An Awfully Big Blog Adventure: Creating a new (very small) world

Sunday, 19 April 2026

Creating a new (very small) world - by Lu Hersey

It all started with the house leeks. Or maybe it was when I bought that bowl in a charity shop. the kind of thing my mother would have considered unbelievably tasteless but my grandmother would have loved. In fact, maybe it all started over half a century ago, and I can blame it on my grandmother.

Back in the time before she came to live with us, among many wonderful treasures in her bungalow, (my mother's opinion of them differed) she had a potted cactus garden which I absolutely loved. Hidden between the cacti there was a tiny ceramic bridge over a mirror pond, and a tiny ceramic Chinese pagoda nearby. I always wished there were tiny people to go with it. Maybe that's what makes us start writing, creating fantasy lands in stories, like capsule worlds we can control. Unlike the news.

Anyway, because of the bowl, the house leeks or my grandmother, I strayed into a whole new universe. Turns out there must be countless others out there, like me, creating fantasy worlds, whether it's for model trains, mini dinosaur parks, or tiny tanks and soldiers for war games. We start sensibly in places like ebay and etsy, then tumble right down into a snake pit called Temu. Beware! Temu can suck sensible people into rabbit holes it's hard to escape from. There is literally no end to the fascinating awfulness that Temu can produce.

And even as I worried somewhere at the back of my mind about the poor Chinese people who work creating bizarre stuff no one needs and which will inevitably lead to the collapse of Western civilisation, I found it almost impossible to stop searching for tiny objects to put in my new fairy bowl universe.

Fortunately I was saved by the cat, demanding second breakfast. She started yowling loudly and consistently, just as I was about to hit PAY on Temu.

As I grumbled downstairs to appease the beast, it suddenly occurred to me - I already had everything I needed! I'd only needed to leave the Temuverse for a moment to remember. Even better, I realised what I had was much classier (in my opinion - others might disagree) than anything my online search had come up with.

A quick hunt after feeding the cat unearthed some glow in the dark forest spirits from Princess Mononoke which had been lurking under a money plant downstairs for so long, they'd almost vanished into the compost. They look very happy to be rescued.

Even better, I remembered a magical Christmas present, handmade for me by my friend Dandelion and buried somewhere behind a pile of notebooks on my desk. It's perfect. (If you like it, he sells all kinds of wonders in his Glastonbury shop, Dandelion Dreamz, which are also available online),