free will. And when I hit my teens I realised it was all just a big load of shit anyway.
As a child I could recite parts of the mass in Latin, which made her chest swell with pride. Obviously I didnât know what these words meant, but if it made her smile or I wasnât getting a flogging, I was happy to perform. Not long afterwards, though, masses were delivered in English, and Latin disappeared from church services, so I was spared the effort.
4.
Despite my parentâs disagreeable ways, life with them wasnât all bad because they had books. Lots of them. And although I had never seen books before I arrived there, they captured my soul from the very first moment I opened one. Julie had all the favourites like Rupert Bear, Paddington Bear and Winnie the Pooh, so I started with those. Not being able to read wasnât a problem â each page I turned was still a new and exciting discovery.
After Iâd had my fill of Julieâs books, I moved on to the bookshelves in the lounge room, and this is where my mind was blown wide open. Strange animals and flowers, flags of the world, a whale swimming serenely in an ocean of intense blue far above the shape of a tiny boat â I just couldnât get enough. And the books without pictures were just as fascinating. If I looked hard enoughthe squiggles became patterns that repeated themselves in various ways and combinations, and these patterns were repeated in other books too. When we went to bed we were allowed to read for half an hour before the light went out and my choice was always a book with no pictures. When our father would sneak into my bedroom in the night I thought of those patterns and they entertained me while he was entertaining himself.
At the age of four I had the great fortune to go to a playgroup of about ten kids at the home of a woman called Mrs Roberts. She had the usual sandpit and cubby-house and other toys, but she also had a heap of kidsâ books and she read a story to us every day. This was the first time Iâd associated books with the spoken word because at home we had to look at our books in silence as our mother believed that children should be seen and not heard. But Mrs Roberts wasnât like our mother and she was very happy to point out to me the association between the squiggles and speech. This was such a defining new discovery in my life that I still remember an almost audible click when it sank into my brain.
After the joys of playgroup came school, which was even better. Here I learnt how words were put together, and the crazy rules of the English language, and after that reading just happened. I opened up a book one day and realised that I could read, and after that the world became a bigger and better place.
5.
I think our mother suffered from depression. Apart from her bad temper she hated Julie and I doing things that would disturb her cocoon of silence, and the noise that topped the list was farting. It provoked a terrible sense of outrage in her and an inquisition to determine the offender (even if it was obvious) was always her immediate response. I think this was done to shame the miscreant into desisting from giving a repeat performance. This was a bit of a joke as our mother was the worse one of all when it came to farting, her twenty-one gun salutes were a regular feature of our day. After the offender was named it was an immediate toilet jail sentence where Julie or I would be made to sit on the loo until we produced solid evidence to prove her theory that farting was the anal equivalent of the oven timer going off after a cake had been baked.The perpetrator of a noisy fart could of course be identified fairly quickly but it was the silent killers that always gave her the most angst while we did our best to avoid detection. I was the victim of many wrong accusations as I couldnât pull off an innocent face like Julie.
The toilet was one of those old clunkers with the cistern up on the wall
As a child I could recite parts of the mass in Latin, which made her chest swell with pride. Obviously I didnât know what these words meant, but if it made her smile or I wasnât getting a flogging, I was happy to perform. Not long afterwards, though, masses were delivered in English, and Latin disappeared from church services, so I was spared the effort.
4.
Despite my parentâs disagreeable ways, life with them wasnât all bad because they had books. Lots of them. And although I had never seen books before I arrived there, they captured my soul from the very first moment I opened one. Julie had all the favourites like Rupert Bear, Paddington Bear and Winnie the Pooh, so I started with those. Not being able to read wasnât a problem â each page I turned was still a new and exciting discovery.
After Iâd had my fill of Julieâs books, I moved on to the bookshelves in the lounge room, and this is where my mind was blown wide open. Strange animals and flowers, flags of the world, a whale swimming serenely in an ocean of intense blue far above the shape of a tiny boat â I just couldnât get enough. And the books without pictures were just as fascinating. If I looked hard enoughthe squiggles became patterns that repeated themselves in various ways and combinations, and these patterns were repeated in other books too. When we went to bed we were allowed to read for half an hour before the light went out and my choice was always a book with no pictures. When our father would sneak into my bedroom in the night I thought of those patterns and they entertained me while he was entertaining himself.
At the age of four I had the great fortune to go to a playgroup of about ten kids at the home of a woman called Mrs Roberts. She had the usual sandpit and cubby-house and other toys, but she also had a heap of kidsâ books and she read a story to us every day. This was the first time Iâd associated books with the spoken word because at home we had to look at our books in silence as our mother believed that children should be seen and not heard. But Mrs Roberts wasnât like our mother and she was very happy to point out to me the association between the squiggles and speech. This was such a defining new discovery in my life that I still remember an almost audible click when it sank into my brain.
After the joys of playgroup came school, which was even better. Here I learnt how words were put together, and the crazy rules of the English language, and after that reading just happened. I opened up a book one day and realised that I could read, and after that the world became a bigger and better place.
5.
I think our mother suffered from depression. Apart from her bad temper she hated Julie and I doing things that would disturb her cocoon of silence, and the noise that topped the list was farting. It provoked a terrible sense of outrage in her and an inquisition to determine the offender (even if it was obvious) was always her immediate response. I think this was done to shame the miscreant into desisting from giving a repeat performance. This was a bit of a joke as our mother was the worse one of all when it came to farting, her twenty-one gun salutes were a regular feature of our day. After the offender was named it was an immediate toilet jail sentence where Julie or I would be made to sit on the loo until we produced solid evidence to prove her theory that farting was the anal equivalent of the oven timer going off after a cake had been baked.The perpetrator of a noisy fart could of course be identified fairly quickly but it was the silent killers that always gave her the most angst while we did our best to avoid detection. I was the victim of many wrong accusations as I couldnât pull off an innocent face like Julie.
The toilet was one of those old clunkers with the cistern up on the wall
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