DJ DARTON
Best-spelling author
with occasional contributions from
WORDSMITH DAVE
Wit, smart-arse, and rather silly fellow...

Scene – somewhere far, far away, in the southwest of England, possibly Cornwall, in the last century, when dinosaurs ruled the Earth... well, Harold Macmillan. Or was it Wilson? It was definitely someone called Harold. Never mind, you get the idea...

I was born. I had two parents, three grandparents… oh, and a dog. Grandparent number four died before I was born, and grandparent number three lived at the other end of the country, so I had to endure the scandal of being in a two-grandparent family... it was the talk of the village, until the postmistress was hanged at Bodmin gaol for embezzling the takings...

We lived in an unremarkable house on a hill which led down to an unremarkable village; before, behind and beyond us lay woods and fields, and if you walked far enough up the hill, you would find yourself on the moors. I think my first memory of the place is being awoken at a disagreeably early hour of the morning by a herd of cows on its way to market; to a young child, the noise those poor animals made as they passed was terrifying; unlike that young child, I expect they had a sense of what was to come...

Anyway, in our unremarkable house, I learned to crawl, then to walk, and to talk, to read, to write, and to count. I think it's fair to say that by the time I started school at the age of five, most of the hard work had been done, and all that remained for the teachers to do was to keep me occupied and out of trouble for the next thirteen years, tasks in which they succeeded, though only partly.

Education, as I experienced it, was firstly about discipline, and the means of teaching discipline was the generous use, formally and informally, of corporal punishment. Whether it was a caning from the headmaster, or a hard slap around the head or face administered by an irascible teacher, nowadays we call it assault. Some, of course, were more vicious than others, whilst the lazier amongst them used mental cruelty rather than violence; it was no matter though, because both were effective, and both cut deep, though the wounds from the former never heal. My fellow pupils, of course, were far nastier. The baby maybe born an innocent, but it grows quickly into a mean and spiteful child; then, when at last it reaches adulthood, it forgets what a nasty little shit it used to be...

But enough…

Bliss was it in that dawn to be alive, but to be young was very heaven!

With all those woods and fields, the moors, and miles of sandy beaches all within easy reach, those years should have been blissful indeed... endless summer days in the sun, woodsmoke-scented autumn evenings and snow-dressed winters, with spring’s primrose paths to lead us into those joyous times usually appearing in the middle of March. If a soundtrack was wanted, it would have been the music of Vaughan Williams and Holst, and if we’d needed someone to capture a moment of it on canvas, I imagine Constable or Turner would have been engaged, though I’d have preferred Monet or Renoir. But never mind because, when the warm and comfortable glow of nostalgia is dampened, I think Hieronymus Bosch would have been a better choice… 

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WORDSMITH DAVE

Scene – somewhere far, far away, perhaps a tumbledown cottage in a forest clearing, sometime in the last century, or maybe the one before that, when emperors, kings and princes ruled the world, when the poor were oppressed and the foreigner enslaved, and the only things they owned were their dreams, when Bliss it was in that Dawn to have made it through the night...

Well, I bet that didn't go quite the way you were expecting? Nothing ever does, or so I find...

In the beginning were the Words, my forebears, an ancient lineage stretching back beyond Time Immemorial; they began to marry other people's forebears, and I think you know what's coming next. Yes, a certain young Squire Word joined with a Miss Smith, and began a long line of Wordsmiths; and if you haven't guessed already, one of Word's brothers got together with a certain Miss Worth, and one of their descendants invented the Daffodil. The youngest brother married a Miss Search, a union which continues to puzzle many...

Anyway, should you ever find yourself confused by your many forebears, just remember - Goldilocks had only three, so count yourself lucky. 

More to come...

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