THINGS THAT ARE ALWAYS THERE...

I suppose I was around 3 or 4 years of age when I first became aware of the Uncle Arthur's Bedtime Stories book in my bedroom.  Well, I say 'my' bedroom, but I shared it with my brother.  (It would be another 9 or 10 years before I finally got a room of my own.)  I was always dimly aware of its presence in our first three houses, but it was allocated to the attic along with a pile of other stuff in our fourth house, and was there for years before I rediscovered it one day and moved it into my bedroom cupboard.

It was written by an American but published in Britain as well, and is one of a series that lasted for quite a few years.  In fact, for all I know, they might still enjoy regular reprintings today.  The stories, purporting to be true, are a bit twee, and looking at them now, they paint a picture of a vanished age - or at least the perception of an age which may never truly have existed except in the minds of a certain 'class'.  I only just started reading the stories and am now around halfway through the book. They're reasonably well-written, though the children featured in them don't speak like any children I ever heard (far too keen to pray), not even when I was a nipper. 

The book was hardly in pristine condition, with scuffs and scrapes to the boards, and part of the spine was missing in the middle, plus a little bit of the cover where the absent piece of the spine folded over.  It may always have been like this, but it's hard to say with any certainty as I don't think either my brother or myself ever read it.  If we ever picked it up out of boredom, we soon put it down again the moment we remembered it was a Sunday School-type book that held no interest to us.  We were both made to attend Sunday School (reluctantly), but I remember at least one occasion when me and a pal skived off and spent our collection money on sweets.  (Villains!)  Where did the book come from?  Jumble sale, church, a relative?  Its source is lost to the mists of time, but it could've been 'secondhand' when we got it.

For many years, neither me nor my brother were allowed beyond the confines of our back garden on a Sunday (apart from visiting our grandparents along with mater and pater) as my mother was religiously-minded, though more from a superstitious perspective than a pious one.  She believed people shouldn't exert themselves (as kids are prone to) on a Sunday as it was the 'day of rest', not realising that, to the Jews, the Sabbath was a Saturday and the admonition to 'rest' was only for them, not Gentiles.  We were in our third house before she eventually relaxed a bit and we could get out to the field across the street to play for a while.  I'm not sure exactly when that happened - could've been when I was around 7 or 8.

Anyway, digging through my cupboard the other day, I spied the book and decided to effect a repair job on it, to sort of make up for its many decades of neglect.  I gave it a colour touch-up in places, just to make it look neater, and replaced the missing piece on the spine.  I'm slightly colour-blind so can't swear to the efficacy of my work in that department, but the book is now more secure (a touch of glue in places along the spine sorted out any looseness), and is certainly much better in appearance than it was.

Look at the back cover below.  One glance at that seal and I'm a child again, and the shape and dimensions of my room shift in my mind - first one room, then another, then back again, swirling through time and space like my own personal TARDIS.  To be honest, in the natural course of events, the book would likely have been jettisoned by my parents long ago as something not really required anymore, and had it not been quarantined in the loft for decades, it almost certainly would've been.

However, I'm glad it wasn't, as it goes all the way back to my earliest days, and to be without it would be like being without some old friend from childhood who I never quite realised meant so much to me 'til I set eyes on them again after a long period, and was reminded of how far back we went before I cruelly and selfishly forgot about them on my day-to-day sojourn through life.  It's ironic to think that had Uncle Arthur still been alive, he'd probably have turned that into a quaint little morality tale for one of his books.

Any of you Crivvies own any books that you've had from infancy?  Spill the Heinz 57 in our ever-lovin' comments section. 

Posted in: Cartoons