En Passant: When wants become needs, you’re old

THERE was a time, you know, when if you’d asked me what I wanted for Christmas, I could easily have compiled you a list as long as your arm. And it’s funny that as I’ve got older the list has got progressively shorter, so that when Doris last week said, “I’ve got no idea what to get you for Christmas. What do you want?” I had to answer, “I dunno, I don’t want anything.”

Boy, when I was a child we got presents from our parents but also from all our aunts and uncles. We even had an Auntie Freda in England who sent us something every year, and I’m ashamed to say that I cannot remember whose auntie she actually was. She might have been my mother’s aunt, that’s my best guess, but why she felt obliged to send presents to us kids at the bottom of Africa, kids who she’d never met, I do not know. We used to write thank you letters to Auntie Freda.

I seem to recollect that her present for me was usually a book, which back in the 1950s was a very acceptable present for a child. Books were; in fact you could almost guarantee that among a child’s presents back then would be a book. And a jigsaw puzzle, which used to be cut from thick plywood and then, later, from cardboard.

Boys got Dinky toys in them days too…

Dinky what, Oupa?

Dinky toys, my boy. They were little die-cast motor cars that boys played with, and if I’d kept all the Dinky cars I had and had not scratched them and lost their rubber tyres playing in the dirt on imaginary roads, they’d be worth a small fortune now. They were made in England from a zinc alloy, and because they were English-made they were models of English cars like Austin, Morris, Hillman, Riley and Triumph, names you don’t hear of anymore. And then there were Corgi cars and Matchbox cars, and then soon afterwards everything seemed to be made in Hong Kong and the Golden Age of Dinkies faded away.

Yep, small boys wanted Dinky cars, and any little die-cast vehicle was called a Dinky even if it was made in Hong Kong; and we wanted a bicycle, and I was lucky enough to get a bicycle that my parents bought for me “to grow into”, which means that to start with it was too big and I couldn’t reach the peddles so my Dad, ol’ Dave, bolted wooden blocks to the peddles and I looked like right idiot. Thankfully I grew longer legs quickly.

And boys back then wanted an electric train, and I got one, but never got round to adding accessories to it so it just went round and round, with nowhere to shunt trucks to, no junctions and tunnels, and there was nowhere to set it up and leave it, so after playing with it you had to take it apart and put it back in its box, and soon after New Year it was a hassle to take out and set up just to see the train and carriages go round and round and round. It’s probably worth a fortune now.

Back then, too, boys wanted model aeroplane kits to build, and not because the glue was of the type that could be sniffed for for a “high”. They were made by Airfix and I never worked out why Airfix didn’t make the the models out of plastic the colour of the original aeroplane. The plastic was mostly light blue, and you had to have this special paint to paint your Spitfire fighter or Lancaster bomber before you stuck the transfers on, and I never had the right paint.

Then when you got older, in your teens, the list of wants changed. I know some teens liked clothes, but I never did. I though clothes were a really boring present. I think then, back in the 1960s, the most wanted present had something to do with music, so the latest LP was what your wanted…

Oupa, what’s a ellpee?

Eish! My girl, LP stands for Long Playing, meaning a long-playing record, one that rotates on a turntable at 33rpm…

What’s are-pee-em, Oupa?

Stone me! Go and play outside.

You see, the 1960s and 1970s was the Golden Age of popular music – the Animals, Ten Years After, the Beatles, the Rolling Stones, the Temptations, the Byrds, the Doors, Led Zeppelin, Procol Harum, the Supremes, the list is extraordinary and can go on and on – there’s never been anything like it since, and for a teenager with burgeoning testosterone levels music was the present wanted if he couldn’t have sex.

If you were lucky you got a radio so you could listen to the LM Hit Parade on Sunday nights in your room where your dad didn’t have to hear it, and it was around this time that cassette tapes appeared and teenagers wanted a cassette player and recorder.

And then, suddenly, you’re an adult, and the list of “wants” becomes more and more a list of “needs”, and there is a distinct difference between the two. I can’t remember what I used to want in my 20s, being married with a mortgage, but I’ve always been a reader so I imagine books were in my Christmas stocking. I really cannot remember. Tools, perhaps, ‘cos I used to fancy myself as a bit of a handyman. I dunno.

And now? I really don’t need or want anything, and I confess that in the end I said to Doris, “I dunno, I need socks.”

Socks!

Boy, I’m getting old.