Confession Time

I have a confession to make! It's not something I am proud of and I try to limit it to the secrecy of the bedroom. It's not something I've done for a long time either but, remembering the pleasure I used to get, I just couldn't resist it.

Let me explain: I was in the local Help the Aged charity shop looking for an application form when I espied a Famous Five book. After going home and creating a spreadsheet to justify the outlay of 20p and extrapolating the knock-on effects of such extravagance, I returned and later emerged triumphant with the book safely hidden in a plain brown wrapper. As a kid, you see, I can still remember discovering the joy of reading and this whole bookcase of rather boring looking books in my bedroom, which I had previously ignored, suddenly became my escape from the trials and tribulations of childhood. There was the whole series of Just William, the whole series of Famous Five as well as stories of pirates, cowboys and all sorts of other thrilling adventures.

I was all set to be disappointed when I opened the cover but, to my astonishment, I still loved every moment of it. Suddenly, Aunt Fanny, Uncle Quentin, Timmy the dog and all the rest of them came flooding back and I finished the book in a day.

I am now an inveterate collector of both William and the Famous Five once more, although the very books that lay in my room for all those years now cost up to £35 each depending on their condition.

It's a strange thing.....all of the amazing effects in movies these days, all the engrossing entertainment of computer games, not to mention the TV programmes available and yet I still get the utmost pleasure from the one thing that life has taken away from us - simple imagination.

It's like when I was a kid and I played constantly with my toy soldiers. My slipper was a boat, the rug was an island, the carpet was a sea, the armchair a mountain. Simple things where there were no limits apart from one's own mind.

Maybe that's where I get my love of books from and this apparent ability to draw pictures with words. A few years back I wasn't very well and I wrote an awful lot as a sort of therapy. Lots of writing, lots of poems. All of which I still have and still get something out of reading. I was told at the time I ought to write professionally but that's the paradox. If I write because I have to then it becomes a pressure. If it becomes a pressure then I lose the joy of writing.

I've written some pieces for a local magazine which are, I suppose, journalistic and written to order but the thought of getting up and thinking "I have to write" is not something to which I relate. That's one of the purposes of this blog, so I can see if I can discipline my writing and make my fortune. There again, what if I wrote and it wasn't accepted? Would I lose the confidence and enjoyment in the one thing that I feel I can do?

Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaargh!