Tell Me About Your Favourite Tin
I have a nostalgic fondness for tins - every house and shed had tins when I were a lad. I kept my marbles in a big tin and my cigarette card collections, colouring pencils and crayons in other tins.
Christmas always brought new tins in to the house - I always had a tin of Bluebird toffees, and we were given gifts of a tin of Quality Street, a tin of chocolate biscuits and sometimes a tin of shortbread, too. Those were the days when a tin of Quality Street was an acceptable Christmas present and not plastic tubs you put in your shopping trolley by the dozen and ate in October. Dad had a tin of pipe tobacco.
Every Saturday Gran would give me a travel sweet from her tin - just one! Never knew why she had travel sweets, she never went very far. Never knew why they were called travel sweets, either.
She even gave me bit of snuff from her snuff tin once - never again!
Mom kept money in a tin, to pay the milkman, baker and window cleaner. Our first aid kit was in another tin - plasters, TCP and germolene, as far as I recall.
Dad's shed was full of tins - full of nails, screws, washers, bolts, drill bits.
The heaviest tin of all was the button tin. Kept me occupied for hours when I was a tot - mom would tell me to find all the white ones, or that she needed every button that looked like the one in her hand. It was the mangles that killed the buttons, not poor sewing skills. The sewing kit was in another tin.
Tins came in all shapes and sizes, all colours and patterns. I don't think we ever bought a tin - they just happened to contain the Bisto, Alka Seltzer, tobacco, snuff, biscuits, Elastoplast, golden syrup. The big round ones made great drums.
I bet if you are over 40 you, too, can remember a houseful of tins.