When I was a toddler, way back in the
mists on time (1983ish), I went to nursery at a place called the Little Folks’ Lab.
The name suggests my childhood was a
scientific experiment, but it wasn't. I wasn't raised in a cage and forced to
eat lipstick whilst chain-smoking every brand of cigarette under the sun. I
don't know why the people who set up the Little Folks’ Lab went for such an
analytical under-the-microscope-sounding name, but whatever the reason, it
clearly worked, as it drew my parents in. So it was that I spent the period of
my life between drooling at home and drooling at infant school, drooling in
this Stevenage-based child-minding facility.
(...which makes it sound like a borstal.)
I remember my time at nursery as being
pretty magical. It was a wonderful place, with all the best toys of the age:
Big Yellow Teapot, Fuzzy Felt, Mr Frosty and the like - but the most exciting
thing of all was their Wendy House. It was the Wendy House to end all Wendy
Houses, as it had (get this) TWO floors.
You wouldn't think I'd be so impressed by
stairs, as I had them in my house; at least twelve of the buggers, working from
memory. One thing my childhood abode didn't have was a scaled down babushka-like
home-within-a-home that I could disappear into with my friends and never come out
(until orange squash-and-nap-time, that is).
The Little Folk's Lab Wendy House had
better facilities than most people's real homes. It even had a kitchen with an
oven, which thankfully wasn't plumbed into the gas supply. Most bizarrely of all, the kitchen was full of fake food, including a tubful of realistic plastic biscuits that looked exactly like all the popular brands. They wouldn't get those past
health & safety these days; least of all when hidden in a 'building' that
was impervious to grown-ups, or adult supervision.
According to Google, the Little Folk's Lab is still in
existence. I hope it's still as fun as it was. Apparently, it was
once the home of Denholm Elliott; the outer building and not the inner one,
that is.