Building imaginations

I used to love lego. I loved the bright colours, the shiny plastic smell, and the satisfying click as you pressed the pieces into place. You could buy kits and build things like cars and houses and castles and trains and football stadia and bridges. If you were so inclined you could build entire villages and some people got carried away with 'creative art'.

I used to build lots of neat windowless buildings. Because I never had any of the little lego people (did none of us, I wonder, or did my brother nick them all?) my houses were unpopulated, but they had nice roofs and pretty paths to the front door (it was just windows they lacked for some reason - I'm sure Freud would have a field day).

Sometimes my lego creations were the backdrops to my Pippa doll games (she was smaller than Sindy so you didn't have to use so many lego blocks) but mainly I just liked to tip all of the pieces out of the bucket onto the carpet and start clicking them together.

And Lego is still going strong. A friend came to visit recently and their lad had Lego pirates. The raft was constantly attacked by the kraken and Captain Goldtooth was suitably menacing from his crow's nest. I love the combination of practicality - following instructions and diagrams to build functional projects - and creativity. With lego you can build your own toys which is really quite exciting.

Some of this stuff has been hijacked by the geek market and there are video games and robot wars and all sorts of stuff that should really be confined to your parents' basement once you are over the age of 12, but some Lego spin-offs are still simply irrestible.