Car-ry on!

There is a reason why I've blipped this today. There are two reasons in fact.

The first is that I found a pile of comics in the practice cellar the other day. I took a couple home for H, thinking he'd enjoy them. He didn't. They were in fact, "Rubbish and I don't get them! Are they supposed to be funny?"

I remember running to the corner shop, pocket-money in hand to buy my copy of Jinty...then when I was a bit older, Judy...

I loved those weekly serials and the garish colours. I used to read it from cover to cover then swap with my brother, who favoured The Beezer. When I was a student I used to read Bob's copy of Viz. There's something cool about comics which my eight-year-old doesn't get.

The second is this:

As the mother of two boys I have never discouraged either of them from playing with 'girls' toys. Both my boys enjoy play (and real) cookery; both can use a vacuum cleaner; Henry has an impressive collection of cuddly toys and has enjoyed playing with dolls and prams. Yet the toys they return to again and again and again are cars and trains. Since they could first crawl they've both headed straight for anything with wheels on it. I'm pretty sure that H's earlier love affair with baby dolls was primarily because he liked pushing them around in a pram...fast! Both are addicted to Top Gear and worship at the altar of Jeremy, James and Richard. It's that old nature vs nurture debate really.

I was never into 'girly' toys when I was young. I liked airfix, lego and meccano,..perhaps because I lived with my dad and, quite reasonably, he wasn't wild about Sindy or Girls World! So maybe I've subtly influenced them. I can certainly get more enthusiastic about K'nex than Barbie, and I've spent hours on my hands and knees over the years helping to create mega-railway systems out of Brio. Yes...maybe I'm to blame.

If they'd both been girls they might have still preferred cars to dolls. But then...I had a friend at Uni...a fully paid up member of the Doc Martin-wearing, football playing, shaved-head brigade. I assumed (wrongly as it happened) that she was a lesbian (sorry Shell, but you know I wasn't the only one!) and was extremely surprised to receive an invite to her wedding. When she had a little girl I remember her saying, 'No daughter of mine will play with sexist toys.' I saw her again a couple of years ago. She brought her little girl for an eye examination. Shell was still wearing her Docs, ripped jeans and natty ubber-short hair-do. Her daughter was The Princess of Pink...in sparkly sandles and tutu. She was clutching a battered Barbie. "*I* didn't buy it," protested Shell, "She found it at a car boot sale and wouldn't put it down. Where did I go wrong..."

So as I was picking up a traffic-jam of cars from the floor today, thinking about comics and where I went wrong too, this blip just sort of happened.