What books do you want to read?
Ever since I first learnt to read, I have read books from any genre, both fact and fiction, academic and non academic, funny and sad. I can’t keep to any single type of book and I would never want to.
When I first started reading I loved comics like Action, Victor, TV21 and, of course, The Beano. I used to lie in bed for ages reading by torchlight and I would read most of them over and over again. When I started to move onto books, I was buying books from Target’s Doctor Who range, Michael Bond’s Paddington books and the Narnia books. I also liked certain fact based books. For example, I had (and still have!) a Crazy but True fact book which I probably drove everyone mad with at the time constantly reading out random facts! Later on I was definitely interested in the unexplained, having a book of mysteries at sea and The Vampire in Legend, Fact and Art. Around the same time I would be found with my head in one of the Ladybird history books, something that I really enjoyed because they were proper pocket money books and I could buy at least one or two a month.
As with so many other things, secondary school severely dampened my enthusiasm for reading and in my teens I was much more likely to be listening to music or watching TV. After I left it took me two or three years to regain the reading habit, but when I did it was through reading the entire R F Delderfield novels that were available in the W H Smith across the road from my office. I read only his novels for about 6 months, going from To Serve Them All My Days, to A Horseman Riding By, to Diana, then The Avenue Saga, and finally the Swann Family Saga. The only other time I did anything similar was in Saudi where the library on the base had about twenty Terry Pratchett Discworld books and I read all of them, with just the odd Inspector, either Morse or Wexford thrown in!
I was a fitful book reader for a while during my twenties and thirties, going from reading voraciously to hardly reading at all depending upon how I felt and what was happening in my life. Then, I started commuting to London and I rediscovered books with a vengeance. Apart from a couple of years when I was writing my own stories, I was hardly ever seen without a book on the journeys to and from the capital. I started becoming very wide ranging in my tastes, going from autobiography to music history, from historical novels to social history novels, from crime novels to romance novels. I read anything and everything and I loved having the opportunity to explore new authors, new genres, new subjects and new stories.
I couldn’t imagine my life without a huge range of reading and, although I don’t read anything like as much as did on my commute, I still love the excitement of discovering a new author and the comfort of rereading an old one.
Write about a few of your favorite family traditions.
Yes, I know Christmas is over for another year, but I really can’t think of another time where family traditions are so integral to the way that we act and interact.
When we had children, one of the things I looked forward to most was Christmas. As a child I had always found Christmas magical and I couldn’t wait to pass that magic on to my own children. Over the years, a whole tapestry of Christmas traditions grew up as the children did. The first was Christmas stockings and a sign saying Santa Please Stop Here. We got both from a shop on the outskirts of Sydney as we prepared to spend Christmas at a little place called Nelson Bay to the North of Sydney. Our youngest at the time was nearly two years old and she understood that something special was happening. We ended up bringing the Santa sign and the three stockings back with us, and they are all used to this day, having been in the centre of our Christmas since 1998!
We have ornaments that are brought out every year, my favourite of which is an Advent calendar in the form of Santa going down a chimney. I bought that from a charity shop for about £3 back in 2005 and for years, our children took turns in removing the numbered rods underneath Santa to send him down the chimney. Early in 2006 I bought a set of cake ornaments consisting of a Santa, a Snowman and an Angel for 13p and they are placed on top of our cake every year. A definite bargain I’m sure you will agree!
One tradition that I am sure our children will be happy to jetison for their own Christmas started through practicality. As you will know from your own childhood, children tend to rip off the wrapping paper on every single present as soon as they see it. It was exhausting for them and for us to be so over stimulated, so we made it a tradition to open presents one at a time so that they could properly appreciate them. In that way we could easily make present opening last until December 27, and, so I told them, make Christmas last longer! My youngest daughter in particular complains about this every year and says that when she has her own Christmas she will open everything all at once! We shall see!
Our final traditions are watching Love Actually together as a family and going to the Dickens Christmas Festival with as many of the family as are available. It’s nice that three of the children still make both of those things part of their Christmas build up.
Christmas is all about traditions and when they have their own houses our children will keep some of ours and ignore others as well as introducing some of their own. That is what makes Christmas such a special time of year.
What do you enjoy doing most in your leisure time?
These prompts do tend towards repetition from time to time and I have been answering them for the best part of seven months now. I actually like that because it gives me the challenge of thinking of a new way of answering similar questions. So today I am going back over four decades to look at the way that I spent my leisure time before computers and smartphones took over our lives.
As a child, teenager and young adult I was used to activities that involved friends. Whether that be Scouting, parties or drinking (sometimes all three were very much linked especially in Venture Scouts!!) we were focused on having fun and deepening our ties as people. Conversations flowed, different groups of people talked together and we discussed pretty much everything under the sun. Now, I know that this still happens with my children and their friends, but if you drift out of the conversation you can immediately focus on the screen in your hands. When I was younger, if you drifted out of a conversation you often carried on listening to it in case there was a chance for you to rejoin. If you were tired of conversation or, in your teenage years, a bit worse for drink you could have a proper break sitting on your own or walking outside for some fresh air until someone came to look for you.
