Tuesday 23 May 2023

Aunt Doris and the Jennings story...

 


When Scrobs was quite young, around six or seven, he used to know several ladies in the village, who were kindly, generous, good friends on his Mum and Dad - and Sister, and he often popped round after church on a Sunday, because there were always some sixpences in a jar on the mantelpiece for an ice-cream at the local shop for us both...

One day, I was chatting with Aunt Doris - she wasn't really an aunt, but a lovely lady who ran a small guest house, and seemed to have lots of elderly visitors staying all the time, although we never saw them. One day, my dear Sister and I had secured the funds for the ice-cream, and wandered though to the main parlour, which was empty except for a huge ticking grandfather clock!

On a side table was a book, 'Jennings follows a clue', which had been casually left out for me to notice, and Aunt Doris airily said that it was meant as a gift for a 'nephew of hers', but I could read it if I wanted to borrow it and take good care of it!

And so I did...

It was probably the first real full-length story I'd ever read, apart from Rupert Bear annuals, and a few other books which my sister owned and treasured. This Jennings book shaped my whole life for ages, as I was indeed carted off to prep school a few years later, and the tones of these magical stories were ringing in my ears for several months - years even!

Our good friend AK Haart has a comment on here by DAD, and of course, AKH responds as he always does! I eventually bought, or was given, most of the Jennings stories, and handed them on to some other young lads a few years ago, when they needed a bit of advice!

Aunt Doris was the J.K.Rowling lady for me, although she never actually wrote the stories, she just 'got me reading', which was never going to be a bad thing, and a few posts back I mention all the Nevil Shute stories, which are a joy to visit these days!

Thank you Aunt Doris - you watched a young Scrobs learn to understand a real story!

4 comments:

A K Haart said...

It was William books for me. Our library didn't have many Jennings books although I think I remember reading those it did have. Billy Bunter too.

Scrobs. said...

They were a good read weren't they AK!

I went through several authors like Robert Louis Stephenson, and got fixed on Leslie Charteris and 'The Saint' for years - even though they were banned at school!

Then it was Alistair MacLean and Hammond Innes...

James Higham said...

We all need an Aunt Doris … my Great Aunt was mine.

Macheath said...

Fossilised fish-hooks! I haven’t thought about Jennings for years. I first encountered the books in art lessons at school, where we took it in turns to read aloud from a large collection of Jennings and William stories.

It was excellent preparation for a later career dealing with just the same sort of unintentional scrapes - heads or legs stuck in railings on school trips, for instance, or a pupil accidentally locking himself inside a large trunk (both genuine occurrences) - and sincere replies which didn’t quite hit the mark (one of my favourite examples of the latter was Jennings’ slightly desperate but willing-to-please answer when asked how similar triangles could help to cross a river: “I suppose you could make them out of wood and sit on one while paddling with the other...”)