This September Sun, My Grandmother and I
I’ve always believed I was born in the wrong age. I should have been born in the twenties or thirties and lived in a big manor house in the English countryside. There would have been a nanny, a cook, at least two maids, a gardener and perhaps even a butler thrown in for good measure. Daddy would go to London on the train every morning and mother would run the Women’s Institute, organizing raffles and tea parties, all held at the local Vicarage, of course. I’d go to boarding school and, in the holidays, I’d explore the nearby woods and find fairies and pixies and elves and we’d all have such splendid fun. Considering the reading matter I was exposed to as a child, this idea of myself is not surprising.Yes, Enid Blyton has a lot to answer for, and more so in the colonies where this idea of between-the-Wars-England lived a far longer life than it did in England itself.But she wasn’t alone. My maternal grandmother was a vociferous reader. She’d sit with a pile of books next to her a...