A Child’s Garden of Verses

It’s always the mothers who buy the presents, well, that’s
how it was in my home. Mum would remember the birthdays and would shop and choose and plan and generally come up trumps. She'd know who would love a dolls house or a garage at Christmas - though she got those mixed up one year and while my brother cried, my sister stubbornly refused to give up the garage! However on my eleventh birthday, it was my father who gave me the gift of a book. It’s sitting on the table beside me as I write, its dark green leatherette cover with silver writing, A Child’s Garden of Verses by Robert Louis Stevenson. It has travelled with me back and forth over the Irish Sea as I left home, went to London, returned, back again to Nottingham, then Sussex and now home again, safe and sound. I took it down from the highest shelf, where books I never lend reside, to think about as I write. He inscribed, Wishing Mary a very happy Birthday 20th June 1963, Daddy. And now, as I turn the page again I find, with an introduction by Elizabeth Goudge. Isn’t life just full of wonderful surprises!

Time To Rise
A birdie with a yellow bill
Hopped upon the window sill.
Cocked his shining eye and said:
“Ain’t you ‘shamed, you sleepy-head?”

What's In A Name?

I couldn’t believe it! Her surname was Eliot, just like the
characters in the book I had just been reading. They were all camped inside my head, The Eliots of Damerosehay, and right across the room from me was a tall, blond woman who could have leapt right off the pages straight into this house in Belgrave Square where the party was in progress. I adored the fictional Eliots' creator, gentle English author Elizabeth Goudge, who had written enough books to keep me going for years: The Little White Horse, Green Dolphin Country, The Scent of Water and A City of Bells – I’d read them all, occasionally finding life inside her stories a much better place to be than my own distracted home.

Back to the party where I asked around until I had an address (just around the corner, literally) and one dark wintry evening I ventured out, knocked on number 19, declaimed my name as if that explained everything and Ms Eliot opened her door wide, welcoming me into her home. I’m not sure how long it took for us to become firm friends - maybe five, or even ten minutes. I am sure, though, I never even told her why I had come!

Even now, when I think back to when I was an innocent 16 year old, I thank Elizabeth Goudge for introducing me to someone who became a true and trusted lifelong friend. Books are funny things, you know, they can affect you in all sorts of way – all you have to do is open the covers and start reading.