Marbles
There is no more glorious a toy than a new bag of bulging crunching marbles – shining like fish eyes, ready to roll and clink their way through an afternoon of mini boules, marble petanque and trying to retrieve them from under the sofa and the dog’s mouth.
Thank goodness then for Sam McCarthy Fox and his marble championships. They are held every year in Tinsley Green in West Sussex. The village is said to have been the scene of an epic marble battle in Elizabethan times over the hand of a local maiden.