And now that I'm half way through I must say I'm very much enjoying the stories. A delightful quirkiness, mixed with good writing. A splendid 'falling asleep to dream sequence" sticks in my mind:
Mark sat in the train and wished that he could go to sleep. He had been to the dentist and had a local injection, and his cheek still felt most peculiar. He didn't like it at all. So he counted sheep earnestly, but the sheep were obstinate animals, and wouldn't do as they were told, and the train was an extremely rowdy one—he could hear it all the time saying to itself, “What-did-you-say? Stick-in-the-mud! That's-what-I-said. Stick-in-the-mud!” It was a slow little train, plodding along over the march from Cobchester to Tallant, and, try as Mark would, he could not make it go any faster. He urged it on under his breath and even tried reciting Horatius to it, but it only staggered along more sleepily, and stopped here and there at Oghan, and Naghan, and Liddle Halt, while Mark fumed and looked at his watch.
[...]
He wandered up and down the carriage, and hung out of the window, and read a magazine which he had already read twice before, and finally settled down and tried to go to sleep again.
This time the sheep were more obedient. They jumped over the stile, but Mark noticed that they found it harder and harder to get over, until they had to creep up one side, foot by foot, and then flock down the other. Were they very old sheep? Or what was it? Then he realized that it was the fault of the stile. It was getting higher and higher, like an elongated ladder, and each sheep had to climb almost out of sight before, with a gasp of relief, it began the descent. Finally the remaining sheep all sat down in a crowd on one side and looked at him reproachfully. The top of the stile was now invisible in the clouds, and it was no longer a stile, but a terribly thick, tangled, barbed-wire fence.
“Well, you certainly can't get over that,” said Mark to the sheep. “I suppose I'll have to find another way in for you. Come along.”
And he set off, walking along the side of the fence, looking for some sort of gate. When he turned back to see if the sheep were following him, he saw that they were still sitting in a huddled group. Evidently they were waiting till he had found a gate before they took any more exercise. He decided that he did not blame them, and went on.
He was walking along the side of a flat, gray road which stretched away into the distance before and behind him, until both ends were lost in mist. Groundsel and ragwort grew along the edge and a cold wind was blowing. Mark shivered.
“I don't think much of this place,” he said to himself.
However, he pulled up his left sock and walked on, and the dust crept into his shoes. A very small tabby cat came walking towards him, and when it was near gave one plaintive:
“Prrrmp?”
“Well, what are you doing here?” he asked it.
The cat seemed rather doubtful itself, and he picked it up and carried it, quite glad of its warmth, for the wind was colder with every step.
The cat purred, and he talked to it and did not notice until he was nearly there a gate in the fence with a sentry-box beside it.
Quote:
Originally Posted by pdurrant
I'm reading "The Serial Garden" by Joan Aitken. A delightful set of (connected) children's fantasy stories I hadn't come across before.
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