Morning Pages | 21 December 2023

It's remarkable how chilled a reading session on the settee can make me, even with a pounding headache. And that state of chill led to my feeling an urge to write, and so that's what I did. Honouring the Urge.

I mentioned The Book of Three. This is the first of Lloyd Alexander's Chronicles of Prydain, a series of children's fantasy novels based on Welsh mythology. My primary school teacher, Mrs Welsh, read it to us in primary 6, so I would have been 9 or 10. I bought a used copy on eBay a couple of years ago, and just seeing the cover again made me tear up. It was such a big influence on my reading habits and led to my lifelong love of epic fantasy. I read The Hobbit not long after that, and that was me.

A set of books I didn't mention but should have is the Alfred Hitchcock and the Three Investigators series. I read them all, mainly borrowed from Prestwick library. Along with two of my pals, we started our own three investigators club one summer. I was the Jupiter Jones character. We even made up business cards and would meet in my garden shed. I don't remember ever solving any mysteries though!