We have just had an interesting trip to Bluewater and there was one aspect of the trip that we felt deserved a post all of its own. That is the issue of a lack of British made children’s toys.
It would seem that buying British made toys is an impossible task. We visited Hawkins Bazaar, which was filled to the rafters with noisy, flapping and brightly coloured gadgets, non of which are made in the UK (or at least that we could see). Lucan inevitably picked up a load of stuff all produced in China which,when we had to escape this sensory overload, we had to wrestle off him. As you can imagine this ended in Lucan screaming and kicking as we fought our way through the far too narrow isles.
We next went John Lewis, which we felt might be a better bet to find British made toys. However, this was not to be the case. Having turned over every box it seemed like every country was represented but the UK. There were small plastic toys made in Germany, novelty items made in Poland and well known favorites made in the Scandinavian counties. But the overwhelming majority were made in China – even the John Lewis own brand stuff. Rather depressingly even the old British favorites, like Corgi cars and Hornby trains, are now produced in the Far East.
Lucan picked up a toy tractor and a stuffed Paddington bear, both of which were not British. We were desperate to find something to negotiate these two items away from him. We did find one saving grace, Orchard Toys, who produce books and jigsaw puzzles. Using all of our parental negotiation skills and some slight-of-hand we got him to the till with just the Orchard Toys tractor puzzle.
It has to be said that this made us both feel really rubbish. We knew that there were things on offer that Lucan would have loved but could not have because of our self imposed rules. It was really hard not to relent when he was fawning over these, perfectly nice toys.
Moving forward, the concern for us is that Britain just might not make fun toys for kids anymore. More generally you can find plenty of twee wooden trains, and the Orchard Toys puzzles are great, but where is the proper toy manufacturing in this country?
We have already seen in our search for all things British this year that we can make molded plastic items, electrical components and of course we know we are good at traditional wooden items. Why then are there not companies making toys for the children of the UK to play with? Why are companies like John Lewis outsourcing even their production of wooden toys to Indonesia and China, a mainstay of traditional British toy manufacturing? We would love to know.
Reusable nappies seem to have such a devout following, and generate such passionate advocacy from the parents that use them, that you cannot simply dismiss the concept as hippy nonsense. It seems that those that use them come from a broad spectrum of society and are not all eco-warriors, earth mothers or smell overwhelmingly of patchouli oil. Many of them, in our experience, seem quite reasonable people who live squarely in the modern world. So, it would be unfair for us to be totally dismissive of their virtues. But in short, if you were to ask us if we would be using them if there was any other British made disposable alternative, we would have no hesitation in saying no. We also fully accept that this standpoint may indeed change as we get used to the concept of waking up and scraping poo every morning. 
The written word is often said to the greatest of man’s creations. I tend to agree. However, as far as old books are concerned, they apparently have no value. We have been wrangling with the issue of getting rid of 4 large boxes of books for about 5 years. They have even moved with us twice. The problem is that nobody wants them. We have approached charities, local hospitals, free listings ect… This weekend we decided to take drastic action.
Today we received our new frying pans ordered from Netherton Foundry in Shropshire. These are the sort of pans that Lucan’s children will be using, so while they are about £45 each they are a real investment (so long as you look after them that is). I was excited to give them a whirl so decided that fish cakes would be a fitting christening.
The next process unfortunately we couldn’t see in action, although as Suzy said it was very very noisy and I don’t think Lucan would have enjoyed it. This was the disgorging room where the sediment of the second fermentation is quickly frozen in the neck of the bottle and then pops out as a sediment ice cube before the bottle is topped up, corked and capped. Lucan got a souvenir for the day in the form of an unused cork which was huge in comparison to the cork that pops out the top of the bottle.
After all this there was the small question of lunch for which we went upstairs to The Swan at Chapel Down (a review of which we will post separately). And then a little bit of shopping was in order before heading home. Our stomachs were full of great food and great drink but our hearts were equally full of pride that such quality was being produced so close to home. Well done Chapel Down. Please keep beating the French at their own game!
