I was slower than my father wanted me to be about reading, Peter said. I read car magazines and car books and on one bad day he said ‘If you don’t look out you’ll be standing on the side of the street watching other people going by in their cars and you won’t have one.’ It was a bit out of character and I must have driven (ha!) him mad with my relentless monologue about minutiae of different cars in the street.
He gave me his favourite childhood book Call of the Wild by Jack London. I didn’t want to read a book about a dog.
I did read Moonraker by Ian Fleming, which wasn’t entirely approved of and then a novelisation of the then hit show The Man From U.N.C.L.E. I still have my UNCLE ID card, along with the photostatted note they sent out to those who applied to join THRUSH the Man from UNCLE equivalent of SMERSH. Maybe my desire to join the bad guys reflects the path I was toying with taking).
But then along came Swallows and Amazons and within a fortnight I’d read all eight of the series. Parental approval shot up and I was on my way to Lord of the Rings etc. Though books about cars remained my favourite (I write books about cars now).
I never did read Call of the Wild, but I did try Swallows and Amazons on my daughter Lydia. No go. I read her the first two pages and she shook her head. But for the hell of it I gave Jack London’s Call of the Wild a go. After a page she reached out from the duvet and took hold of it.
By morning she had finished it. And devoured the followup White Fang a few days later.
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