Books

And here I go again, I've overslept. Actually I didn't, I did kick myself up at 8 am but decided it was too cold to live outside my duvet. These duvets are such lovely things. They are weightless and yet the comfort they ooze is out of this world. So it is one thing which we cannot judge by its cover. And it's not even a book. I like books, I've liked books ever since I could probably hold one of them. I like the fact that you can delve into one, pushing the pause button on the world around you, and pressing play the minute you open the first page. I'm not sure my relationship with books was very healthy when I was young. I read a lot, probably too much, but then I think I was quite a strange kid who was bored with playing around with Playmobile. And there was this huge library at home (there still is) and when you're little it seems so grand and big. So, without anybody knowing, I started 'borrowing' a book a day from this grand old library, and because it seemed so grand, it made the 'borrowing' even more exciting. Until my mum found out and wasn't pleased. And until my dad found out and was over the moon. His daughter was showing an interest in the same things which interested him. Lovely dad. It became like a game. Let's 'borrow' and see if we can get away with it, or better put, see if we can fool mum. And it worked, I was reading a book a day. I read so much that I started hating going to school because it was so far away from all those books. What was happening, unbeknown to yours truly who was still a little girl, was that this girl was getting extremely good at a whole lot of things. Which puzzled mum, and which made dad's and my secret flourish. Until one day mum 'caught' me reading Hardy, and Greene. And since she never wanted me to grow up (something which she failed badly at), she was so mad that I, at 9, was reading, as she called them, grown-up books. And then that made it all the more exciting. And the 'borrowing' went to 'stealing'. It was still just 'borrowing' but once it was so wrong it all graduated to 'stealing'. And yes I remember reading the first part of Hardy's Tess of the D'urbervilles and not really understanding the rape scene. I understood something bad had happened to Tess, but not exactly what. I also remember being so puzzled at the priest who had a child in The Power and the Glory, and I couldn't fathom out how on earth this could have happened, since I still believed children came into the world through praying to God, and since a priest was a man of God, how did God let it happen in the first place? Oh dear, it was so confusing. But it all has made me into what I am today. I am not in any way a Slimiza who is rubbish at talking English and just as much rubbish at Maltese. We talked plain Maltese at home. And I am southerly born and bred. And yet I think I can speak good English and I'm certain that my Maltese is just as good. Speaking English to little people at home just doesn't work. So many parents do that, and yet the level of the English level falls by the year. So, to all the adult ones having little ones, give them a book instead.