It's been along time since the Janet & John books ( I seem to still remember the very particular style and colours of those books, the way the text was so clearly laid out on the page with lots of white space around it as if presaging the white space look of the uncluttered web page, but i can't remember any of the words. The next book was green, I think, and had the story of chicken-licken which at the time I was vaguely disturbed by, just as I was by the later knowledge, when I was nine or ten, that the sun would eventually blaze up and engulf the earth, this fact conflicting with my dimly felt sense of immortality.
I remember going up to read to the teacher - a Mrs Cohen, a smily, dark haired bird of a woman, slight and short, who nevertheless once banged mine and Simon Collis's heads together in the cloakroom of Halsford Park School because we had made dire and plain nasty threats that we would smash a little girl's dollies - I don't know why we did that, but I do remember the clash of heads. (You'd think this was a predicate of a bad future, these bullying little boys of six picking on a smaller girl in the class (actually she might not have been smaller - I can't even remember who she was|), but I did OK, and Simon Collis, according to my mother's best friend and Google was the British Ambassador to Iraq from 2012 to 2014 among other achievements). And I have to say that we were usually pretty well-behaved and peaceable children, but for some reason this event did happen).
When you read to Mrs Cohen you were allowed to read until you made a mistake and I was always keyed up and anxious, so wishing to read on and on and.. but I would always trip over a word or a pronunciation and that would be it, back to my table in the class. The next memory, though, is the same class./ I'm reading on my own Enid Blyton's Magic Faraway Tree, completely swept up in it. It is Mrs Cohen's personal copy because I have read every single reading book in the class. Somehow,. somewhere a reading bomb exploded in my head and I never stopped.
I remember going up to read to the teacher - a Mrs Cohen, a smily, dark haired bird of a woman, slight and short, who nevertheless once banged mine and Simon Collis's heads together in the cloakroom of Halsford Park School because we had made dire and plain nasty threats that we would smash a little girl's dollies - I don't know why we did that, but I do remember the clash of heads. (You'd think this was a predicate of a bad future, these bullying little boys of six picking on a smaller girl in the class (actually she might not have been smaller - I can't even remember who she was|), but I did OK, and Simon Collis, according to my mother's best friend and Google was the British Ambassador to Iraq from 2012 to 2014 among other achievements). And I have to say that we were usually pretty well-behaved and peaceable children, but for some reason this event did happen).
When you read to Mrs Cohen you were allowed to read until you made a mistake and I was always keyed up and anxious, so wishing to read on and on and.. but I would always trip over a word or a pronunciation and that would be it, back to my table in the class. The next memory, though, is the same class./ I'm reading on my own Enid Blyton's Magic Faraway Tree, completely swept up in it. It is Mrs Cohen's personal copy because I have read every single reading book in the class. Somehow,. somewhere a reading bomb exploded in my head and I never stopped.
Never stopped reading, yes, but what did I read? I didn't come from a well educated home - my Dad left school at 14 and was apprenticed as a draughtsman, my Mum had been at what was essentially a lower middle class finishing school until she was sixteen before she joined the Civil Service as a typist. From my Mum's background I had the children's classics - most of the Swallows and Amazons series, Richmal Crompton's William books, but I didn't care for them that much. There was one book though that I read and reread even though I didn't like the strong musty smell from its faux leather binding - Arthur Ransom's Old Peter's Russian Tales. (The smell is one that I love now, faded though it is, I bury my nose in the pages to inhale the feeling of reading these strange light and dark tales).
I like to think, I do think, it was the narrative excitement of Blyton and Biggles that kept me reading and reading but the powerful heart of fairy tales that eventually brought me to literature - and kept me sane.
Postscript - 15th January 2019
I was searching for somewhere in this blog where I thought I remembered lamenting how little time there was - but there isn't a search facility in this damn cheap blog software - all I found was the first part of Fifty five years a reader from three years ago, so even less time now - maybe not even the time to reread all the books I want to read again, let alone the new.
Oh and Simon Collis is now the British Ambassador to Saudi Arabia , and the only Ambassador to complete the Hajj - good on him!
I like to think, I do think, it was the narrative excitement of Blyton and Biggles that kept me reading and reading but the powerful heart of fairy tales that eventually brought me to literature - and kept me sane.
Postscript - 15th January 2019
I was searching for somewhere in this blog where I thought I remembered lamenting how little time there was - but there isn't a search facility in this damn cheap blog software - all I found was the first part of Fifty five years a reader from three years ago, so even less time now - maybe not even the time to reread all the books I want to read again, let alone the new.
Oh and Simon Collis is now the British Ambassador to Saudi Arabia , and the only Ambassador to complete the Hajj - good on him!
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