No TV in those days, WW2 was in full swing and after dinner
the family sat in the sitting room listening to the radio, reading and knitting
and doing jigsaws. Sometimes friends came round and they played bridge. If I
sat quietly behind the sofa they sometimes forgot to pack me off to bed.
The little table beside Auntie Susie's chair was a good
source of reading material. She kept her little stack of library books there
for the reading-cum-knitting sessions of an evening. One day I had one of
Auntie Sue’s library books and I was reading it with great interest, until I
asked my mother at breakfast: "What's a sex maniac?" (I pronounced it
man-eye-ack)
"It is a kind of murderer", said my mother,
"Why do you ask?"
I said there was mention of one in Auntie Susie’s library
book, and my mother was right, he had indeed murdered someone. When I wanted to
go back and finish the book, I couldn’t find it anywhere. My mother and Ouma
and Aunt Sue all helped me look, but the book was gone, never to be seen again.
One of life's little mysteries.
I didn't like to attract too much attention and did a lot of
my reading behind the sofa. (From there I also heard a lot of interesting if
often mystifying grown-up talk.)
Auntie Sue also had a dog called Rex whom she dearly loved.
Everybody else disliked him because his hobbies were jumping up against you
and/or sticking his nose in your crotch. Ouma complained that Auntie Sue always
had dogs but she, Ouma, had to feed and look after them. This was a lesson to
my mother and we were never allowed a dog until I had already gone to boarding
school and my sister Marie got her dachshund Cleo. But that is another story.
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