When I was a child I loved reading and would sit in my bedroom on wet boring Sunday afternoons, absorbed by the ability to lose myself in just words. We moved around a lot me and my family, my father was in the RAF and I remember one bedroom in particular. It wasn't really a bedroom, more like a cupboard you could ( just) fit a single bed into. The stair head jutted into the room affording me one shelf where I kept my precious porcelain animals, lovingly collected and requested on birthdays and at Christmas. My bed overlooked a row of tall and narrow Victorian houses and a graveyard which didn't scare me or prevent me going to sleep. It was somehow tranquil and still, moody and melancholy which as a child was conducive to reading. There were several books I discovered while living in this house.
We had a 'front room' that no-one ever used. It always had a musty, dusty, unused scent and one large dark wood bookcase. It had glass doors and one day I removed an old leather bound copy of Grimm's Fairy tales, it fell open at the pages of Blue Beard. The details evade me now, however, the horror of that first encounter with a Grimm's story I will never forget, it was terrifying.
Another book I found on those shelves was written by an American psychiatrist whose name eludes me, it belonged to my father who was in the medical profession and owned several books on anatonomy, human biology etc. The effect of that book on me was profound, even though it was written for adults I understood every word and got every joke because it was truly very funny. The author was a great wit and managed to find humour in even the most tragic of personal circumstances. I wonder how it would stand up today in our PC world (excuse the unintended pun).
One piece of wisdom I will never forget is when he writes about a long standing patient of his, a woman of middle age, who is pretty depressed and bemoans her failure at having never achieved the degree she always wanted. The doctor advises her to go ahead and take her degree which requires a period of study of approximately 10 years. "But doctor" she said, "if I do that, by the time I finish I will be 70 years old!"
And he replies -"and how old will you be in 10 years if you don't do it." There is a lesson.
There is another book that I found quite by accident when I was bending down to try and find a small saucepan in our pot cupboard and had to dig right down to the back, moving all the other pans out of the way, when a small, blue covered paperback fell out onto the floor.
I hid it under my pillow and, well, put it this way, it was hidden in the pot cupboard for a good reason, erotica I believe you would call it, and well thumbed......just in case you were wondering, yes I did have a sneaky peek, red-faced, then tucked it carefuly back into the back of the cupboard.
We had a 'front room' that no-one ever used. It always had a musty, dusty, unused scent and one large dark wood bookcase. It had glass doors and one day I removed an old leather bound copy of Grimm's Fairy tales, it fell open at the pages of Blue Beard. The details evade me now, however, the horror of that first encounter with a Grimm's story I will never forget, it was terrifying.
Another book I found on those shelves was written by an American psychiatrist whose name eludes me, it belonged to my father who was in the medical profession and owned several books on anatonomy, human biology etc. The effect of that book on me was profound, even though it was written for adults I understood every word and got every joke because it was truly very funny. The author was a great wit and managed to find humour in even the most tragic of personal circumstances. I wonder how it would stand up today in our PC world (excuse the unintended pun).
One piece of wisdom I will never forget is when he writes about a long standing patient of his, a woman of middle age, who is pretty depressed and bemoans her failure at having never achieved the degree she always wanted. The doctor advises her to go ahead and take her degree which requires a period of study of approximately 10 years. "But doctor" she said, "if I do that, by the time I finish I will be 70 years old!"
And he replies -"and how old will you be in 10 years if you don't do it." There is a lesson.
There is another book that I found quite by accident when I was bending down to try and find a small saucepan in our pot cupboard and had to dig right down to the back, moving all the other pans out of the way, when a small, blue covered paperback fell out onto the floor.
I hid it under my pillow and, well, put it this way, it was hidden in the pot cupboard for a good reason, erotica I believe you would call it, and well thumbed......just in case you were wondering, yes I did have a sneaky peek, red-faced, then tucked it carefuly back into the back of the cupboard.
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