Nursery rhymes, stories, and music
'Please may we have Toffee the Teddy-bear soon? ' says a disconsolate small girl to the wireless set at two o'clock each day. ' She has waited so long,' says her mother, and her request has been echoed of late by so many children, inducing a boy whose mother has had to invent' a whole saga to fill the gap,' and a girl who ' still tries to knit for her dolls as Lulupet knitted for " Toffee." '
Why are these tales by Jane Alan so much loved and so long remembered? Perhaps because Teddy-bears are tuoh favourite toys; perhaps because Toffee is funny—he tumbles downstairs instead of walking, he cannot carry a stick without fits getting mixed up with his legs; or 'perhaps because the relationship between
Lulupet and Toffee resembles an ideal relationship between mother and child. Lulupet, wise, tolerant, affectionate, is all that a ohild needs his mother to be; Toffee, clumsy and ingenuous, well-meaning and serious, is all that a small child feels himself. So Toffee and Lulupet return this week in the three old stories and two new ones, with Julia Lang as storyteller and Catherine Edwards to introduce the programme.
Elizabeth A. Taylor