Remembrance of Times Past

There’s a box in my attic full of books. I don’t have room for them on the shelves downstairs but I can’t throw them out. So, they sit up under the eaves – boiling in summer, freezing in winter – growing as old as my children, each year another step away from when they were treasured, cover to cover. Sometimes we take them down, just for old time’s sake, to read through again, to bring that time alive when we were all much younger and life was definitely simpler.

Way back then, I’d read, each night – one, two, three stories – until my voice would start to croak. They’d lay their heads down ready for sleep but keep their glazed eyes open, watching each page flip over to the next, remembering every single word, every picture, every nuance. Like The Cat in the Hat, who was oh so bad he drove everyone completely nuts, and then he had the temerity to come back and create even more havoc! Would you believe it??? I’d say, and they’d nod furiously in complete agreement.

But I laughed out loud – along with my boys - every time I read Who’s a Pest? a story that followed young Homer whose hat completely enveloped his head so that all you saw was his confusion as he got into impossible situations – absolutely none of which were his own fault. And then there was Benjamin’s 365 Birthdays, the girls’ favourite, in which this young bear discovered an ingenious method of ensuring there was a birthday present at the end of his bed every single day of the year. We thought he was marvellous, his idea absolutely brilliant.

I have just climbed up into my attic to retrieve these tattered treasures to share them with you. I wonder what story-books you have stored away, in remembrance of times past.

Recipe for a Good Night Out

4 x thirty somethings
2 x tents
1 x campfire
1 x hamper of home cooked nosh
0 x alcohol

Take four young adults
Bus them down to Brittas Bay, County Wicklow
Erect two tents
Send them all for a swim
Light a campfire
Feed them

Now what?

We’re all used to instant entertainment so it’s hard to switch off and be still. Eoin could probably have fallen asleep early; Sam could have sat in an impossible yoga position and sucked her toes; Jessica could have read her book; but Angelo was bored. “Now what? There’s nothing to do!”

Jessica reached into her backpack, pulled out The Dice Man by Luke Rhinehart and started reading aloud. She read an entire chapter as a gentle breeze flapped against the open tents. Her audience lay down, listening to this adult bed time story. She read until the sky darkened and turned to dusk, until her three listeners had almost fallen asleep, while they relived their own private memories of being read to as a child.