52 Weeks of Personal Genealogy & History - Toys

Week 7: Toys. What was your favorite childhood toy? Is it still being made in some form today?

To single out one favourite toy as a Kid for me is an easy one. It was Alf. The brown Alien from 80's TV series Alf. My Grandmother bought me a soft toy of him in about 1987. I used to love the show when I was about 4-ish. If you've heard of the show then you'd probably know that they don't make them anymore nor the TV series. Well, not here at least. I don't know about anywhere else in the world. I still have him now, 24 years later. But now I think about it, you might not class it as a Toy but I thought it would be worth a mention, but when I was about 5 years old I was given a book called 'The Velveteen Rabbit'. Which was my favourite book at that age and it's one of the Books that helped me learn to read and helped me to love reading. It was given to me my Aunt for my 5th Birthday.

A tidier version of the Alf I was given

The Velveteen Rabbit book I was given.

52 Weeks of Personal Genealogy & History - Radio & Television

Week 6: Radio and Television. What was your favorite radio or television show from your childhood? What was the program about and who was in it?

Considering that I don't really watch much TV now, in fact I don't really like it that much anymore, I did have a fair few favourite TV programmes when I was a Kid. The one that sticks out the most was one that was called 'Round The Twist'. An Australian Children's TV programme shown on CBBC in the 90's. It was about a Family, called the Twists that move in to a Lighthouse and since they moved in all sorts of strange paranormal things would happen. Like the Lighthouse being haunted and involving other various magical adventures, along with various non-magical sub-plots surrounding the family. Such as the Dad, Tony Twist, being romantically interested in Bronson Twists (son) School Teacher and quite often having Harold Gribble, a real-estate agent trying to come up with various ways to get the Twists to move out of the Lighthouse for his own gain and always failing in some comical way.