On reading (and writing)
Mum had me reading before I started school, albeit we didn’t start school back in the day until we were five which by today’s standards was late. By the time I was in Reception class I was well up on my Ladybird early learners. Once there I whipped through the Janet and John’s like they were on fire, frustratingly held back by being only able to check off so many pages a day. Those very early days are imprinted on my young mind, the books in the fold away wooden cart with those plastic covered spring stretchers that are used for net curtains holding the rows of colourful covers up. The reading card with the date to tick off, the flash cards that teacher would produce and get us all to read, spell and copy. The smell of the library corner, the smell will stay with me forever, like a warm comfortable hug.
Becoming a fully fledged member of the public library was the single most exciting day of my young life. We got four cards. I could get FOUR books at a time FOUR!! Choosing was agony. I would be there hours, plucking one after another off the shelf, knowing the four had to last me a week. Not that it mattered to Mum she was the epitome of Faithful Reader that Stephen King refers to. Although when she found the time is beyond me. I am part of a big noisy family and we lived in a relatively small semi detached house. At first there was only me but then Mum popped out a brother or sister every three years and soon we were four, books were my escape hatch. My fondest memories are of lying atop my bed on warm summer evenings when it was still light nose firmly shoved in between the pages, cool pillow behind my head, the sound of birdsong as they nested, the fading evening sun filtering through the rose patterned curtains, me away with the fairies, the goblins or ghouls, intrepidly forging a path through Alderley Edge. Which incidentally was just three train stops away on the Picadilly line.
I went to live in the lakes with Swallows and Amazons, I was the sixth silent member of the Famous Five, I crept through the tunnels hunting the Weirdstone of Brisingamen and the Moon of Gomrath. I set off with Bilbo and eventually followed Frodo but not before taking short forays into Russian folklore and creeping along behind Baba Yaga as she flew around in her mortar carrying her weapon of choice, her pestle, looking for unsuspecting children to capture to eat for lunch.
I haunted Victorian England with Dickens and grubbed around in the workhouse, there was never enough gruel or porridge. After reading For Whom the Bell Tolls I cried, silent, painful, hurty throat tears that you try to quell so no one hears you then my heart was broken anew by the Brontes, first Jane Eyre’s cruel childhood then the agony and ecstasy of Wuthering Heights. I saw a distopian future with Asimov and Bradbury. I was terrified by Shelley and Poe in that addicted to fear way that leaves you hankering for more, an addiction that was started by Grimm, punctuated, or should I say punctured by Stoker leading to my adult obsession with King.
I sailed into teen years on the wings of adult literature taken out on mum’s cards when the children’s section had been picked clean. The classics of Steinbeck, Dafoe, Wilde and Orwell put meat on the bones of social injustice, Harper Lee took me out of my white privilege and made me see a different world, Laurie Lee showed me that not all in Christendom is holy and that Fascism was alive and well and living in my holiday Spain years later. As an adult I was haunted by Carlos Ruiz Zafon’s The Shadow of the Wind and David Boling’s Guernica, made all the more poignant living now in Catalunya. Agatha’s very typically British whodunnits led to Coban and Cornwall and ever onward through crime fiction, Poe to King and James Herbert continued to fuel my penchant for horror and things that go bump in the night, or the day!
Back then to school, grammar for me, a not unhappy nor miserable existence, but not particularly academic. I excelled in the arts, literature, music, painting and drawing and it was books that got me through. I can still quote ad verbatim Shakespeare my year did Romeo and Juliet and Twelfth Night so light hearted and really quite jolly if you discount the suicides! Of Mice and Men left me heartbroken, Lord of the Flies and Animal Farm quite certain that we were all doomed. I learnt ancient history at school, the Romans, the Greeks, British History focused on the Stewarts, the Roundheads, Cromwell and Henry VIII but we never did modern history or any of the World Wars so my education was gleaned from the fictional, yet based on historical events, of Ken Follet’s Century Trilogy. They should really make it essential curriculum reading perhaps we might learn the futility.
While I am on a roll let’s not forget the poets, romantic, I wandered lonely as a cloud that floats on high o’er vales and hills, gifted to me a book of Wordsworth at thirteen by friends of my parents who lived in Cumberland, the weirdly bizarre world of Lewis Caroll both poet and tale, Dylan Thomas lyrical masterpiece of alliterative story telling, historical Tennyson, or the unknown greats like Beowulff, a copy of which introduced me to the art of Arthur Rackham and I was forever captivated by the style leading me to Aubrey Beardsley. In fact many of the books of the time engage my imagination through, not just the words but the illustrators used at the time. I still have a passion for Victorian poets, Christina Rossetti and Elizabeth Barret Browning, I confess I like poetry that rhymes that has a cadence to it, alliteration. A poem that captures that Victorian style is Alfred Noyes The Highwayman. The story of a cold, dark, windswept night, love, loss and sacrifice. Maybe I was born in the wrong era?
I didn’t really want this to become a post that was merely a list of books I have read, it couldn’t there are so many, but really a post that celebrates the act of reading. How it can transfix, transform and transport a person. Am so grateful to my mum for waking the hunger for knowledge through reading and it has led me to other creative avenues and interests. I passed on that hunger to my own two boys which gave me new author’s worlds to enter – yes Roald, I felt by this time we were on first name terms. No matter what life has thrown at me I have always had the escape of a good, or even an average, book to jump into.
