Wheelistically @ Claire.NU

I have always loved a good book. For long as I can remem­ber my sum­mer hol­i­days were filled with trips to the local, if tiny, vil­lage lib­rary. I should ima­gine that most people’s liv­ing rooms were lar­ger than said lib­rary, but I digress. Every couple of weeks dur­ing the never end­ing abiss that was school sum­mers hol­i­days, my aunt would sand­wich both my sis­ter and I (com­plete with crutches) and her two chil­dren into the rear of the car (which over the years ranged from a tiny black mini, to an awk­ward 2-door char­coal Ford Capri to a mer­ci­fully roomy Volvo) and off we would beetle to gather read­ing mater­i­als that prom­ised to keep our brain-cells from rot­ting in the absence of attend­ing an edu­ca­tional insti­tu­tion. I loved it.

Think­ing back I feel sorry for the other three. My aunt’s chil­dren took to books like a pond duck to Hoisin sauce, it was clearly agony. As for my sis­ter? Des­pite being des­per­ately encour­aged by my mother and being blinded by the shin­ing example that was her book­worm of a sib­ling, she never really took to it. It wasn’t for want of try­ing, every time she would return with the exact same amount of books I did. After all, it wouldn’t have been fair oth­er­wise and there would’ve been tears and pub­lic whin­ing and strop­ping that would res­ult in my mother let­ting her bone-structure set in that face and mut­ter­ing in harsh tones under her breath through clenched teeth that we should “pack it in or we’re going home in a minute”.

I think every par­ent should have access to that face, never in my child­hood was I sub­ject to ground­ings, the removal of toys and treats or phys­ical pun­ish­ment. Believe me, even now as a grown adult, if I see that face, I know I’ve got to start back-peddling — and fast. My grand­mother too has that face, although truth be told, I’ve only wit­nessed a hand­ful of times and thank good­ness it wasn’t aimed at me. Much to my delight, it seems to be hered­it­ary and I have been told that I har­bour a “mini­ature” ver­sion of that face — not quite as scary as my mother’s, but accord­ing to my source, it has poten­tial. I’m very much look­ing for­ward to unleash­ing it onto my as-yet-to-be-formed unsus­pect­ing off­spring. I’m vin­dict­ive like that. Alas, again I digress.

On our return home, my sis­ter and I would shoe-horn ourselves out of the back of Auntie’s car and duti­fully deposit our chosen books in neat piles either in the liv­ing room or the bed­room we shared. My pile would then be sys­tem­at­ic­ally divided and conquered over the three weeks of which, I had them on loan. My sister’s books would remain almost untouched, she’d take one with her on vis­its to my Nan’s (pre­sum­ably for the ride) or per­severe for a short while at home, but it wouldn’t be long before she got bored and would reat­tach the roller-blades or bike that was pretty much super-glued to her through­out the hol­i­days and be off out shed­ding the skin from her limbs and past­ing it firmly to any avail­able tar­mac surface.

The Babysit­ters Club (BSC) was a firm favour­ite of mine between the ages of 8 and 11, closely fol­lowed by Point Hor­ror between the ages of 11 and 12. In a four week visit to Aus­tralia to see rel­at­ives, I took 7 BSC books with me (includ­ing 2 bumper spe­cials which were double the size of an ordin­ary edi­tion) and ended up spend­ing a pro­por­tion­ate amount of my hol­i­day money buy­ing 3 or 4 more while I was there because I’d ran out of things to read.

It was well-known for me to devour an entire BSC book in the course of a day which, sim­ul­tan­eously became a source of great pride and frus­tra­tion for my Grandad as he would reg­u­larly altern­ate between beam­ing about what a great thing it was to see “young­sters like her, read­ing nower days” as “you just don’t see it any more” to how “unso­ci­able” I was being, “always got her nose in a book”.

I soon out-grew “Kristy” and the antics of her sugary-sweet babysit­ting friends and believe me it was vomit-inducing, I moment­ar­ily leafed though a copy found in the spare room recently. I could feel my gums reced­ing, plaque build­ing and dark can­ker­ous cre­vasses bur­row­ing their way into my tooth-enamel before I’d even fin­ished the first para­graph. By the third para­graph, bile was sear­ing like lava in my oeso­phagus and I thought I was going to erupt like Mount Etna by the second page-turn.

