When I was a wee laddie small things were incredibly important to me. Old coins, gumball premiums and keyrings kept me entertained for hours. Ah, keyrings, I adored the little blighters and loved to collect as many different ones as I could. So I was thrilled this week when I saw an old friend of mine on Ebay, the amazing plastic wine bottle pen! The memories came flooding back. I could almost feel the pleasure of unscrewing the pen part from the bottle and rescrewing it in as a pen! I was a simple boy! Mine was green and had a biro nib rather than the fountain pen shown but still I enjoyed the almost total recall! I do miss my bottle pen.
Trying to recollect all my keyrings, none of which survived the battleground of adolescence, is proving difficult. Some were from my Dad's cash and carry warehouse, Richard Oldhams in Preston and others from trips and family outings. I do remember:
1. a rubber footballer
2. a small metal covered bible
3. an articulated metal fish
4. a toilet [bog standard white!]
5. an esso blue character
6. an eiffel tower
7. various skulls and skeletons
8. a thunderbirds figure
9. a fan with pictures on it
10. and my old buddy the globe, which often shows up on ebay like this one
I still collect tiny bits and bobs. It seems instinctive. Like a squirrel. Rather than keyrings and foreigh coins, I love miniature spacecraft nowadays, which are mostly from Japan. The Japanese call these small candy premiums Omake. Where small items like keyrings part of your younger years? What did you collect readers? Or maybe you still do!
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