of books and bears

When I was a child I lived in books, discovered at an early age, and was a fluent and avid reader by the age of 7 when I moved up to the junior school and discovered that I had already read most of our set books for the year. I travelled through Narnia, met hobbits, played with the famous 5 and Biggles and the secret 7. As an adult child I have read all the Harry Potter books and particularly enjoyed Philip Pullman's 'his dark materials' trilogy, which I can highly recommend.

But my thoughts led me back to the sycamore tree we had in the garden. It didn't have a house in it but my father fastened blocks of wood on to its trunk for us to use as footholds to climb up into its crown where I could sit with my brother and sister, although not in much comfort.

My greatest joy, however, was my dolls house. It was a rectangular construction with a front panel which you could lift off. It was painted red, with a white balustrade, elegant windows and a porticoed doorway, and when opened it revealed 4 rooms inside. My father papered the walls with paper from books of wallpaper samples. Over the mantelpiece hung a stag's head resplendent with a fine set of antlers which came from a Christmas cracker. A school friend of mine gave me a couple of antique pieces of dolls house furniture amongst which was a tiny glass vase with red and blue stripes on it. The kitchen had cupboards full of miniature cutlery and dishes of food - a strong reminder of Beatrix Potter's story of the two bad mice where Hunka Munka tries to stuff a plate of food, stolen from a dolls house, into the fire grate. Eventually the dolls house grew too small for its inhabitants and Dad made me an annex out of an old fruit crate.

The inhabitants were bears - "Syrian bear" was about 6 inches tall, white with movable limbs and a moveable tail - and "Polar bear" who was about half his size and made of rabbit fur. He slept in a miniature picnic hamper in the annex.

Syrian Bear and Polar Bear used to go on expeditions in my younger brother's wooden toy train set. There was a train and about 4 wagons which you could pull along on a string. With the train loaded up with crockery and food, the bears would go out into the garden to explore the nooks and crannies of the rocks under the lilac tree. We had such fun.