After a brief flir­ta­tion with Point Hor­ror: nov­el­ettes of the horror-based vari­ety aimed at teens, think Goose­bumps with teeth and a twist, I was gran­ted “spe­cial” per­mis­sion by the lib­rar­i­ans to take out books from the “Grown-Up” sec­tion (I was going to use the word Adult, but feared it would con­jure images of the sort of paper­back vari­ety found at the rear of lar­ger branches of Ann Sum­mers.)

Tech­nic­ally, I wasn’t old enough to bor­row books from the same shelves as my mother and should have still been mither­ing around the “Young Adult” sec­tion, but God-forbid they should hold back the devel­op­ment of an “advanced” child. There, I was given free-reign in the hor­ror and thriller sec­tions. Stephen King, Dean Koontz, Bent­ley Little, Richard Lay­mon, Mar­tina Cole. Devil pos­ses­sion, murder, rape, infi­del­ity, child abuse, kid­nap, tor­ture, you name it. Not to men­tion the bio­graph­ies I per­used; fame, for­tune, drug abuse, sex scan­dal, the list goes on. Funny really, people are so busy jump­ing up and down about the cen­sor­ship of music and the viol­ence and pro­fan­ity on TV and in video games. Yet, there I was at 12 read­ing the mem­oirs of world-famous heroin addicts and no-one bats an eye­lid. Why? Because read­ing is edu­ca­tional. You don’t say.

Now before the afore-mentioned indi­vidu­als start jump­ing up and down about poor par­ent­ing, I would like to state that this was a rather valu­able over­sight on my mother’s part. After all, I was taught about such mat­ters in the con­text of a given “real-life” situ­ation. When someone writes an auto­bi­o­graphy, there’s no part where they go “Ooops, Game Over. Return to last save and give it a second bash.” You see these people lose their careers, fam­il­ies, mar­riages etc. It’s all rather well-balanced. After all, in “real life” there is no “hap­pily ever after”.

Any­way, I seem to have become rather removed from the beaten track again. I read rather obsess­ively for a few more years, then sud­denly, it stopped. I dis­covered the “inform­a­tion super high­way” or the “world wide web” or “whatever buzzword or bizarre expres­sion some bod in advert­ising has dreamt up in-between stack­ing his pen­cil erasers in order of shape, size and col­our”. In short, I found the Inter­net.

Over the last 4–5 years since I dis­covered the Inter­net, my love for read­ing hasn’t so much died, more been boxed and put in the attic with the notion that it’ll come in handy again one day.

The other day, I went up in that attic. I was brows­ing in a (ridicu­lously over­stocked to the point where my wheel­chair was refused access by poorly stacked hard­backs on more than one occa­sion) book­shop when his expres­sion of utter dis­be­lief caught my eye. Who’s expres­sion you ask? That of my hero, Mr. Jeremy Clark­son.

Those unfa­mil­iar with the dry, opin­ion­ated wit that is Clark­son, need to dis­cover BBC2 (found between BBC1 and ITV1) and watch Top Gear. Most dis­miss Top Gear as just a poky motor­ing show where grown middle-aged men get to be 12 again and tank around in some of the world’s most knicker-wetting Super­cars. They’d be almost right, except Top Gear isn’t just that at all. Top Gear makes you real­ise the real reason people fast drive cars — not to get from A to B quickly or to look like smarmy pil­locks, but because you get a thrill sim­ilar to para­chut­ing or bungee-jumping without even hav­ing to get off your back­side. Fan-bloody-tas-tic! Top Gear makes me wish I could drive and Clark­son makes me wish I could write.

You see, aside from giv­ing opin­ions more vivid that a giant Magic-Eye pic­ture with the con­trast wound right up on Top Gear, Clark­son writes. Hence, the appear­ance of his afore-mentioned expres­sion on the cover of a paper­back found in the book­shop I vis­ited. Cue me clam­our­ing at K to reach it for me (why is any­thing I want to buy always stacked out of reach?) and then me being like a dog with two tails for the rest of the day.

You have to buy this book. This man is so funny its untrue. I have spent the last two days doubled-up with laughter and irrit­at­ing K no-end by laugh­ing out loud to the point of hys­ter­ics, whilst read­ing. Being an avid reader of his column in The Sun, I’d always found his writ­ing and the points he raised to be not only pain­fully accur­ate but extremely amus­ing in their exe­cu­tion. How­ever, that column is noth­ing on this. “The World Accord­ing to Clark­son” is the first book I’ve read in a long time — its def­in­itely been worth the wait.