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Love and the doll's house

Love and the doll's house

Date: 2025-08-27

What is it about memory that the most recent of events are forgotten and those more than half a century ago, shine as yesterday? Recently, I found a knitted doll in a charity shop, so lovingly made with curly red hair and colourful stripey clothes. She was soft and squishy, her legs flopped, lips smiled. As I moved away, I had a sense that she wanted a hug. To be given a home, some love and care.

In that moment, there was a flash. My father. A man who loved to make things. Pottering about in a wooden shed. And when I was four turning five, he came out of the shed bearing a doll's house. Jesus might have been a carpenter; my father was an artist with wood.

The house was bright red, the whole front opened on hinges to reveal a wonderland of magic. You see my father had an eye for detail. He not only made the house, with its chimney pot and bold green door, but the contents too. Beds, a cooker, a dining table and chairs. These could be moved around so the bed ended up in the kitchen and the chairs outside on the lawn. It was a world of make believe, imagination, pieces essential in a child's life. That and the fact my older brothers taught me to climb trees and play with dinky cars, life was a balance.

It was what my Dad built, like many other things in our house and beyond. But then he was gone. Dead. When I was barely ten.

There was a jingle as the door of the Hospice shop opened. By now, Daisy the doll was clasped to my chest.

In this world of robots and intelligence that is artificial, will fathers continue to craft doll houses, daughters open wooden doors into magical worlds.?What then is the future of touch if there is no feel? What then the future of memory, if there is no past? What then the future of craftmanship, if there is a China Mall down the road?