World Book Day.
It is one of those days some of us feel to be entirely relatable and identifiable. It just feels as if the subject under the microscope today may have been taken far too seriously and much more moderation should have been exercised. Reading could never have been regarded as an obsession but books were rather more than a simple pleasure because, to be honest, reading was my ultimate escapism, the mental salvation when there was nothing else to do. But today folks books should still be considered as one of the most important building blocks in any child's development.
Today is World Book Day, as it always has been for as long as you can remember. During your childhood, you built a brick wall of rebellion against reading. Reading was always something adults did rather than you as you were growing up. It was boring, pointless, irrelevant, sadly lacking in any kind of stimulus and a complete waste of time when you could have been in the early stages of inventing, pioneering or creating something that would leave us breathless and dumbfounded, six o'clock news, the main story.
Books represented something much more than a golden world of literature that had to be explored from a young age because mum and dad naturally assumed that if you continued to read as many books as possible you'd probably end up as a rocket scientist, professor, the Prime Minister or one of the world's greatest financiers. If you read sufficiently, your prospects of promotion to the highest echelons of society would be considerably better than if you'd decided that you just wanted to be a dustman, milkman, train driver or a cleaner. Or maybe this was just lazy stereotyping on your part.
Then again if you did start taking books out of your local library and carefully compiled as much information as possible, the chances were you'd be on the right road to success, well paid affluence, a job in the City on the Stock Exchange, a mathematician of remarkable intellect, an economist who would grease the wheels of capitalism and a best selling writer of some renown and a celebrity par excellence.
For many of us, books were the first foundation stone of your early development when the world perhaps seemed to be both frightening and bewildering. You were a reluctant reader for the very reasons mentioned above. You didn't have time to wander into a wood panelled library with rows of boxed tickets as you entered and shelves heaving with enlightenment, learning, scholarly erudition or maybe just adventure stories, reference books, encyclopaedias, brilliant books on science fiction, romance, horror or maybe the days newspapers.
And all those decades later you can still see the distinctive columns outside the entrance of Gants Hill library. These are indeed the chief characteristics of Gants Hill in England's finest Essex suburb. You can still smell the scent of studious contemplation, reinforced by the gentle coughing and sneezing from local residents browsing the many shelves. But there was something special about Gants Hill library because inside there was a reverential silence almost belonging to some mystic religious order.
Then the magic happens. You enter the building and are faced with either chief librarian or a member of staff standing there smiling dutifully at you behind the counter. Suddenly you're confronted with rows upon rows of boxes of tickets with your name, your address and the random set of numbers on each ticket. It may have been the equivalent of today's QR code but this was your passport to the fantasy world of books, hundreds of books sitting next to each other in disciplined formations like well drilled soldiers.
Of course you were stubborn non reader as a kid although you did know your mum and dad were right because eventually you had to find about what exactly made the human and animal universe worked. Soon primary school furnished you with the knowledge of adding up and subtracting numbers, multiplication, division and long division, the rudiments of English grammar and vocabulary, the ABC followed by secondary school.
Eventually you developed your passion for reading when it became a vital necessity. As a class we boys read William Golding's Lord of the Flies currently trending on BBC One on a Sunday evening. At the time there was a basic understanding of what the story was about. But there was no real idea of what we were supposed to be doing as a result of reading out loudly during English lessons. It was only in later years that you became aware of the book's premise, detail and concept.
Personally, you stumbled on Redbridge library next to Ilford Town Hall during the early 1980s. A sense of guilt and embarrassment may follow you because you should have been in full gainful employment. Circumstances dictated otherwise and soon you were occupying every single waking hour after lunch eagerly grabbing and then embracing the great British classics. It was never an addiction but you somehow felt obliged to read as much as you could without bothering to wonder why you were doing this.
First there was the eminent German author Thomas Mann who gave us the best in Teutonic language and mention of his dog Basha. There then followed the mighty colossus who was Charles Dickens, most if not all of his repertoire including Hard Times, Great Expectations, Nicholas Nickelby, David Copperfield, Oliver Twist, Barnaby Rudge, Dombey and Son, Little Dorrit, the fantastically amusing Martin Chuzzlewit, the lesser known and heralded Sketches By Boz and the Christmas stories. It was the most wondrous discoveries.
Then there was the masterful literary genius of Thomas Hardy, the one author who changed my whole opinion on the big, wide world. Subconsciously, you were living in Dorset and you too were farming in the agricultural heartlands of Wessex. You too were planting the seeds, harvesting the crops and then fraternising with Hardy's powerful and resonant characters. You too were living in the quaint timber thatched cottages and drinking gallons of mead, beer and cider if you were particularly thirsty.
You couldn't help but immerse yourself in the Mayor of Casterbridge, Far From the Madding Crowd, Jude the Obscure, A Pair of Blue Eyes, The Trumpet Major, Return of the Native and the man's delightful short stories. Hardy was the man you were looking for when you needed to know everything there was to know about human emotions, the triumphs and positive narratives. Hardy was the finished article who started life as an architect but then established different narratives with suitably dramatic plotlines.
There followed James A. Michener, Franz Kafka, Marcel Proust, Leo Tolstoy, Joseph Conrad, the elegant Henry James and the wonderfully eloquent George Eliot who embellished the English language with a descriptive flair and polish which took us effortlessly through Middlemarch, Mill on the Floss, Adam Bede and Felix the Radical which was equally as poetic as the rest of Eliot's masterpieces. You did read the Brontes, Jane Austin and have now completed most of the American back catalogue of William Faulkner, Ernest Hemingway and Scott Fitzgerald.
And so it's World Book Day and we should be celebrating the joys of reading to our children and grandchildren. It is the most fascinating of pastimes and hobbies, a genuine pleasure if you've a spare moment during your day. You become totally absorbed in the imagery and symbolism of books, the literary journeys that can transport you to exotic South Sea islands. You were now with W. Somerset Maugham, the man who took you inside the minds of eccentric colonels, spies, plantation officers in the middle of the Borneo forest, cunning card players, spivs or wealthy lords and dowagers living in ostentatious wealth.
Today is World Book Day, a day for being reminded of what it was like to pick up your first book of nursery rhymes, fairy tales, lovable characters such as Thomas the Tank Engine, Postman Pat, Harry Potter, the Gruffalo before arriving in Disney where yet more childhood companions live. Literature on the written page is always to be valued and then heavily examined by its harshest critics. We all have our favourite authors such as James Patterson, Lee Child, Jo Jo Moyes and the Sophie Kinsellas of the literary canon. Essentially books are all about acquiring the fundamental skills of reading, laughing at prose of stunning originality, word construction or just enjoying the word pictures painted by the mainstream writers of the modern day. So please curl up on your sofa, pick up your favoured choice of author, allowing yourself the luxury and freedom to experience the joys of the written word. Enjoy folks. It's World Book Day.
