I’m still thinking about my reading, and my reading history, much only vaguely or indistinctly remembered – the book where the children were in this place, which I don’t really remember but had a river and a boat, the mystery that even in the final pages I didn’t really understand, the smugglers, the swashbucklers, the adventurers, the climbers and sailors and wanderers, the mysterious forests, the endless plains, the distant mountains, the treasure, the crash landing…
I was always desperate to have adventures, I had plenty of imaginary ones, but from my child’s point of view I never had a real adventure. I think I would have been utterly terrified if I really had been kidnapped/ stuck on a desert island/washed overboard/mistaken for a princess from a foreign land. In fact I know I would have been because when i was quite young, maybe about eight or nine, I went on a Sunday school trip which was somewhat chaotically organised, unlike today’s trips and visits.
I can’t now think who organised it – I’d half-thought it was the Sunday School my sister and I went to each week, but if so, why wasn’t she with me? We knew other children at the Sunday school but they weren’t really friends of ours – unless there was someone from my sister’s class at school and she was playing with them. We must have travelled by coach to wherever it was and there were fields and meadows where we were running about. There was a fence at the edge of the field and then a wood – maybe other children were climbing over it to go exploring, and I must have thought to myself ‘ooh, adventure!’ because I climbed over too and went into the wood.
I can’t remember clearly what i did, just wandered around i guess, on my own, though no doubt hearing the others playing. After a while I realised I hadn’t a clue where I was, where the other children were and worst of all, how to get out of the wood! Instead of excitement, I had a sinking feeling of panic as I wandered around until I saw lightness through the trees as I got to the edge of the trees and nearer the meadow. I could hear shouts and laughter and hurried on, no doubt full or relief. I got to the edge of the wood – there was the meadow, there were the other children – but the fence here was topped with barbed wire, there was no way i could get over it.
Some children ran past me and waved and I waved back trying not to show my fear and upset. I was actually beginning to snivel, and part of it was because in adventures, children were brave and fearless, they didn’t feel scared – or if they did they kept a stiff upper lip. Somehow, and I don’t remember how, I must have blundered back either along by the fence or within sight of it, I got back into the meadow and – and that’s the end of the memory. The feelings which remained – and are still with me when I think of it, are disappointment, shame that I had not been brave, and foolishness that of course a real little girl of seven or eight or however old I was, wouldn’t actually have an adventure. Adventures only happen in stories and books. No doubt once I was back in the meadow with all the other children I was fine and I’m sure I didn’t fret over it. Nobody else knew of course, they would have just seen me aimlessly wandering like the other children were. I wasn’t a very noticeable child! However, it obviously made a great impression on me since I remember it so clearly
Lois Elsden 