Toys

As Wordsworth said, "The child is the father of the man..."

Huw Williams | 17:50, Saturday 22 February 2014 | Turin, Italy

Do you know how to spot a British toddler in an Italian airport? Apparently you look for the one with a cuddly toy. I hadn't noticed this until an Italian friend pointed it out to me, but since then I've confirmed his theory - you don't see so many Italian kids out and about with cuddly toys.

Kitty may be an Italian signorina in many of her ways, but she is suddenly very much into her soft toys. She has many, mostly accumulated through the kindness of others since birth, and all of a sudden her little army of furry friends are indispensable, especially at bed time. I call them her posse. They all have imaginative names like "Cat" and "Bunny" - sometimes we have to distinguish between different members of the same species with even more imaginative names like "Little Cat" and "Big Bunny". (And to think that I went to University...)

... you don't see so many Italian kids out and about with cuddly toys

Quite often Kitty decides to move from one room to another with her posse, en masse. We laugh to see this tottering mountain of fur staggering across the hallway, with only the legs of Kitty beneath them to give away the secret of their movement. All is well, until one drops to the floor, and then the cosmic struggle ensues to pick him or her up without dropping one of the others.

I have tried to explain to her that maybe she would like to play with her animals one by one, or even carry them two by two (after all there is a good precedent for that), but the lady is unmoved. She may be very young, but Kitty is already intoxicated with the very human obsession of having it all.

There was a time when people lived in beautiful dependence - content not to have it all

But then this hasn't always been a very human trait. There was a time at least, when our rugged independence was neither valued nor sought after. There was a time when people lived in beautiful dependence - content not to have it all - but rather to enjoy a relationship with the giver of good gifts over the gifts themselves. But with the lying promises of a serpent, their desires changed and the rest as they say, is history.

So maybe I shouldn't be so surprised that my words to Kitty fall on deaf ears. Maybe none of us are so very different. Maybe as we get older, it's just the toys that change. Maybe very few of us are even aware, as we accumulate so zealously, of a faint hiss ringing in our ears.

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