Project Gutenberg

I finished Wind in the Willows in record time. The Palm is just so easy to read contrary to all expectations. I have just downloaded Gulliver's Travels and I suppose I will have to think about a donation to cover all this free reading. My Dad still has a very battered copy of Gulliver's Travels which I used to read when I was about ten. It had wonderful detailed drawings which were the main draw as most of the political allegory went over my head. Hopefully, I will understand it a bit more this time. It is about twice the length of WITW.

There are some absolutley beautiful moments in Wind in the Willows. The language is complex without being stuffy and can conjour up wonderful images in one sentence. The chapter 'Wild Wood' when Mole goes off to try and find Badger in the er... Wild Wood, brings back all sorts of memories of mine of walking through the countryside around Castlemorton where I used to live. (They wouldn't have their rave in the Winter - far too cold). My favourite time of day in my Favourite Season is a Winter evening about an hour before sunset but with a thick grey cloud. The light then is wonderful and highlights all the comforting Orange glows of the windows. Our house overlooked a large expanse of Common land and could be seen from the main road about a quarter of a mile away. (See Map - our house was the one just above the 'n' of 'Castlemorton at the corner of the yellow dotted edge road) The land between the house and the road is just Gorse and close-cropped grass but thew windows of our house could be seen in the distance. At Christmas, we could always see the lights of the tree in the window as we returned home at night. Coming home from school we were dropped off at the corner of the common and had to walk back across rough stony paths and even just grass tracks to get home. When I has just started at the school (I was just 14) I used to be accompanied by a sixth form girl who I had a serious crush on. She used to tell me about Chaucer and the other books she was doing for her English A-Level. I am not sure but it might have been those discussions of bawdy old-English literature that made me realise that there was more to life than science. Don't tell my wife though. Oh! Too late.