Right little, tight little island

As a child I was always, understandably, enchanted by the miniature. Tiny models of the inside of a Boeing 707 in the BOAC office would have me happily entranced as my mother and father arranged flight and stop offs with the pretty lady. Just next door was a shop aptly named "Good Companions" and they had a dolls hospital. I knew that it must be splendid because on the counter, for sale, was a filigree four poster bed, just the right size for my Barbie doll, and if they knew that then the dollies they took in had to be very well cared for.

I was traumatised at 14 to find out that the doll's hospital was, in fact, a large room filled with kapok and glue, baskets of dismembered hands, legs and heads, switches of horse tails being glued piece by piece on some poor creature whose mother had obviously been left alone too long with the scissors.

Cover of Miss Happiness and Miss Flower

One of my favourite books, both then and now, was The Borrowers. An enchanted but never sickly tale of little people who 'borrow' from the 'big'uns (us) to furnish their houses and feed themselves. Another delight was Rumer Godden's Miss Happiness and Miss Flower: two Japanese dolls who had a very special house made for them. I remember vividly the use of a certain kind of pencil case, using the same mechanism as a roll top desk. I made my mother's life a misery as we searched high and low for just such a case - finally  finding them in a Kashmiri shop at the back of the New Market,

Even as I outgrew dolls still found the small microcosmic items irresistible; thus my mother could happily spend a morning in Hamilton's the jewellers looking the Cooch Behar emeralds as they were prepared for their transport to Paris and Cartier whilst I looked at the exquisite jaguars, tigers, owls and snakes made of enamel and precious stones. Back opal crabs, turqousie parrots with diamond eyes and golden snake with emerald eys a flick of a ruby tongue

I went to the Cotswold's today a microcosm of an England that has gone, a sepia image of days gone by where the  market halls was not overlaid with a keen eye on the tourist trade. But it did remind me again of how the small can enchant and delight. I coudn't live there - too small, but I still loved it the way it made feel about an England that does still exist - where the church clock stands and ten to three and there still is honey for tea.

So - my perfect house built in 1560 of honey coloured Cotswold stone, just outside Calcutta with views to the sea on ones side and the mountains on the other. And of course, a collection of doll's houses. I just hope the borrowers can find me.

Related articles

• Creepy and Disturbing Mummy Dolls (planetoddity.com)
• Rumer: Seasons of My Soul - review (guardian.co.uk)
• A guy and dolls: Seattle man charged with stealing part of Bothell woman's extensive, valuable doll collection (pnwlocalnews.com)
• The Oxfordshire Cotswolds at its best (audleyblog.com)