When reading, you would be completely focused on the book in your hand. You wouldn’t be wondering how many people had read your latest blog post or Instagram post because those things only existed in science fiction. Instead of going to the phone if the book became hard going you would plough on. That didn’t mean that you finished every book, or that you didn’t get distracted, far from it. What it did mean was that you allowed your mind to drift to other things or to reflect on why the book wasn’t really grabbing you. I would often have three or four books on the go at the same time, which probably reflected my butterfly mind, and as a result I would find something to interest me. Should all of the books fall short it would be on to music.
Music in the pre Spotify age was a much deeper experience. You only had the records or tapes in your collection to work with, so you would listen to certain singles and certain albums time after time until you knew them perfectly. With a choice of a few hundred songs you would find them become an integral part of your life. They are songs you can listen to now and they bring back memories of people and places in a way few other things can. It’s inconceivable to me that you would be able to bring those visual memories to mind nowadays. No way could you remember and picture your surroundings the first time you heard a song on Spotify! Music has never been more accessible or more disposable because it doesn’t cost anything. Back in the days when you spent your pocket money on your records they meant so much more and you connected with them so much more readily. Obviously, artists become an integral part of young people’s lives, as the passionate crowds at recent concerts I have been to prove. Taylor Swift, Sabrina Carpenter and The Last Dinner Party all have absolutely passionate fan bases but I think that passion is far harder to come by.
Television was the central technology of my childhood and it was a live experience only. If you missed it, you missed it for ever (at least until video tapes and DVDs) so you concentrated on each programme more if you really liked it. If you didn’t enjoy it you had, at most, two other channels to choose from but with closedowns being common on the BBC and with few programmes, if any, starting before 9am, it was often a case of one channel or switching off. With no phone to double screen on your focus was only on the programme or the people you were with so you knew much more quickly whether you wanted to carry on with the programme or turn it off.
The most important part of your leisure time back in my younger days was boredom. That was what encouraged you to try something else or just sit quietly and allow your mind to wander. It was essential for you to experience boredom and Sundays were the perfect time to do that until the early 1990s when the shops were allowed to open. Sundays just stretched out endlessly unless you dreaded going back to school on the Monday, in which case they sped by. I credit my boring Sundays with giving me an imagination that I still value and use.
So, will I occasionally go back to a 70s and 80s style Sunday? Well, I often think I should and I intend to a bit more this year. My phone will go onto airplane mode and I will see if I can rediscover the joys and drawbacks of analogue life once again. Will that be possible? Who knows, but I will try it and write about it, so watch this space!
Name an attraction or town close to home that you still haven’t got around to visiting.
For those of you who have read Great Expectations you will remember that a fair amount of the story takes place in Satis House, the home of Miss Havisham where she lives in constant despair after she was jilted at the altar on her wedding day. It is actually based on a real house in Rochester called Restoration House. With Great Expectations being such a favourite of mine and with Rochester being so close it seems incredible that I have never been there. I have always wanted to, but it is one of those attractions that is only open occasionally, and it’s not easy to remember to check when. What I will do is to find the official website, work out when it is open and when I can go and finally make the booking. When I do I will definitely write about it on here.
List five things you do for fun.
I am trying to find out what I do for fun as that has become more important as I have stepped back from full time year round teaching. It’s not actually a case of doing something new, but appreciating what I already do more than I have in the past.
- Writing my blog every day is a good discipline to get into but it’s also a lot of fun. I wouldn’t do it otherwise. The fact that it is nearly always early on in the morning means that I have to engage my brain and it’s really good for me.
- Janet and I love doing jigsaw puzzles together and it’s something we need to do more of this year. Yes, there is the occasional frustration of getting stuck but even that’s fun because it’s followed by the inspiration that means you are full steam ahead for the next part of the puzzle. It’s great as a mental challenge and also as an opportunity to work on something together.
- Walking is something I have always enjoyed doing and Janet and I love walking down by the Kent coast in particular. It is great exercise of course but it is also great fun to see the views and to feel the fresh air. Over the years I have undertaken a number of charity walks for a number of different causes and our walks are a very important part of my training. I am not sure if I am going to do a charity walk this year but if I don’t then I’ll definitely do one next year.
- One of the pastimes I let slip after finishing my commuting days was reading. My hour long journeys there and back were completely focused on books rather than a screen. I would read over 100 books a year as a result and I would concentrate on anything I liked. Romantic comedies, detective novels, books about music, books about popular culture and social history. You name it, I read it. To restrict myself to fiction or non fiction, or to read a specific genre is anathema to me. Variety is the spice of my reading life.
- Finally we come to my favourite TV programme of the moment. My youngest daughter and I started watching Celebrity Traitors together last year and I got completely hooked. Tonight, as I write is the final programme of the normal version and I am absolutely loving it. The game is great, the players are a fantastic mix and the sheer enjoyment I get from it is amazing. A lot of that enjoyment comes from sharing it with my daughter and discussing the programmes and what might happen next. The programme we share as a family is Home and Away. It’s a blast of sunshine from our favourite country and we have been to Palm Beach where it is filmed a couple of times so we recognise the places where the filming takes place. Individual watching is OK but nothing like as much fun as watching something with other people. My Dad and I shared three programmes, MASH, Yes Minister/Prime Minister and The Wonder Years. The last of those we shared despite not living in the same house. We used to watch each episode then chat about it on the phone and I really treasure the memories of those conversations as I grew to understand him more and more.
So, there you have it. That’s what is fun for me, and long may it continue.
David Pearce - Popular Culture and Personal Passions 