I've always loved reading, my first fond memory is of The Little Red Hen (Ladybird version), and a trip to the Mobile Library, a large grey van full of beautiful books that parked, once a fortnight (I think) in the Wheatsheaf pub car park in the hamlet where I grew up, was a great treat, I still can picture a large volume of Thorburn's Natural history illustrations that fascinated me .. the plate of a Ptarmagin was especially beautiful.When I was a little older but preteen I think? a new neighbour arrived in the hamlet. She wasn't a local and was more town in appearance than country, a new type for me, but a very nice woman, interesting, kind and attractive. She loaned me a book about Siamese cats by Doreen Tovey and I was hooked, and will forever have fond and grateful memories of Mrs S-C.
Over the years Doreen Tovey's books have fluctuated between being very easy to find to very difficult but they've always been worth the chase. They've amused me, and in places made me laugh out loud and if I include a couple of extracts here perhaps you may see why...
from "The New Boy" by Doreen Tovey
"When, two years previously, Charles said he was thinking of taking up bee-keeping, I said Oh No We Weren't. We had enough trouble with Annabel and the cats, I said, without adding bees to the mixture.......Eventually I agreed to our having them.So long as they were kept right at the top of the orchard, I said, where they couldn't sting me or the animals. And so long as I, personally, wasn't expected to have anything to do with them. Famous last words again, of course."
They aquired the hives of bees and poor Doreen has to help steady the hives full of irate bees being carried up the steep tussocky hillside to their new home..all the while desperately hoping they won't escape during the journey.... all is well to begin with, and her husband is both happy and fascinated by his new hobby, until,that is, he gets stung for the first time...
"Not when he was up at the hive, either, when in anycase he'd have had his veil on, but while he was standing at quite a distance, interestedly watching them work. A guard bee apparently got suspicious of him and came down to warn him off. Then it got tangled in his hair, stung him on the head when it couldn't get out again- and the first I knew was his charging down through the orchard yelling for me to help him. That was sooner said than done. The bee was still buzzing madly in his hair. I didn't want to touch it. So I did the only thing I could think of and banged him on the head.
It despatched the bee alright. According to Charles it nearly despatched him as well."
for more you'll have to read the book "The New Boy" by Doreen Tovey [extracts from chapter eight]
The illustrations are lovely too!