To kick the New Year off to a good start, January’s ‘Thoughts’ theme is...
Books
I guess my biggest pleasure is the joy of books – well the content, particularly fiction, but a good dollop of non-fiction counts as well. The next biggest is the ability to read them. Do we take this ability for granted? I think many of us do. Very much so!
On the opposite side, my biggest disappointment is that my daughter and husband don’t share this utterly consuming passion for reading. Husband has read two of my cosy mysteries but that's all. I think only my nephew and a cousin have read any of my others. Which, as an author, is not just annoying, but hurtful... although there are mitigating circumstances for husband and daughter. (Kind of!) They are both severely dyslexic, so when it’s an uphill struggle to try to read words which jump about on a page, or blur, or wobble or just plain don’t make sense then where’s the pleasure in it? (I do still find it hard to accept my family hasn't read my books though :-/ )
Those of us who do read – and read a lot – on the whole don’t understand what it’s like not to read. Not reading hasn’t really made much difference to Daughter and Husband, I suppose because if you haven’t ever had something then you don’t miss it, but that’s difficult for us devoted readers to comprehend. I can’t imagine my life without books; reading them, writing them, owning them, enjoying them...
Having said that, Daughter has helped with producing my next book (Ghost Encounters of North Devon,) I've done the writing, she's done some of the photography and most of the special talented research. You'll find out more soon. (I promise!)
My first memory of books is of coming out of Walthamstow library clutching a Little Grey Rabbit book (Alison Uttley) I was thrilled because it was one I hadn’t read. I say ‘read’... was I reading books myself by then? I was four when we moved from Walthamstow to Chingford, ergo I wasn’t four when I had this memory - maybe nearly four? But I have no recollection of Mum, Dad or Big Sister reading me stories. And I don't remember not reading!
That’s another huge disappointment. (Oh the things us Mum’s suffer!) I started reading a Little Grey Rabbit book to Daughter when she was tiny, (yes I have copies of my favourites – they’re here on the shelf in my office). We got a couple of pages into the story, turned the page and there was a picture of Hare. Daughter freaked out. Hated the book. I was gutted. It was only when we moved here to Devon (12 years ago now!) that she and I discovered the reason why... she has a Hare Phobia. This was, undoubtedly, a Past Life residue because there are no hares in Epping Forest or in the Essex/London suburban border – at least I’d never seen one, so that instant, unfaked reaction of hers as a three year old to her very first sight of a hare in that storybook was, at last explained. She still freaks out, even at simple pictures of a hare, as to the real thing... there are quite a few here in Devon, only please don’t remind her! She's fine with rabbits. Not hares.
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| Jill and Blackboy |
I have always been disappointed that Daughter has never read any of my beloved pony stories that are another treasure of mine. Jill's Gymkhana, I was given this book as a ninth birthday present. The unwrapped parcel was obviously a book, I did feel a bit cheated, I admit, then I opened it... oh my goodness! I’d been unaware that there was such a thing as a Pony Story! I so desperately wanted a pony of my own (no way could we afford one,) so this was the next best thing. I devoured that book – the pages are now battered and the book somewhat fragile from overuse, but it is still a treasure.
One comment here though. Several years ago we went through that rather ridiculous Politically Correct rubbish. Blackboards had to be called whiteboards, for instance, and the Jill books had to be changed. Blackboy, her pony, had his name changed... I mean come on, he was called Blackboy because he was a black pony! There was absolutely nothing detrimental about it!
I digress: thank goodness for the local library (yes, the same one where I eventually worked as a library assistant, and the same one used as a base for my Jan Christopher Cosy Mysteries). I know I was in that library at least once a week after school, always reading, cherishing my next chosen book, always had my nose in a book. Always getting teased about it.
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South Chingford Library
©Alison Morton |
Anyone else remember being teased about getting ‘square eyes’ from reading too much? Or being told not to have the book so close to your eyes: ‘you’ll ruin your eyesight’. But I was extremely shortsighted so of course I held books close, I couldn’t bloomin’ see the print otherwise!
No one realised I could only see a blur before I was five years old. It took a teacher, eventually, to suggest to my mother that maybe I needed glasses. Didn’t it occur to her that I was always falling over things for a reason? (Now I can’t see because I’ve got Glaucoma – DO always get your eyes checked ESPECIALLY if relatives have Glaucoma, it is hereditary and you can keep it at bay if you catch it early enough. I didn’t.)
Actually, the teasing at Secondary School became bullying. I was an oddball because I preferred books to boys. (Hah! Still do! LOL)
Books – stories – were my escape. My only friends were characters in books. (Mostly pony friends who were lucky enough to own a pony. Tamzin and Rissa from Wish For A Pony, and the Punchbowl Farm series. (Monica Edwards) for instance. I still have all of them in paperback. Why oh why are they not available now on Kindle so I could still read them????
Reading took me away from the misery of school. (Apart from English, I hated school.) Reading took me to a different world.
Reading led to writing. I wrote pony stories (of course.) I wanted that pony, couldn’t have one, so invented Tara. Such a shame I never kept any of those scribbled stories. (I wonder where I got the name from? I was about twelve - I can only think Gone With The Wind must have influenced me somehow?)
Come the GCE exams... I’d finished the R.E, exam in half the time, now what to do? Obvious, I started writing a story. Asked for more paper. Then more. What I didn’t realise, all the other girls taking the exam assumed I was still answering questions and were worried because they hadn’t written much. I was even less popular after that. Didn't worry me to be honest - they left me alone!
The library was an ideal job for a square-eyed bookworm. All those books – brand new ones as well! Pony stories had led to adventure stories, science fiction, fantasy and then historical fiction. And writing my own novel.
I think I drove everyone mad with my constant 'When I write my best-seller...’
Took me a while to do it though. I didn’t get a publishing contract until I was forty – a week after my birthday, and that was back in 1993.
But where would we be without books? Where would we be without libraries and FREE access to books?
The biggest thrill this recent just-gone Christmas? We spent Christmas Day here at home with good friends and their little lad, who is two. I gave him a few board books, the first one he opened was Spot the Dog, a lift-the-flap of Spot. The delight? The little lad opened his present, and immediately exclaimed “SPOT!!!” then sat and 'read' every page.
Thank goodness for books.
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