Worried about Childhood Obesity? Get this.......

So, let's recap on last week...... I drove to my London house on Wednesday to try and fix the washing machine.... and failed. On Thursday I drove to London for dinner..... and it was great. On Friday, I drove to London again, to meet an engineer who was actually qualified to fix the washing machine.... and he did just that.

After all that driving, I was feeling pretty Londoned-out, so it was with relief that I arrived back in Oxford on Friday evening, safe in the knowledge that I could relax and wouldn't have to experience the M40 motorway for a little while. I chilled out, watched a bit of 'Big Brother' (yeh, I know it's tat, but I can't help being a voyeur), and went to bed.

Saturday morning arrived, and I had planned a leisurely weekend catching up with emails and doing odd jobs around the house.

Everything would have been hunky dorey and gone to plan if my phone hadn't beeped the arrival of a text. It was from Steve and it said: 'don't forget to get Izzy a birthday present.'

Shit. I had totally forgotten my own daughter's birthday (which is on the 28th June). It's not like we hadn't discussed it, because we had. But it had seemed a conceptual thing that was going to happen sometime in the future.  Yep, and if you hadn't guessed, diary-management isn't my strong point.

I needed a plan and fast. And like a Sherpa clamped in the jaws of a lion-trap, I came up with a cunning plan. I was going to visit a store called 'Toys R Us'. I had seen adverts for the store on TV, and it seemed the perfect place to pick up some presents for Izzy..... even better, it was only 20 minutes drive away from my house.

Fast forward two hours and try to envisage me in a store full of toys that were totally alien to me. I mean, I grew up playing marbles, making mud pies and building dens out of sticks. If we had toys, they were made out of wood. And, as a kid, as soon as I got home from school, I was kicked outdoors with my brothers and told to stay there until dinner was ready.

It was a very different world to the one thrust upon me by Toys R Us. It was with horror that I viewed the aisles crammed full with cheap plastic crap. Then, when I thought it couldn't get any worse, I spotted this (and yes it is for real!):

Pic.No.1. A toy 'McDonalds Drive Thru'

Ok. So let's get this straight. In a time when childhood obesity is shooting through the roof, and the National Health Service is creaking due to fat-related illnesses, a toy manufacturer came up with the idea to produce a replica 'McDonalds Drive Thru'?  Yep, you read right, it's a toy that allows kiddies to practice feeding their chums with 'Satured Fat Burgers'. Surely this is a clear case of McDonalds grooming youngsters .... or is it me being bah humbug?

Bring back the marbles and hopscotch any day. I would have added 'Ring a Ring of Roses', but even I admit that it was boring as hell.

P.S. I was just sat in the garden enjoying the warm evening sunshine, when a pissed-off looking girl ran past in pursuit of two loose dobbins galloping up the main street in Forest Hill. That doesn't happen much in London.

P.P.S. Just for the record, I did NOT buy Izzy the toy McDonalds Drive Thru. I bought her a Doctor's outfit. And a ball. And a frisbee.