This is your Princess calling!

Every little girl goes through this stage bar the odd exception, my inner child was none and I still can't get it out of my system.

 In your little world you are the Princess, whose world revolves around your needs natural as perceived by you as you live in your imaginary castle complete with it's flag.

In this castle you have servants usually boys to do all the things you want to happen at that very instant and woe betide them if they don't!

Some of us could turn this into a game you played at school recess or at home or in the park and in lots of ways it's really cute as for one thing you have a lovely set out dresses and tiaras and magical slippers.  Yummy!

It's this kind of innocent play that many of us look back on with fondness although acting in that kinda  pushy manner isn't really to be recommended in real life. Give me an outfit and I'll play Princess Pushy with you all day!

Every girls friend

It's a basic truism, that a child and it's teddy bear cannot be separated no matter what and if anything happens to  it it is like a death in the family.
My own Little Girl side is very much alive and kicking having a strong bond with my own teddy bears that I treasure. This image means a lot to me because it illustrates something quite important, the notion of the teddy bear as your 'real' friend and the girl is showing him the stars in the night-time sky because she loves him so much, she wants to share this magical event.
I like many name my teddy bears in age-old  ceremony that binds us together and still frequently hug them, telling them all my secrets - the good as well as the bad in the knowledge they're safe.
Don't ever lose the magic!

Beatles Second Album

This must of been one of the first studio albums by the Beatles I bought.
It was March 1979 if I remember correctly and I spent the weeks allowance on it in a matter of minutes!
The label was a Green Apple which suggests it might of been old stock as the later ones such as my current copy are Purple with the Capitol dome logo.
I still get a buzz from hearing Thank You Girl in stereo.

Kiki's Delivery Service

At the instigation of a online friend from a forum I recently bought this title in the acclaimed Studio Ghibi collection.

Adapted by Hayao Miyazaki from the Japanese childrens book by Eiko Kadono, it is about Kiki - a thirteen-year-old witch, and daughter of a witch - who is eager to leave home and spend a year working away from home. Her only talent is flying on her broomstick, but she sets off with her black cat JiJi) and finds a big city by the sea that she decides to live in.

She makes a deal with the bread store owner to work for her board in store that soon transforms into a courier service delivering anything from pies to pets. In this activity she -a polite, cheerful if naive child - encounters the rudeness and spoilt behaviour of others especially of a girl of her own age.

She encounters a boy on a bicycle who becomes her friend but undergoes a crisis of confidence losing her ability to fly. Only by looking into herself can she regains her abilities saving the boy from a Zeppelin flight that goes disastrously wrong.

What I liked about was the attention to detail in the drawings coupled with the message of triumph over adversity it presents.

Sports day

One essential ritual of my school life was the annual Summer school Sports day where like it or not you were entered into the various sporting competitions for your school year group and house (cos we had operated a 'House' system).
There were  a number of them that stick in my mind and this is one of them.

That's the Egg and Spoon race that every junior school I went to always had  with the point being to fast walk with the egg balanced on a spoon not dropping or breaking, a feat that require much co-ordination the likes of which I never had!

Often there would be running races along a predetermined distance  with the first to reach the winning post getting a prize. Okay I could kinda run but staying in lane was hard going!
The other  common race was the Sack Race where you'd stand up wearing a sack over your PE kit holding the edges and have to run with the itchy material not tripping up over yourself which usually happened.
Usually some teacher or helper had the first aid kit at hand!
Although I was rubbish at it, I enjoyed taking part although we'd have to walk to the local park where it was held and was the 'Mascot' for our House.

The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya

Well this was going to happen sooner but I got waylaid so here goes...

The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya.

I wanted this so much when it came out around November time last year but if ya hadn't noticed there's a recession on and one consequence of this was threat Beez's UK distributor went into receivership but I managed to get this reissue.

The story revolves around Haruhi Suzumiya, a high school girl obsessed with finding all forms of the extraordinary and supernatural, and Kyon, a cynical classmate who proclaims his non-belief in such matters and narrates the series. After being displeased with the mundane happenings at school and the lack of interesting after-school clubs, she forms her own, the SOS Brigade, to investigate any mysterious happenings, with Kyon forcibly drafted as its second member.

She drafts in additional members into the SOS club and in time they are revealed to be the extraordinary characters she is seeking (Yuki, an artificial human created by the extraterrestrial Integrated Data Entity; Mikuru, Time Traveller; and Itsuki, esper), sent by their various organizations to observe Haruhi. All see Haruhi as possessing a superhuman control over the universe, capable even of recreating the entire universe in a state of dissatisfaction and attempt to prevent this by keeping her entertained, holding her powers in check, and maintaining the illusion of a normal life.

The series became an Internet phenomenon and in the absence had to make do with a subbed import with so-so quality but have now gotten the UK R2 Re-issue 4 dvd set

Debbie

My 'Little Girl' side has always had a mania for dolls, initially as objects of play or as a means of experimenting with images of how I could look and later on into the field of collecting as objects.

This side of my Little Girl nature has never gone away.

This is a picture of a porcelain doll I've had since my teens called Debbie who has long pantaloons.

She was bought for me from a doll fair near Macclesfield and she's been with me no matter where I've been living ever since. I like the blouse and dress she's wearing.