Toys from Yesteryear Sitting very quietly, looking at a blank page Prompted me to pen a poem about toys that were all the rage I had some wooden jigsaw blocks when I was only two In a wooden box with a shiny brass clasp And a picture of Winnie the Pooh I remember at the age of six, when I was given some stickle bricks Plastic shapes so colourful, with brushes of small plastic fingers Making a train of red, yellow and green, the memory of it still lingers Then at the age of seven, I remember ‘coming a cropper' When dared by my cousins to bounce up the street On their big and orange space-hopper When I was eight, my favourite toy was a plastic daredevil skydiver Many parachute jumps from the top of the stairs, that guy was a true survivor When I was nine, the Spirograph, a drawing toy based on gears, Was my favourite toy to play with, watching marvellous patterns appear At ten years old I found building with Meccano lots of fun Metal strips and gears and nuts and bolts, invented in 1901 When I was eleven the Rubik’s Cube was really all the rage With coloured squares, six sides of nine, a puzzle for any age At the age of twelve, Shinsai Mystery was my fave Two eight-hinged polyhedra could be folded into many shapes At the age of thirteen, my baby brother was born His favourite toy was Lego, my love of building things was reborn There are many toys of yesteryear, would take ages to mention the rest But for me, after all these years, Lego will always be the best