December Theme: The gift of Imagination

By Lucy Jones.

When we were young, we could hold tea parties with our friends without any tea or even cups. Try doing that now and you’d have a lot of guests thinking you were very mad. But back then, we were more than happy to pretend. Teddy bears were really alive, Santa Claus lived in the North Pole, and there actually was a possibility that a magical land exsisted behind each and every child’s wardrobe.
I remember one of my favourite games was gathering a pile of sticks together and ‘cooking by fire’, because I was stranded in the wilderness and the only way to survive was to collect berries and firewood. It didn’t matter that there were houses surrounding me left right and centre, or the fact that my mum kept on coming outside to check if I was OK, because my imagination ignored all the logical adult thoughts of ‘This isn’t possible’ and let me drift into the make believe world where anything could happen.

I had about a million Barbie dolls too, and created an entire town for them over my parent’s living room floor. Card board boxes came in very handy for making stables, beds, houses and cars. If only living costs could be that economical today...

So please Santa, what I really want for Christmas is my childhood imagination back. Don’t get me wrong, I’ve tried to hang onto it as much as possible over the years, and I think I’m doing a pretty good job so far, but I would love to re-visit the ‘five year old me’ where absolutely anything was possible...