26 Childrens Winters

The Museum of Childhood is full of objects rich in character and history. When I saw the item I’d been allocated, though, my first reaction was disappointment – swiftly followed by apprehension. What could I possibly find to say about that? That was an assortment of animated Christmas movies on DVD: Frozen, The Snowman, Elf,…

Babes in the Wood. It’s a morbid story. A dying father entrusts his two children to his brother. He loves them for a year, but then finds them boring, so pays two villains to kill them. The murderers take the children into a wood. But they fight about the blood money. One of them kills…

First… The negatives: The fear that, as a writer of 50 word stories, finding those extra 12 words for my first 26 mission would cause me to collapse with exhaustion. Then… The positives: Joining a team of diverse, talented and creative people in a project centred around one of my favourite places, the Museum of…

Before a 26 project I’m always worried about whether I’ll be able to relate to my ‘object’. ‘Skating boots’ didn’t mean much to me until I remembered the one time I did skate as a child. The trail through town to the frozen pond, the cold hands and feet … the borrowed skates, the ankle…

The first thing that struck me when I saw these objects was the delicate, sparkling papier mache skulls. Far from the turnip lanterns of Scottish tradition, these have their roots in Latin American Day of the Dead celebrations. Similar to the Celtic Samhain beliefs, it’s thought that for one night the boundaries between living and…

Somewhere amongst my Northern roots lies a tie to Scotland, knotted in the heart of Edinburgh, where my Grandma grew up. And it was Betty Smith that first handed me a Toffee Apple and warm tattie. So when the brief landed to write about fireworks, I couldn’t wait to get stuck in to what makes…

Birds in a Nest Marketing literature for post-war playing cards sing of their bright, permanent colours, but card games initially reminded me of being caged indoors by winter weather in the suburban house where I grew up with two older siblings. Our natural habitat was always the garden, and indoors we chorused, ‘I’m bored’. As…

The brief for #26Winters span into my inbox one topsy-turvy morning: the baby had given up sleeping… I was grasping at muted mindful ways of entertaining her sister. I looked at the objects pictured: “Marbles…MARBLES! Why have I got marbles, when I’m losing mine,” my internal dialogue muttered. A trip to the museum was needed,…

I’m in the ‘jigsaws are for Christmas not for life’ brigade but I was pleased to get jigsaws from 26’s Secret Santa swag bag. One of the things I do is write the words on the walls in museums. So writing museum labels is familiar territory and a whole 62 words for a label is…

The sporty board games that are my #26winters inspiration initially gave me a warm blast of nostalgia; remembering holidays playing endless family bouts of Scrabble in front of log fires. But after research, these vintage games revealed connections to historical events that imbued them with something more than just imagined memories of family fun. The…