I Put Away A Childish Thing

When I was six, neighbours gave me a chocolate dog for my Easter. It was coated in some kind of plastic material and, to me, looked too good to eat. So I named him Pogo and placed him on my bedroom mantelpiece. When his space was needed for an Airfix model plane, I consigned him to his cardboard box.

In May this year I found myself wondering why I still had Pogo, now some 61 years old (still uneaten), in the bottom drawer of my desk. Surely, he belonged in a museum!

Some internet searching revealed that in Brixton a French lady called Isabelle runs The Chocolate Museum. And she agreed to buy Pogo. (By now, of course, I was beginning to wonder if I could possibly part with him.) But off he went to the big city where he is now on display, with his history beside him on a notice.

Pogo is not the first of my treasures to go to a museum. Mik and I had an industrial-sized Hoover which, previously, my brother had acquired for my mother for £1. I donated it to the museum in Chambers Street. They were delighted to have it as an example of 'how people used to live'.

I had a very big Raleigh bicycle (someone said it enabled me to look into the upper decks of buses). I bought it from a colleague at Telford College for £20. It was extremely heavy and had no gears. I used to ride it from Stockbridge to Drem, and not an inch of Lycra in sight. When I began to run out of puff I sold it to the museum (Chambers Street again) for £70. Turned out it was a type used by policemen to patrol the docks during the Second World War. To my considerable amazement I spotted it one day, in Princes Street, in a Jenners window display.

What next? My ten-inch LP, Bing Crosby, The Early 30's, Volume Two, or my white shoes from the late 1970's? They say that on average a British adult consults their phone around 240 times a day. I last looked at my mine at least a month ago. Maybe it's me who belongs in a museum. (Oh no, never, I hear you all cry in unison - at least I would if my hearing were better.)

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