I built a time machine out of Lego

OK, I didn't literally build a time machine.

I mean, Lego certainly doesn’t contain the requisite pieces to overcome the current rules of time and space, so I was speaking figuratively. But it was still an amazing journey.

My nine-year-old daughter has had a recent spike in interest in building Lego. She got a couple of sets for Christmas, and over the last few months, she has built those. At the same time, I have been building a few sets I have had sitting around in my cupboard unbuilt since buying them (if I’m honest, I think I may have a Lego hoarding problem, but we won’t mention that to someone who constantly asks, “Why isn’t there any storage space in this house?”).

The two of us had built a couple of great sets, including the Corvette and the LOVE statue. Because my daughter was keen to stretch her skills, she would jump in and help me with the sets I was building.

We’d just finished one build, and she suggested, “We should build another one!” I did not need much convincing on that. So off to the Lego cupboard we went.

I was pulling out set after set, seeing if she wanted to build one, and then she saw the big flat box with the distinctive yellow pieces. “What’s that one?” She asked.

I looked at the box and immediately smiled. A few years ago, my Mum had started packing up the stuff I’d left at their house, and she’d sent me away with a heap of Lego sets from my childhood. There were the small space sets, a few Lego City sets, but one of the jewels in the crown was the Lego Castle.

With a level of glee reserved for 7-year-old boys on their birthday who open a present to discover it contains the Lego Castle (yes, that was me!) I said, “Oh wow, that’s the Lego Castle, we should build that!”

To my Mum’s credit, she’d already checked to make sure all the pieces were there before she packaged it up, and the original instructions, although torn, were still there too. I had hoped that maybe Lego had put their instructions for vintage sets on the Building Instructions Page to spare my poor eyes and having to use my phone’s camera to zoom in on the instructions, but it was all part of the adventure.

My daughter and I have built a few sets together over the years, but this one was extra special. It was as though it were two children building together. She shared my excitement at the nostalgia, and I shared her excitement at watching the set grow into a scene from history.

Of course, as a nine-year-old brain will do, she’d get distracted and start taking the knights on horseback to have a joust, but then she’d come back to helping me build the towers. I will admit, I’d forgotten how reliant the whole build was on 2 x 1 yellow bricks for the bulk of the structure.

By the end of the afternoon, it was built. My daughter wondered at the intricate details, the fact that you could open the castle up to play inside, and that the drawbridge would raise and lower (although we had to replace the now-worn-out drawbridge string).

But even more astounding was the feeling I got, reliving the memories of that day in 1979, when I first got the set, when I built it, and played with it. Then over the years I would disassemble it, pack it away for a while, then when I felt like it, drag the set out and build it again. It’s now sitting on the shelf in my office as a display piece, but sometimes the knights will have a joust, or there will be some swordplay. I can relive a childhood where I am a knight of the Yellow Castle.

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Thank you for reading. If you hadn’t already guessed, I’m a bit of a Lego nerd. Feel free to read my poetry about Lego

Or maybe read some of the adventures of Ace Brickman: Lego Detective: