you know, apart from in every other way I was living my life) and took my box full of multiple teams, scoreboards, goals, cups, corner takers and throw in figures, referees... I never was obsessed enough to but the stands and spectators, but maybe that was economical rather than what I actually wanted.
Some of that stuff might have minimal value, but that's not why I regret my foolishness. I just wish I still had it all. Imagine the podcast for starters. Especially when I was doing Scottish Division 2. Audio only obvs.
I just wanted to write this blog so that any 21 year olds reading can be warned - don't think you've outgrown stuff, hold on to it. You will want it again when you're older and probably spend hundreds of pounds trying to track it down and it won't be the same because it isn't yours.
Sadly the chances of any 21 year olds reading this is zero, so the foolishness shall continue.
Putting away childish things is a mug's game. If you have to put them anywhere, put them on ebay.
