Everyone else was on the British side, and that meant us. I almost always got to play the good guys, with my brother helping, and dad was always the bad guys. He would always lose of course, yet next time he was always ready for another go.
Each box of soldiers had about forty soldiers in them, and so it would take quite some time for us to set them all up. This was I think when he would get some rest. We could easily be there for hours at a time just getting them all standing again!
Picking which box of soldiers we were going to buy was something that I think my dad never looked forward to. It could take a while. Of course the pictures of the soldiers on the front of the box were definitely a deciding factor, though if they had quite exotic names then all the better. A dragoon was always much better than an infantryman, for example.
“What side do the civilians fight on. dad?” my brother had asked my dad one day as we stood looking at the boxes and boxes of soldiers. My dad already had my choice for the week in his hand: French paratroopers. The box my brother was peering at contained civilians that no doubt could be used as minor or major casualties in any war that the soldiers were set up for.
“They don’t fight for anyone. soft lad.” my dad said, leaning down to my brother’s eye level.
“Are they Germans, dad?” he asked.
“No son. They are just people in the street. They don’t fight for anyone.”
“Not even the Italians?” my brother said with disdain.
“No.” said dad.
“They’re rubbish then.” he said, putting the box back.
“Get some Japs.” my dad said. “Look - some of them have swords too.”
My brother gazed wide eyed at the sword held in the soldier's hand, and so Japs it was. Politically correct we most certainly were not.
These days where Mortimer’s used to be a is a grubby chemists shop and a few estate agents peddling their houses in the window. I walk past there every day and it is rare that I think of the toy shop now. Yet sometimes the memories come flooding back and if you ever mention the shop to anyone from by where I live then the memories are always good, and perhaps sometimes over-exaggerated.
For example, I can remember the shop and all of the toys laid out in there, but I can only ever remember Mister Mortimer being the only member of staff in there, and I am sure that that is definitely not the case. I also remember that they had a small fleet of delivery vans. Two or three I think, you could see them in the backyard of the shop (all fenced off and locked up of course but if you stood on your tiptoes you could see over the wall), and I seem to recall that they were all shaped in the form of Noah’s ark. I know that doesn’t really make any sense to be truthful. After all, what does Noah’s Ark have to do with a toy shop? Yet I seem to remember that this was definitely the case, though anyone else I ever ask about it always seems to draw a blank and look at me as if I have been hallucinating or something. Perhaps the vans existed only in my imagination? Perhaps. I, however, can see them as if they were right in front of me.
The shop next door to Mister Mortimer’s toyshop was Danny’s. Danny’s was a newsagents, and after spending a not inconsiderable amount of time picking our boxes of soldiers it would be off to Danny’s to get that week’s Victor or Valor. All war, war, war. I think kids these days would be amazed at our lack of scope. Yet you have to consider the timeframe. There were only two television channels for example, and the games that we all played as kids were either games or war, or perhaps cowboys and Indians, and that was it.
There was no spider man as such. That was American, but as I look back on it now that would change, and change quite rapidly. Yet for now, in what you may consider to almost be a golden age, we were locked into a cycle of war and cowboys, and the toys were traditionally; made of wood and painted properly. Again, that would change too but it was the back end of the home made items that would soon be replaced with battery driven plastic toys. Already our soldiers were plastic, the model kits of aeroplanes: spitfires and hurricanes, the dreaded Stukas, were already plastic formed and needed sanding down with dad’s matchbox before assembly.
Dad was good at painting these too. My brother and I were only allowed to paint anything under supervision, and almost always dad would have to tidy up what we had done after we had finished. Then it was the transfers. The swastika’s for the Stuka’s, the roundels for the RAF and so on. Dad always had to do them, because they were flimsy and difficult to place, and once they were on they weren’t shifting for anybody. They were permanent. We were, quite frankly, glad that dad did that bit, because the only one time we had attempted it (or be allowed to attempt it by dad) it was a complete and unmitigated disaster. He always did it after that.
Ironically, the place where I walk to to get the bus to work every day now faces exactly where Mortimer’s and Danny’s used to be. The estate agents and the chemists. When I walk to work, my friend Jimmy usually meets me at the bus stop or we bump into each other walking there.
“Yes I remember Mortimer’s.” he said to me one day when the subject had been raised. “Best toy shop in the world when you were a kid. Woolies didn’t even come anywhere near.”
“Emporium.” I said, and we both smiled, looking up the road to see if the bus was coming as we stood beside the crowded bus stop. It wasn’t.
“Do you remember the delivery vans?” I said and Jimmy looked puzzled.
“Can’t say I do.”
“They were shaped like Noah’s Ark.” I said and Jimmy nodded, then a frown crossed his face,
“What’s Noah’s Ark got to do with a toy shop then?”
I laughed, shaking my head.
“No idea. Maybe I got it wrong.”
“I think so.” he laughed.
So on it went. One day we were walking along the road where the back yard of the toy shop used to be. Now it is not gated. No fence. Just a car park really for the staff from the chemists and the estate agents.
“You can still see where the walls of the old yard used to be you know.” said Jimmy as we passed by the alley.
