My soul and plastic farmyard animals...

Sometimes I feel like I’m losing my soul. Well not exactly losing it but selling it grain by grain to whoever is holding the stings at the time – and why?

This is how it happens... I sold my soul for some plastic farmyard animals.

Ever had that ‘must have’ feeling? That ‘I have to have it – them – those - or I am going to die’ feeling. That, ‘I must have, I must have, I must have’ feeling? I think that at sometime or other we’ve all experienced it, I know I have. With some of us it is cars, others gadgets, or houses, or clothes, or cruises… well, it can just about be anything can’t it - and all of those ‘must haves’ cost money.

‘I must have whatever it is’. I think - and there goes another piece of my soul.

My first ‘must haves’ were toys – farmyard animals to be precise, plastic farmyard animals to be even preciser. Plastic farmyard animals bought in Castle’s the newsagents from my Auntie Lena who worked as an assistant way down in the dark, narrow-aisled, back of the shop where they kept the toys, piled ceiling to floor, on shelf after shelf after shelf. You could get any toy you wanted at the back of Castle’s. It was a place where small dreams were realised and ‘must haves’ threatened to leap at you from every shelf and corner. It smelt of wood and plastic and cardboard and dust and it was like walking into a long thin tunnel - down on the left with just enough room to get through, around at the bottom, then back up on the right – three lines of shelf, one on each wall and one free-standing right down the centre. It was a place to begin to lose your soul and my ‘must have’ farm animals were at the top on the right on a racked display with a painted background.

Pigs (must have), sheep (must have), cows (must have), horses (must have), chickens (must have), ducks (must have), goats (must have), cockerels (must have),, I loved my turkey and my two sheep dogs (one standing on all paws, another down on front legs and herding), my farmer carrying a lamb and his wife holding a bucket (must have), I even had a scarecrow (must have) - and acre on acre of fencing and gates.

‘I must have them all’. My four year old self thought.

I bought a different ‘must have’ each week with my pocket money - six-pence for a chicken, one shilling and sixpence for a ram, two shillings for a cow – and sometimes my Auntie Lena gave me discount, even dropping something extra into the brown paper bag ‘accidentally’ on occasion – that’s how I came by my scarecrow. Soon I had a very big farm and it was then I realised that I ‘must have’ a zoo… I’m still finding ‘must haves’ and so are the people around me.

I wonder how long my soul will last?