Spot the Frippet: toy.

Children have no taste. 

Pastel-pink horse? Wistful rag doll dressed in faded prints?

Neither will cut any ice with your average toddler. Give him a blob of luminous plastic, or some indeterminate animal with features set in the leer of a particularly sinister clown, and he'll freeze to it with utter delight and determination -

- and thus ruin the décor of the entire house.

Ah well. I suppose making a gift of such a toy is a good way of revenging oneself on the most smugly annoying parents.

Still, it's not just the kids that need toys. There are adult collectors of dolls and trains, and to many of us (though when I say us, I actually mean you) what is a phone but, at heart, a toy?

At least they tend not to come with clowns' faces on them.

Yet.

Spot the Frippet: toy. This word appeared, from no one knows where, in the 1500s, when it meant a flirtation - though to Bishop Hugh Latimer, who died in 1555, a merry toy was an amusing anecdote.