“Can you?” I said, stopping and looking into the currently empty alley. It was only seven thirty and the staff from the estate agents and the chemists would not arrive for at least another hour yet.
“Yes.” he said, stopping too. “Come and have a look. We’ve got a few minutes yet before our bus is due.”
So we walked into the alley. It was quite long and broad, but sure enough near to the end of it was what could almost be the remaining part of a wall. It looked like a kerb to me at first, but it was right in the middle of the alley and served no useful purpose at all.
“This is it.” said Jimmy. “I noticed it one morning as I walked past. Came and had a look.”
“Wow.” I said. “Goes to show doesn’t it, really. Little pieces of the old shop remain even now.”
“Yes.” said Jimmy and off we went to work.
I thought about this for a few days. I wished that I had taken a picture of the kerb. I have no idea why. It just struck me as amazing that there was still a bit of it left. It was about a foot high and about the same wide, but it ran horizontally right across the alley down into the back of the estate agents. It had definitely been a wall of some sort, perhaps even some part of the building itself. At work I resolved to set out a little earlier the next day and take a picture of it. Just for old time’s sake.
The next day was warm and bright, even for a June morning, and I made my way to work a little earlier than usual, walking into the alley and getting out my phone ready to take a picture of the remnants of the wall. I walked along the passage and put my work bag down on the ground, opening the camera on my phone ready to take a picture. I composed the shot and took a few, stopping to look at them. They were okay but I thought that perhaps it would be a better shot if I took a picture from behind the remains of the wall looking down the alley back towards the main road, and so I stepped over the small what could easily be confused of a kerb. As I did so however
something happened.
Even to this day I am not entirely sure what it was that actually did happen. All I do know is that I dropped my phone as I stepped over the wall remnants, and as I did so there was a bright flash of light and everything went black and then slowly began to come back into focus. As I stood there, my head reeling I staggered back a little, and found myself leaning on a small van. I steadied myself, my stomach rolling with nausea. Had I experienced some kind of electric shock? I leaned a little more on the van, my back to it now.
My eyesight was clearing, but in front of me there was a small bright light flashing on and off at about waist height. I backed away from it. No doubt this was the source of what must have been the electrical shock that had sent me reeling. As I moved away I more or less slid my back along the van, the sides of which I could feel next to me. I paused. There had been no van in the valley when I had come in! I looked down to the floor. My phone was not there! I pushed away from the van, keeping a safe distance from the flashing light that I now saw looked like a small spinning sphere, tendrils of blue light and electricity flashing about it, crackling in the warm morning air. I gasped and turned to look at the van and I froze to the spot.
It was a small van really. Not terribly large. Certainly not transit sized. It was also in the shape of a small Ark, pairs of animals painted on the side of it, happily trooping into a picture on the side of the van that was an ark too. On the side of it in large curling letters it said, “Mortimer’s Toy shop.” and below it a small - in fact a very small - Arrowebrook telephone number.
I more or less ran to the side of the alley, putting as much distance between myself and the flashing ball of light and the toy shop van in the shape of an ark as I possibly could.
“What?” I said to myself, and as my eyesight was more or less back to normal now I looked wildly about the alley for an explanation. It was then that I saw that the van was not the only thing that had changed.
The sun was much higher in the sky for a start. It was later in the day for sure. The hum of traffic from the main road had ceased too. Just the occasional rumble from that direction. Even the walls of the alley seemed different. In fact, at the end of the alley were a small pair of wired gates, and a small stone wall along which ran a barbed wire topped fence. Nobody seemed to be around either. I was quite alone.
I ran to the end of the alley. The gates were locked, a large padlock swinging on them on the other side of the wall. yet these gates were not topped with barbed wire, and so I began to climb them, it was no difficult and soon I found myself on the pavement outside the yard. I gazed up to the main road just as I saw what was no doubt a Ford Anglia pass by, followed a few seconds later by a bus, the type of which that as far as I knew had been out of service for at least thirty years. There was even a conductor standing on the open rear end of the bus and as it passed by slowly he saw me staring and so waved. I waved back awkwardly and then the bus was gone.
My head spinning, I staggered along the wall which should have been the side of the chemists, but as I got a little further along I saw a small wooden framed window, the paint once a dark colour of red but now faded slightly and in places peeling. Just as I had remembered it. I knew what was going to be in this shop window of course. Every single time my dad had brought me and my brother here we had run ahead to look. It never changed. Inside were aeroplanes, a sandy beach and toy cars, and in the middle a wooden Thunderbirds base, Tracy Island, complete with the spaceships from that television show.
I ran around the corner, my eyes wide. The street was quiet I thought, but they always were then, but was that just nostalgia? It didn’t seem to be the case. For there were people about, and as I stood and stared at them I saw that they were all dressed strangely. As if it was the sixties again. Hair styles were piled high and old fashioned, and I started as a man walked past in what most definitely was a kaftan!
Then I looked at the shops. Brown's department store, a grand title even then for such a small shop, then the gas showrooms. Then next to it Danny’s the newsagents, and now, right in front of me, Mortimer’s toy shop, the doors open, a small (I noticed unlocked) tricycle outside the door, the doors open.