Naturally with all that reading I dabble in writing, I don’t think I have the energy for a book, I write in short sharp bursts. I often post longish posts on Facebook with my take on events or observations and people, I am quite self deprecating and like to make people laugh or elicit similar experiences or memories in others. I do love words and am extremely verbose, probably to the point of irritation, will she not get one with it, spit it out! My text messages and WhatsApp’s are something to wonder at. Everyone else seems to be able to convey what they mean in a few succinct sentences I go off at tangents, even my shopping lists are descriptive. I think my family despair at times. However, often friends will comment and ask if I ever think of writing a book, or, just respond positively that makes me think could I? Then life gets in the way which is not a bad thing. Unless you are particularly productive and are more than a one book writer I don’t think there are any great financial returns but then again is that what being a writer is about?
So, I shall share my scribbles here and there but leave the serious writing to those more erudite than me and I shall carry on walking among their worlds and populations quite happily.
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8 Comments
Ruth Gregory
Hi Anne-Marie, just love your blog that I clicked on from the Cheadle Grammar page. We have such similar taste in books & childhood experiences from the buzz of a visit to the library to loving the long summer nights that facilitated reading in bed until late, in fact, until I was squinting! I worked for HP for many years with a boss in Barcelona so our team meetings over there meant I got to know the City so well. I lost myself in the fabulous Shadow Of The Wind which brought back so many memories. Didn’t realise you lived there – you lucky girl! Anyway, just wanted to let you know it was great to read and say thanks again for The Parish playlist.
Cheers
Ruth x
Anne-Marie
Hi Ruth, thanks so much for your comments! As I started writing this piece I remembered more and more, not just the texts but how I felt at the time, what I was doing, where I would be. Same with the Parish playlist, when I was putting it together I was there in the darkness with the strobe light and the disco ball, the sticky black floor and the slightly mushroomy smell of the side room ha ha ha. The Cheadle Grammar page has awakened many memories for me, people, places and events that I had forgotten now seeing the light of day. If you are ever over this part of the world do please let me know! x
Ali Meehan
Wow you have catapulted me back in time. I loved Malcolm Saville books (I still have them at home and read them very once in a while). My best friend and I decided one day to go and visit him in Winchelsea where we knew he lived (shocking to think of it now LOL). We got on the train and knocked on his door. I remember him being very gracious if not a little startled at two young Girls arriving! And experience to remember and reading is something I hope my granddaughter enjoys as much as I did growing up!
Anne-Marie
Thanks for commenting! I’ve had a number of responses on Facebook and in groups I am in all telling me their stories of how reading made a difference to their lives, it’s great to get people talking.
Valerie
Yeah!!! Great post, Anne-Marie. I so relate – the local library (me from North Manchester), reading under the covers, grammar school, hiding in the school library from gym and sports (ugh!), Shakespeare (came to life when we were taken to the Library Theatre and then GASP! four days in Stratford on Avon. We had very few books at home. One of which I threw across the room (presumably in a tantrum – possibly because I hadn’t yet learned to read) when I was very small. My Mum said: ‘you must never ever do that. Books are friends.’
Anne-Marie
Thank you for commenting. I feel we had a blessed childhood in many ways. Sure the internet has brought us many, many advantages, being a self publicist one of them! However, the simple pleasure of losing yourself in the pages of a book is something I hope we can continue to promote.
Jenny Hezzell
Hi Anne-Marie
I loved reading about your exploration of the literary world.
I clearly remember going to Cheadle Hulme library and delving into a hidden, exciting world of real and fictional characters. I have always loved the unique smells of each and every physical book, so digital reading is for news gathering only.
Those 4 library cards were so precious as I tried valiantly to escape the humdrum world we lived in, which in retrospect now seems full of simple delights that I still attempt to recreate today.
I have a house full of books, with little libraries in almost every room, sorted by subject for non-fiction and sorted alphabetically by the authors last name for fiction.
I have always adored music though did not have the dedication that my sister, Linda had. My tastes have always continued to grow and as big as the book collection, the music collection consists of things I heard in Spain on holiday, but could only find in Rare Records in Manchester, to Northern Soul heard in the clubs I visited whilst a nurse at Manchester Royal Infirmary. The music of Dave Brubeck at The Cyprus Tavern to David Bowie at The Free Trade Hall.
Living for many decades in America, it has been suprisingly easy to hear great music at The Hollywood Bowl, The Greek Theatre and Boston Symphony Hall but nothing evokes the great emotion or brings tears to my eyes like Last Night of the Proms at the Royal Albert Hall.
Keep up your great writing, your thoughts are such a delight to read.
Jenny Hezzell (was Smith)
Anne-Marie
Hi Jenny
Sorry I’ve only just seen your comment usually I get a prompt when someone comments but missed yours. Thank you so much for sharing your own experiences. It has been really great getting back in touch with people from the old school days and wow what an interesting and well travelled life you have led!
As you know from the things I have shared on the Cheadle Grammar page music is the soundtrack to my life and those heady Parish days replay frequently on my Spotify play lists.
Books, music, places, food, smells all make me nostalgic and have a special place in my memories.
I will keep jotting my thoughts down and am very happy that people get some enjoyment from them or are nudged to bring up their own memories.
Thank you for your lovely comments,
Anne-Marie (funnily enough was Dean and now Smith!)