conquers vs Lego

Five years old, an innocent little boy. So happy to be experiencing the world. Totally unaware he was in a world of his own, skipping in and out of dreams all day long. To him a year was forever and collecting conquers was an exciting and magical thing to do. (Mr Kipling?)
It didn't take much to make him smile.

The conquer tree was in my primary school playing field, it sort of straddled one of the fences on the edge of the field that marked the boundary between the edge of the field and someones back garden (the usual 6ft wire fence you get in places like that). The tree was huge with big bushy green hair that would fall out every autumn. I have no memory of the tree having no leaves, i lost interest when the conquers were gone.

It's strange, I have no idea why i loved collecting conquers so much. I never once played conquers or even attempted to put a string through one. They were shiny, waxy and didn't smell bad, that must have been it, oh yeah and they fall out of a tree once a year which somehow makes them better.

I remember the first time i found out conquers eventually went mouldy. I had a big shoe box stashed in the garden full of lovely shiny waxy conquers, it was great. I would bounce happily through the garden to the bush they were hidden, anticipating the magical, proud and glowing moment i would open the lid and gaze at them, thinking to myself ('wow, I've got loads of conquers , I am very pleased with my conquer gathering skills this year, life is good' ).

One day I went to inspect my hoard, my lovely shiny waxy conquers were no more. Instead i now owned a box containing a big brown mouldy lump with white furry mold covering most of it (it didn't smell very nice either).

After that i no longer saw the point in collecting loads of conquers, they were still shiny and waxy but they just didn't cut the mustard anymore. They had let me down, I felt cheated.



But who cares about conquers anyway? I had Lego.

Lego was and still is one of the best things in the world. I love Lego...

Blocks that you can attach to other blocs and make anything you want (if you have enough blocks that is, I had plenty, you really can't have too much Lego).
Blocks with wheels and different sizes of boards you can attach your blocks to, what more do you need? Nothing


You can build; cars, castles, spaceships, swords, houses, robots, guns, animals, more robots, more spaceships, boats, anything... Totally amazing.

If you have a big bag of Lego you're life is complete. Put George Bush in a room with a huge bag of Lego you would never see him again, he would be so amazed at how much fun he was having trying to build a train that he would forget to eat. That is the power of Lego, It could change the world for the better.



Anyway, that was years ago. I'm not that happy go lucky, smiley little boy anymore, I doubt that collecting shiny waxy conquers would put a beaming smile on my face (although i susspect that a big bag of Lego wouldn't be a bad thing to have knocking about the house).

That happy smiley little boy isn't dead, he's just scared of the world. He doesn't get out much, spends most of his time existing as a memory. But he still has that glowing smile and when he pokes his head out into the world, he shines. Bright as you like.