I was minding my own business on Sunday night, when I happened across 'James May's Toy Stories' and his attempt to recreate the Brooklands racing circuit. Using Scalextric. On the exact route of the original life size circuit, now broken up with roads, housing estates, factories, ten foot fences and erm... ponds. This I had to watch! As the track took shape, I was mesmerised by those magic bits of track, and it got me yearning to get my own set out from my parents' loft. Oh yes, faithful readers, I still have my Scalextric set!!
Once the programme was over, I was up in the loft, fueled by memories of racing round bends, streaking down long straights with the trigger all the way in, seeing the cars taking off, unable to cling to the track. I recalled having the track set up almost permanently in the loft (previously the only space with enough hard surface in the house - I had terrible disapppointment upon discovering the problems caused by carpet!!). Hours were spent up there in my mid-teens with friends or even alone, sometimes racing seriously, but mostly trying to get the cars to leave the track and plummet through the loft hatch to the floor below.
And now that age and wisdom are on my side (not to mention picking up tips from the show), I feel ready to take on those black track sections, the cross overs, and hairpin bends. In my favour, my parents now have much less carpet down, and I can pass it off as being for my son.
I located the Scalextric set, but was immediately distracted by something much, much more exciting -Subbuteo! Now this really got my blood pumping, and my index fingers twitching. It was pretty much all there - a nice astroturf pitch, balls, a good selection of teams... but I couldn't find the goals!! I remembered selling some of my assets many years ago, but surely not all my goals?!! As I searched, I found my scoreboard, with box of cardboard team names, more teams (including the Arsenal away kit from 1992 - remember the awful yellow with funny blue detail?) and was transported back to my formative years, before Sega Game Gears, Sony Playstations and the like. This was REAL football as far as I was concerned.
I remembered the Christmas I received my first basic set - with teams Sampdoria and Poland. I remembered my dad glueing the pitch to a piece of chipboard so i could always have a flat surface (and playing on that surface until it was virtually non-existant). I remembered my first Subbuteo player casualty, crushed innocently underfoot after an over-exhuberant flick. Then the spending of pocket money on new teams (the ones that could pass off as more than one club), building up quite a collection allowing competitions of increasing size. The hours spent battling to beat my brother once, just once. I managed it a few times, but invariably my attempts ended in defeat. I can also picture the frustration and tension that came from trying to put those shirt number transfers on the players backs. Lord knows how many I wasted by getting them stuck under my nails, or accidentally folding them in half rendering them useless!!
I remembered the excitement when friends got new sets and new teams. Going round to a mates house with your new team ready to take them on... At one point a Subbuteo league was mooted, but never got off the ground. What I would give now to have succeeded. I recalled the sad day when I lost enough of my Polish players to render the team no longer viable and had to pack them away.
Then, as I grew and moved on to the computer games, the Subbuteo was sidelined into the cupboard, out of sight, but not always out of mind. But before long, too many years had passed by, and the Subbuteo was a forgotten gem. Then, I think I had one of those moments when you yearn to revisit your childhood (usually in the moment you realise it was over about ten years before) and demanded to see 'my Subbuteo'. I can remember feeling disappointed at seeing the sparseness of my previously substantial collection (down to the aforementioned sale) and investigating the prices of new teams. To my horror, I saw that Subbuteo had changed!! It was now a pale imitation of it's former self - pieces of cardboard adorned with real player photographs had replaced the brittle plastic indiscriminate players. I felt a great resentment that Subbuteo had had to sink to these depths to compete with the likes of FIFA and Pro Evolution on all the games consoles.
But now, as with Scalextric, I'm ready to revisit Subbuteo and recapture the thrill of 'flick to kick'.
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