Erly Works

I was round at the ex’s this afternoon, helping her sort through some boxes of books and other stuff. Some of the boxes dated back to the time we took out a mortgage together and quit the rental market. So I’ve taken back a few books that I knew I had somewhere – to wit, packed up in a cardboard box in the garden shed that used to be half mine. Sterne’s Tristram Shandy for one, the complete ghost stories of M R James for another.

I came away with a few other bits and pieces too – the fountain pen that I thought I’d lost at Johnny’s Green Room during a hotly contested evening of Nine Ball, and a couple of really old school exercise books. With some of my very earliest writing. Here are three selected pieces.

Untiteld, August 1960

once there were three chilldren a girl two boys and a dog there names were Johnny Tommy Polly the dog was called rex , and a sea-gull dived and caut a fish then Johnny throuh some bread. to it it eaten it then the fish and it was lovely there was some flowers Polly was Picking flowers and when she a big bunch they went and cerleckted shells one found some golden ones. ode found a winkle it was a white one one found 62 shells on the way home. they went round the rocks and they were home. and they had there tea and went to bed and went to sleep.

The Grate full Duck

The Ducklings were learning to swim. All exept one who was afraid of water and the clumsy Duckling was more clumsy at flying than swimming and one day the ducks were going to their winter quarters but the clumsy duckling fell in an hole a it was so small that it could not quack and the mother duck stare-d and then she remembered a man and he was a St called St Batholomew and he was saying his prayer so she drage dragged him to the small hole where the ducklings were waiting and the saint saw the young duckling in the hole and called him Benjamin and when he was out of the hole he col could fly steadily and could fly stedier than his mummy.

Obsurvashuns on Animal Husbundry

Last night my daddy went for some chickens and he could not get any he said poultry and some of our hens are greedy and they eat there eggs and I think they eat the shells of them we have a broody hen and it turns the eggs over and when the chickens hatch the mother hen keeps them warm and they grow up into adult frogs and they should not remain chickens still and if they did we would not get plenty hens and enough eggs for we sell a dozen eggs each day