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