Revisiting the past

[charlie_faraway]

Living with Rebecca and Matilda has dredged up some literary memories. Her prolific production of jam (her blog is indeed named in honour of the stuff) jogged to mind the wonderful illustrations of Margaret Mahy's Jam, a book about the Castle family whose brainy scientist of a mum goes out to work, leaving a highly domesticated Mr Castle to make enough plum jam to fill every receptacle in the house, and the family plough through it over a year until they've become 'jam pots' themselves, so head out into the garden for some games only to hear the thud of the first plum of the new year...I promptly ordered an Amazon copy for Matilda, which arrived amply battered...other books that come to mind have been Babette Cole's Two of Everything and There's an Awful Lot of Weirdos in our Neighbourhood...Grace introduced me to my current favourite children's book, the 'plop up book' The Mole Who Knew That It Was None of his Business . Milly-Molly-Mandy has been another revival at both Grace's and Matilda's night-time bedside: a treat to explain what a pony trap is, to see the soft rounded edges of the old illustrations of "the nice white cottage with the thatched roof" and Little-Friend-Susan and Billy Blunt's corn-shop. Lucy Mangan wrote praising MMM's doing things for Muvver and Farver ("these spellings are the closest MMM comes to subversion"), that the stories may depict a world past but provide "succour, not sentimentality" and I like to think she's right- just as my readings of Swallows and Amazons and The Dark is Rising transported me, utterly, to worlds far from my bedroom. The Anastasia books awed me in their depictions of this precociously sophisticated tween complaining about moving to the suburbs, saving up to see Casablanca with her best friend, the trials of having the wrong jeans or owlish specs. Tracy Beaker was probably my most-borrowed library book and I relished every drawing...can't bear to see the televised version. But then, I wonder how far my cosy upbringing allowed such succour to take root. Reading to children is such a gift (or telling stories- it doesn't have to be a book) but a lot of children don't get this chance. ATD Fourth World used to run a doorstep library, encouraging parents to read with their children in isolated estates. A new program helps men in prison record bedtime stories to be played to their children, in soundproof rooms to shut out the background din of prison life. I hitched with a man who'd spent a life of being financially irresponsible but politically right on the button, in my book, and who now has a steady income doing foster care work but knows not what to do with it, so gives it to asylum seekers in Plymouth, who he's seen treated, predictably, as the dirt we don't want, whoever 'we' are. "I've always liked foreigners", her said. "I'll tell you something you've probably never heard. These kids, though they may have seen their family killed, their homes burned, they've been brought up with love...and it makes them good students and good citizens. Kids in the UK, they're often the ones whose parents ignore them and they start off their life screwed". Though a great generalisation, there's something about the loving links forged through sharing stories and passing on essential information, imagery, beauty, language, that makes the feeling of passing on books something greater than the mere nostalgic pleasure of realising that 20 years later the picture looks exactly the same. The marbles are rolling....

Present loves: etymology, Latin plant names, carob and banana, pennywort and wild garlic pesto, Bright Eyes, kundalini yoga, Apollo Duck and boat porn