I gulped. what had happened? I could not work it out. Obviously I was hallucinating. I moved closer and then inspiration took me and so I ran into Danny’s the newsagents. The air was full of the smell of old tobacco and sweets, tall jars of pineapple cubes and bullseyes piled high in the shelves at the back of the shop. I walked calmly to the newspaper rack and picked up a copy of the daily mirror, looking at the date.
Saturday 19th July 1965.
I dropped the paper and ran back outside. I walked calmly along the road, seeing houses that were no longer there, shops that had ceased trading decades or more ago. The traffic was mostly non-existent. There seemed to be more buses than anything! I ran back towards the toy shop and around the side, the large gates of the yard drawing near. I had to get back!
I threw myself at the gate, leaping up and climbing quickly, dropping the last four feet on the other side and stumbling, ran towards the arc shaped van and the place where the ball of light was. I panicked as I neared it for I could not see it, but as I drew closer I spotted it. It looked a little smaller now, but as I drew close I threw myself at it. There was another loud buzzing in my ears and I stumbled forwards, my head spinning and I fell to the ground. I looked up, my eyes swimming, desperate to focus and as I managed to slowly do so I saw my work bag on the floor and my mobile phone. I looked up the alley. It was all back as it was!
Ignoring my belongings on the floor I ran to the end of the alley and looked up the road. The traffic, even for this time in the morning, was heavy and I saw that the side wall of the chemists was back in place again. No gate on the end of the alley either. I walked back into the now empty alley, for the ark shaped van was gone again, the passageway completely empty except for a small round ball of crackling blue light which hovered in the air as before, again a little smaller this time, as if by me using it it had diminished in power somehow, and I sat down on the floor breathing heavily.
I picked up my mobile phone and checked the time, amazed to see that no time had passed at all! I put it back on the floor and sat looking at the spinning ball of energy for a while. It was quite hypnotic really, the blue light flashing as if trying to catch the air itself. I thought about what had happened, and I laughed. I could not explain it of course.
Yet only then did it come to me what I had not done, and I knew then that I would use this thing - whatever it was one more time, and so standing I threw myself at it and reeled as the buzzing sound shook me again, and I staggered back blind, my back resting upon what I now knew was the ark shaped Mortimer’s delivery van. This time I would go inside the shop!
I waited this time for my sense to clear. My work bag and phone was gone again, and yes, there was the gate at the end of the alley, and I turned to look at the van, because I knew that this was probably my last chance to do this, for the blue ball of energy was much smaller now, and I estimated that there was probably just one use of it left. Just enough juice to get me home.
I climbed the gate and was back down onto the pavement in a flash, and I walked up the road, poring over the contents of the side window for what could have easily been ten minutes. I genuinely have no idea, for I lost track of time. Finally, I had seen enough from the outside, and so I walked around the corner, and with a deep breath I walked along the pavement and into Mortimer’s toy shop for the very last time.
It was magnificent.
There was the archway, behind which were the stacked up boxes of Airfix soldiers, the model planes and tanks beyond that. From the ceiling hung bicycles and tricycles, more on the ground. Go-karts, skates and all sorts of good old fashioned summer toys: hula hoops, paddling pools, tennis racquets and the like.
Mister Mortimer stood behind the wooden counter, cabinets stuffed with toys I had long since forgotten about all around him. The shop did not seem too busy, t
hough there was one man in a long brown overall assembling a bike off to one side, and Mister Mortimer himself was busy with a woman and two little girls, a doll's house on the counter that both of the children were staring at, eyes open in wonder.
I crossed under the archway and looked at the soldiers, boxes stacked high, the models and glue behind the counter, boxes of dinky cars and trucks stacked there by number, and beyond that a train set ran along a long cabinet. It had been lovingly assembled, the board it was sitting on covered in gravel and green dust to resemble grass. There was a station and signal boxes; a level crossing, but the small steam train paid them no heed, circling round and round the track in an endless circle. I was staring at it as I heard a voice behind me.
“Come on dad!” I heard. “Can we have a box each this week?”
“Go on then.” I heard their father say and I stopped on the spot and slowly turned.
I was surprised at first just how young the two boys were, and I smiled for they looked like scruffy little buggers: all skin and bones and ears. Their shoes were scuffed, their shorts thread worn and hanging loosely.
But it was the man who caught my attention most.
I had not seen him for such a long time and a sob caught in my throat, for where I came from, or should I say when I came from he had been dead for over twenty years. He looked at me oddly as if he was trying to figure out whether he knew me or not, but I just smiled and he smiled back.
“They love the soldiers don’t they?” I said and he nodded,
“Can’t get enough of them.” he said and turned his attention back to his two sons who were by now pulling box after box off the display.
I looked at me then, but then back to my dad. I had forgotten just how handsome he had been. Ridiculously black hair, the small moustache. He was a big man too; tall and broad. I had forgotten that. Yet I saw also love, and as he leaned in to look at what his two sons were looking at I heard the smaller child speak. My brother.
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