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An interesting feature in today’s Times has well-known people - not necessarily celebrities1 write a short note on the time they bought their first book with their own money. I immediately felt very old, when I saw that Lily Cole’s first such book was Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone.
This is all being done as part of an attempt to get people back into bookshops, particularly small independent ones which, I am informed by the article, are closing at the rate of about one a week in the UK.
Be that as it may, it made me think about the first book I ever bought with my own money. And it appears that I can’t recall, though I can have a fair stab at where and possibly when (to within a couple of years). I remember the first records I bought with my own money2, but not the first book.
I do remember, very early on, finding reading incredibly easy. I quickly advanced beyond ‘Janet and John’ and was onto ‘Milly Molly Mandy’ in a flash. After that, it all goes hazy on account of reading so many books in short order in the school library that they have sort of jumbled in my memory. I recall reading and enjoying ‘The Knights of the Cardboard Castle’ which I looked up years later 9Ie a couple of years ago) on Amazon, to find that it is a) out of print and b) by Elizabeth Beresford of Wombles fame. I also remember being a member, through the junior school, of the Scholastic Book Club. I only remember two purchases (though there were more), both made by Mum and Dad on my behalf, because I didn’t get pocket money – 101 Elephant Jokes (I still remember a few. Trust me when I tell you that you don’t want to hear them) and I Am David, by Anna Holm, a story about a young Jewish boy in German-occupied Europe during the second world war. I have a nostalgia for the first and last of that trio and my try to get hold of copies for that reason.
Every year, pretty much, until my mid teens, we would decamp to the Welsh coast for the summer holidays. With the exception of a couple of years when we went elsewhere, we – my sister and I, would spend most of the summer holiday living in a caravan in Tywyn. Half the holiday would have Dad looking after us, half would have Mum. There would be a slight overlap in the middle where they both had a bit of holiday with is at the same time, but by and large they organised their holidays to maximise us kids’ time at the coast. (And I suspect that they both quite enjoyed the break from each other, too. I’m sure that in no small way contributed to the fact that they stayed married for over 55 years until Dad died).
In the early years of this arrangement, I devoured the works of Enid Blyton, though oddly, not the Famous Five, which never seemed to be in stock on the newsagent shelves. I read and reread instead, of the adventures of the Five Find Outers and other solid works that have long since gone out of fashion – or so I guess.
By the time I had a few pennies to buy my own paperbacks, I had graduated on to true wars stories: short popular histories in the Pan paperback range, where I first encountered Douglas Bader in ‘Reach for the Sky’ (still a hero), 617 Squadron in ‘The Dambusters’, the stories of the Arctic and Malta convoys, thousand bomber raids and when they had run out, or were not available, such splendid oddities as the K-Boats, coal-fuelled steam powered Royal navy fleet submarines that took over 20 minutes to crash dive (I’m not making this up), or the story of the journey of the ramshackle Imperial Russian Baltic Fleet half way around the world to exact retribution upon the Japanese in 1905. They didn’t get their revenge; the Japanese navy sank them, too.
These books would have been bought in the period 1969-1973. They would mainly have been acquired from a little shop on the seafront, where they were stacked on one of those revolving wire displays in the front of the shop. I remember being appalled when the price for a standard paperback rose from 20p to 25p (or 25p to 30p, if they were slightly thicker and had maps and/or photographs).
A little while later, I got a weekend job serving petrol, cleaning cars and sweeping a service station floor. That paid an amazing 40p an hour. Cash rich and too young to go drinking, I could suddenly afford books and records, provided I didn’t go mad.
Then things really took off. But that’s for another time.
1I try very hard not to use the word ‘celebrity’ as a synonym for ‘vaguely famous’ although, like ‘star’ it has evolved beyond its original meaning in popular usage.
2The Beatles 1962-1966 and The Beatles 1967-1970, by mail order in 1973 from Mum’s Kay’s Catalogue. Not my first records, but the first I paid for. They were hot off the presses.
This is all being done as part of an attempt to get people back into bookshops, particularly small independent ones which, I am informed by the article, are closing at the rate of about one a week in the UK.
Be that as it may, it made me think about the first book I ever bought with my own money. And it appears that I can’t recall, though I can have a fair stab at where and possibly when (to within a couple of years). I remember the first records I bought with my own money2, but not the first book.
I do remember, very early on, finding reading incredibly easy. I quickly advanced beyond ‘Janet and John’ and was onto ‘Milly Molly Mandy’ in a flash. After that, it all goes hazy on account of reading so many books in short order in the school library that they have sort of jumbled in my memory. I recall reading and enjoying ‘The Knights of the Cardboard Castle’ which I looked up years later 9Ie a couple of years ago) on Amazon, to find that it is a) out of print and b) by Elizabeth Beresford of Wombles fame. I also remember being a member, through the junior school, of the Scholastic Book Club. I only remember two purchases (though there were more), both made by Mum and Dad on my behalf, because I didn’t get pocket money – 101 Elephant Jokes (I still remember a few. Trust me when I tell you that you don’t want to hear them) and I Am David, by Anna Holm, a story about a young Jewish boy in German-occupied Europe during the second world war. I have a nostalgia for the first and last of that trio and my try to get hold of copies for that reason.
Every year, pretty much, until my mid teens, we would decamp to the Welsh coast for the summer holidays. With the exception of a couple of years when we went elsewhere, we – my sister and I, would spend most of the summer holiday living in a caravan in Tywyn. Half the holiday would have Dad looking after us, half would have Mum. There would be a slight overlap in the middle where they both had a bit of holiday with is at the same time, but by and large they organised their holidays to maximise us kids’ time at the coast. (And I suspect that they both quite enjoyed the break from each other, too. I’m sure that in no small way contributed to the fact that they stayed married for over 55 years until Dad died).
In the early years of this arrangement, I devoured the works of Enid Blyton, though oddly, not the Famous Five, which never seemed to be in stock on the newsagent shelves. I read and reread instead, of the adventures of the Five Find Outers and other solid works that have long since gone out of fashion – or so I guess.
By the time I had a few pennies to buy my own paperbacks, I had graduated on to true wars stories: short popular histories in the Pan paperback range, where I first encountered Douglas Bader in ‘Reach for the Sky’ (still a hero), 617 Squadron in ‘The Dambusters’, the stories of the Arctic and Malta convoys, thousand bomber raids and when they had run out, or were not available, such splendid oddities as the K-Boats, coal-fuelled steam powered Royal navy fleet submarines that took over 20 minutes to crash dive (I’m not making this up), or the story of the journey of the ramshackle Imperial Russian Baltic Fleet half way around the world to exact retribution upon the Japanese in 1905. They didn’t get their revenge; the Japanese navy sank them, too.
These books would have been bought in the period 1969-1973. They would mainly have been acquired from a little shop on the seafront, where they were stacked on one of those revolving wire displays in the front of the shop. I remember being appalled when the price for a standard paperback rose from 20p to 25p (or 25p to 30p, if they were slightly thicker and had maps and/or photographs).
A little while later, I got a weekend job serving petrol, cleaning cars and sweeping a service station floor. That paid an amazing 40p an hour. Cash rich and too young to go drinking, I could suddenly afford books and records, provided I didn’t go mad.
Then things really took off. But that’s for another time.
1I try very hard not to use the word ‘celebrity’ as a synonym for ‘vaguely famous’ although, like ‘star’ it has evolved beyond its original meaning in popular usage.
2The Beatles 1962-1966 and The Beatles 1967-1970, by mail order in 1973 from Mum’s Kay’s Catalogue. Not my first records, but the first I paid for. They were hot off the presses.