![]() ![]() She played the whole orchestra, every instrument from the kettle-drum to the piccolo she was the conductor and the composer. She just had to open the book and she would become by turns every character inside those pages: she was Rudyard Kipling telling the tale she was the Camel acquiring his hump, the Rhinoceros getting his skin, the Elephant's Child growing his trunk – by Crocodile means – and she was the Cat that Walked by Himself. So my elder brother Pieter and I were for a while, for that critical time when reading to children in bed is so important, the only audience she had. But by the time I was born, my mother had stopped acting to become a full-time mother. My mother was an actress, who had performed in rep all over the country, including a season or two at Stratford. M y copy of Just So Stories, in its brick-red cover with the Elephant's Child straining away with all his might to escape the jaws of the Crocodile on the banks of "the great grey-green, greasy Limpopo River", the Bi-Coloured-Python-Rock-Snake in close attendance, was the first book I truly loved. ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |