I’m participating in the lovely RJ Scott’s annual autism blog hop again and this year the theme is childhood toys, so I’m talking about my childhood obsession with picture scraps…
Before I get on to this first and all-absorbing obsession of mine, a word or two about the hop. Firstly, you can check out RJ’s chosen charity, Lindengate here – it’s a mental health charity that works with autistic children like RJ’s son: https://mydonate.bt.com/charities/lindengate
More than half of children with autism have one or more chronic sleep problems.
A bunch of authors are posting throughout the blog hop and hosting giveaways to raise awareness. My giveaway prize is any of my backlist books to a commenter on the post. Edited to add: the winner is Alicia Fourie ❤
And so to scraps.
Does this inadequately-bewinged cherub look familiar to any of you?
The cherub was extremely familiar to me because when I was around 6-9 years old (it’s difficult to be exact but we’re looking at around 19809ish) I was an obsessive collector of scraps and this particular picture was ubiquitous!
Scraps were literally no more than pictures that you bought and collected. I stored mine between the pages of books. They were sold at my local newsagent in A4 size sheets, with the individual pictures held together with little tabs.
You can see the tabs holding the pictures together in the image below. I remember buying this very set and I ABSOLUTELY loved them. I would stare at them for ages. I remember thinking of this group as almost achingly tasteful, which, looking at them now is rather sweetly funny.
Scraps were currency. We swapped them (and some of the ones that were circulating amongst my friends were years old, passed on from older sisters and cousins). The seasonal angel scraps above – and the pink, blue and lavender angel heads at the start of this post – were very much at the premium end of what was available. The inadequately-bewinged cherub was rather less popular and scraps like the ones below (hands, flowers) were frankly despised.
And then there were the strange religious ones. I definitely had some of these ones…
I wonder what happened to my scraps? Presumably a day came when I tossed them out, or maybe I gave them to another wee girl. I can’t remember. But I still remember those angel faces, and the odd 1940s aesthetic that permeated all the pictures, even though I was buying them in the 1980s