Skyring

James May's Toy Stories by James May

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


Oh boy! Oh boy oh boy oh boy!

This book pretty well summarised my childhood. All those happy days spent building stuff and watching trains and cars go round and getting bits of Lego out from behind the couch are coming back.

James May has way too much fun. He gets to play with the coolest toys around, but here he is going back to his own childhood, looking at the history of slot cars and train sets and things and then doing something utterly mad. Like building a house out of Lego or getting a mention in the Guinness Book of Records for the longest slot car track or building a 1:1 plastic Airfix kit of a Spitfire - complete with authentic cover art.

This blocky book kept me glued to the pages as I raced through the chapters and tracked the history of my favorite kit.

This is a book for the nerd remembering the good old days of boyhood. I know it was wrong of me to send my Tri-Ang locomotive through a cardboard tunnel of fire - especially when it got stuck half way through and poor old Polly melted - but I wasn't alone. James May was shooting down Jap Zeros with a pellet gun and modifying his Scalextric Mini and building rocketships out of Lego.

And ramming bungers up the back ends of old Junkers.

Whatever happened to the squadron of Spitfires I used to have?

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