10 "Useless" Presents mentioned by Dylan Thomas in A Child's Christmas in Wales

Go on to the Useless Presents.

1. Bags of moist and many-coloured jelly babies
2. and a folded flag and a false nose
3. and a tram-conductor's cap and a machine that punched tickets and rang a bell;
4. never a catapult; once, by a mistake that no one could explain, a little hatchet;
5. and a celluloid duck that made, when you pressed it, a most unducklike sound, a mewing moo that an ambitious cat might make who wished to be a cow;
6. and a painting book in which I could make the grass, the trees, the sea and the animals any color I please, and still the dazzling sky-blue sheep are grazing in the red field under the rainbow-billed and pea-green birds.
7. And troops of bright tin soldiers who, if they could not fight, could always run.
8. And Snakes-and-Families and Happy Ladders.
9. And Easy Hobbi-Games for Little Engineers, complete with instructions. Oh, easy for Leonardo!
10. And a whistle to make the dogs bark to wake up the old man next door to make him beat on the wall with his stick to shake our picture off the wall.

(Plus - And a packet of cigarettes: you put one in your mouth and you stood at the corner of the street and you waited for hours, in vain, for an old lady to scold you for smoking a cigarette, and then with a smirk you ate it.)