"Collection"

Now I’m not really a collector, an accumulator yes, but a collector?
I pondered this latest challenge for the “Cabinet of Natural Curiosities” wondering if I had a collection of anything. Stamps maybe? Coins? No, I didn’t have a traditional collection but it occurred to me that I have been gathering together my favourite childhood books. Some are my copies I have kept down through the years, others I have bought to replace those I had originally borrowed or those precious ones that been lost in time. My Collection!


Since collections are kept in an orderly manner, my page needed to reflect this. I thought of my favourite books – Peg’s Fairy Book, Milly-Molly-Mandy, The Boy Next Door and Jack and Jill magazines – and chose illustrations and signatures from some of these. Except for Walter Hottle Bottle, the copies on my page are from my own childhood books, including my artistic colouring in of “the Nice White Cottage with the Thatched Roof …”


During this process a special memory returned.
As a child I lived in the country where the nearest town was 16 miles away along a dirt road. Only a few hundred people lived there and it didn’t have a library but fortunately the school had a small room (a large cupboard really when I think of it) which was ‘The School Library’. As an avid reader, I loved this place and spent every spare minute there, when I wasn’t playing hop-scotch or jacks.

Often I would holiday with my grandmother who lived in Sydney and knowing my love of books, she always let me delve into her huge old trunk which was full of her own, and her five children’s favourites. (I have since searched for some of these titles – to no avail). Best of all though, when it was my birthday Nanna would ask me if I would like a book and if so, which one?

In the centre of Sydney was an old, old bookshop which in my child’s mind stocked every book ever printed. It was a magical place. So Nanna would ask, I would reply, she would catch the bus, then the ferry into the city centre and purchase my gift and over the years every title I had dreamed of arrived in the mail.

I had to incorporate this precious memory as part of my page, so have it as my cabinet piece. I copied her inscription from “Anne of Ingleside” by L.M. Montgomery, labelled it 'memories', and happily include it with a full and thankful heart.
How wonderful life is.