A Visit to the Toy Shop
Growing up, a trip to the local toyshop was a much anticipated treat – even if we did, on the whole, go there almost every Saturday. In the 1960s and 70s, most provincial towns included at least one specialist retailer of toys: these were always independent traders, occasionally with branches in a couple of locations, but more usually confined to one retail premises. There were no chainstores such as Toys R Us, and all were of relatively modest proportions. From the age of six months to six years, I lived in the cathedral city of Lichfield. To call it a city is to overstate its modest dimensions – at the time, it was merely a small market town that was, in the post-war era, being slowly enlarged to offer overspill housing to people from Birmingham – which is how my parents came to move there in September 1961. For such a small place, Lichfield was remarkably well served by toy retailers. The biggest and arguably the most prestigious of them was W. Osborne’s on Bore Street, a shop...
