Published on 12, July, 2020
What books have subtley influence you, ones that you read as a child? For me it was Alan Garner's The Weirdstone of Brisingamen, as well as being a good adventure story, it introduced me to a whole world of folklore and what I call mystic Britain. You have the history of Britain and then you have the mystic history, the Britain of the things seen from the corner of the eye, the things that you know are there, that you can sense and feel, but can rarely see and other people think you're being daft for caring about. As well as all the strange rituals and folk customs around the country, the fertility dances of Morris Men, to the Hobby Horses and corn dollies. The pull of ancient sacred places, stone circles, holy wells, some very ancient churches, a whole sacred landscape that we're only just rediscovering through the use of such technology as LIDAR. Some customs that cross continenets and generations, throwing coins in a wishing well, these places have often been in use for thousands of years.
That one book set me on a journey thats still ongoing.
I read a lot of Enid Blyton books as a child, but the one I was especially fond of was The Folk of the Faraway Tree. In addition to the weird and wonderful characters who lived in the tree, the notion of a tree with different lands one could visit really appealed to my sense of imagination.
Another book that sticks in my mind is Heidi by Johanna Spyri, and I remember there being a TV adaptation. I so wanted to be Heidi, to the extent that I once ended up being physically sick as a result. There had been an occasion when I had visited my great-grandmother and been playing in her garden where she had a water butt with a tap. Because I was pretending to be Heidi, I thought nothing of taking a few sips of the stagnant water that was in the water butt. After all, it was probably what Heidi would have done, and the water in the Swiss Alps would (of course) have been fresh. It wasn't until a few hours later that I began to feel decidedly unwell. In addition to being sick on one of my aunts in the back seat of my dad's car, this had happened while we were travelling along a motorway, so not the best time for me to be unwell. Needless to say, I learnt my lesson and never felt tempted to drink from a water butt after that.
Brilliant story! Love it