My Dad , as a small boy, found a dead body under a hedge in our local park. He ran to the police station and brought back a faintly disbelieving copper, tugging him by the hand to the site of the pallid,buzzing corpse. Had it been a film, the body would have disappeared,of course.But it hadn't,and my Dad was given ten shillings and no counselling. It did have an effect on him,though. He searched high and low for another one for the next ten years.
Anyone who has had,or has been,a child will know that they are not averse to grue. My favourite book,aged eight, was "Fox's Book Of Martyrs". The illustrations were enough to make most adults queasy,but I was fascinated. It has a Facebook page now.
Imaginative and morbid to a fault,it was not long before I found medical textbooks equally engrossing. I had to wait a bit before the magazine series "Man, Myth and Magic" emerged in 1970. Concerning itself entirely with the occult,it was remarkably well-written and researched,with an editorial board of lofty academics. The art director was Brian Innes, ex-percussionist of The Temperance Seven. However, everyone I knew collected all 112 issues for the utterly peculiar selection of freaky illustrations, reproductions of eerie artworks, and photographs of the phenomenally odd things that human beings get up to when throwing themselves wholeheartedly into drivel-worship.
My interest in the macabre was accidentally encouraged by my father;who brought unsuitable books into the house,and hid them,ineffectually, under his bed.
In the winter I had tonsillitis more or less constantly, and if I wasn't at school, I would wait for the car to cough and jerk its way to Kirkby. Once my Dad was safely on his way to terrorise the typing pool, I would flatten myself under his bed and gleefully read everything I wasn't meant to. I was often reduced to enquiring subtly as to his next scheduled library visit;having killed several compendia of "Stories Of Horror and the Supernatural", and lots of hardcore Detective Fiction,lying in the dust kittens on the bedroom carpet. He also used to get copies of "Argosy", a long-defunct magazine collection of short stories, accounts of mysterious true-life happenings, and anecdotes, snippets of amusing sayings and sage quotations by all manner of writers, ranging from Lord Dunsany to Ray Bradbury.They were also deemed unsuitable,and were therefore catnip. So were brawny American novels, by people like William Styron and John O'Hara. I found these dull,and bewildering. The women in them were always hanging around in slips with pointy bras,always drinking scotch, committing steamy adultery; sometimes declaring that they were utterly sick of everything and driving cars off bridges, or playing bridge, all activities equally unappealing to me. The men sounded comprehensively vile,but wore lovely clothes. There was often a character who had longer hair and was nice to girls.He was often called a "Faggot" by the nasty men, and kept getting beaten up in " Men's Rooms". I promised myself I would seek out a few of those chaps,when I got older, as respite from regularly having my stockings ripped,nipples assaulted , and sobbing on streetcars en route to an illegal abortion.
Phew! I didn't want to grow breasts if this was what happened to you with them.
My Mother cared nothing for fiction, and pronounced most novels "silly". She read autobiographies and histories, mostly, with odd lapses into Hugh Walpole and Dickens. Her books didn't attract me in the same way as did my Father's banned collection. Still, they were books,and had to be read. I sometimes think the best way to get children to read is to surround them with books and then tell them they can't have so much as a peep.
The GB won't read. He thinks that books are Gay And For Girls. The physical act of writing seems to cause him acute discomfort. When forced into it, he writhes and reels and twists his enormous limbs, sliding down chair seats and melting into the carpet,such is his agony of boredom. And yet, he will happily digest great chunks of technical information from a screen, and will actually read instructions on a box, which is more than I've ever done.
I told him about his Grandfather's long-ago find in the park, though. I thought it was rather a good story. He pondered it for a few minutes, and then asked me how much you would get now. I truthfully said that I imagined that you wouldn't get anything, apart from a visit from a bossy therapist, possibly. I don't want him "discovering" dead bodies all over the place in the hope of a fee. That's how Burke and Hare started,if you ask me.
Anyone who has had,or has been,a child will know that they are not averse to grue. My favourite book,aged eight, was "Fox's Book Of Martyrs". The illustrations were enough to make most adults queasy,but I was fascinated. It has a Facebook page now.
Imaginative and morbid to a fault,it was not long before I found medical textbooks equally engrossing. I had to wait a bit before the magazine series "Man, Myth and Magic" emerged in 1970. Concerning itself entirely with the occult,it was remarkably well-written and researched,with an editorial board of lofty academics. The art director was Brian Innes, ex-percussionist of The Temperance Seven. However, everyone I knew collected all 112 issues for the utterly peculiar selection of freaky illustrations, reproductions of eerie artworks, and photographs of the phenomenally odd things that human beings get up to when throwing themselves wholeheartedly into drivel-worship.
My interest in the macabre was accidentally encouraged by my father;who brought unsuitable books into the house,and hid them,ineffectually, under his bed.
In the winter I had tonsillitis more or less constantly, and if I wasn't at school, I would wait for the car to cough and jerk its way to Kirkby. Once my Dad was safely on his way to terrorise the typing pool, I would flatten myself under his bed and gleefully read everything I wasn't meant to. I was often reduced to enquiring subtly as to his next scheduled library visit;having killed several compendia of "Stories Of Horror and the Supernatural", and lots of hardcore Detective Fiction,lying in the dust kittens on the bedroom carpet. He also used to get copies of "Argosy", a long-defunct magazine collection of short stories, accounts of mysterious true-life happenings, and anecdotes, snippets of amusing sayings and sage quotations by all manner of writers, ranging from Lord Dunsany to Ray Bradbury.They were also deemed unsuitable,and were therefore catnip. So were brawny American novels, by people like William Styron and John O'Hara. I found these dull,and bewildering. The women in them were always hanging around in slips with pointy bras,always drinking scotch, committing steamy adultery; sometimes declaring that they were utterly sick of everything and driving cars off bridges, or playing bridge, all activities equally unappealing to me. The men sounded comprehensively vile,but wore lovely clothes. There was often a character who had longer hair and was nice to girls.He was often called a "Faggot" by the nasty men, and kept getting beaten up in " Men's Rooms". I promised myself I would seek out a few of those chaps,when I got older, as respite from regularly having my stockings ripped,nipples assaulted , and sobbing on streetcars en route to an illegal abortion.
Phew! I didn't want to grow breasts if this was what happened to you with them.
My Mother cared nothing for fiction, and pronounced most novels "silly". She read autobiographies and histories, mostly, with odd lapses into Hugh Walpole and Dickens. Her books didn't attract me in the same way as did my Father's banned collection. Still, they were books,and had to be read. I sometimes think the best way to get children to read is to surround them with books and then tell them they can't have so much as a peep.
The GB won't read. He thinks that books are Gay And For Girls. The physical act of writing seems to cause him acute discomfort. When forced into it, he writhes and reels and twists his enormous limbs, sliding down chair seats and melting into the carpet,such is his agony of boredom. And yet, he will happily digest great chunks of technical information from a screen, and will actually read instructions on a box, which is more than I've ever done.
I told him about his Grandfather's long-ago find in the park, though. I thought it was rather a good story. He pondered it for a few minutes, and then asked me how much you would get now. I truthfully said that I imagined that you wouldn't get anything, apart from a visit from a bossy therapist, possibly. I don't want him "discovering" dead bodies all over the place in the hope of a fee. That's how Burke and Hare started,if you ask me.
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