Do you know, it’s a strange thing, but library issue desks seem to have got lower and lower since I was a child. Has anyone else noticed this? There I was at the age of 8, staring up at the top of this enormous wooden edifice, over which a hand was reaching for my chosen library book. I must say I’m glad they thought of making them shorter – it does seem to make things easier.
I grew up in Lisburn, Co. Antrim, Northern Ireland, and the library was in the same building as the Old Courthouse. The steep, bare stairs smelt of wood and polish and the warm sun shone through huge windows, lighting up the floating stairwell dust.
The Old Courthouse, Lisburn (from lisburn.com)
Through the big, heavy door was the dark Mount Everest of the issue desk, beyond which I found a whole new world in a small, light-green, hard-back book called “Mixed-Muddly Island,”* and I handed it up to the summit. It was stamped with an important-sounding click and handed back down again and I climbed onto the wide windowsill and began to read.
A family sets off in a small boat with a picnic. Then the motor breaks down and they don’t have enough wind to sail home. The oars have been left behind and they start to get hungry. After a time they drift to a beautiful island…
“Come on Alison, you can read that later,” came my mother’s voice and we all trooped down the stairs and into the car.
“I want to go for a picnic on a boat!” I announced.
“Well if we ever get a boat I’m sure you will,” my mother commented, edging the car into the traffic.
Most books in my life would be left in a heap, never to be picked up again, while I would be dressing my dolls and placing them in their bookcase houses or eiderdown villages. “Mixed-Muddly Island” was different and soon I knew every detail by heart, from the island’s brightly painted houses where no one has to do any washing up, to the jolly, dancing postman, the busy wizard with his cats, hens and hedgehogs, and the lovely pink house that is just waiting for the visitors. Friendly locals get to work fixing their boat while they all explore. Half of the island thinks it’s Monday while the other half thinks it’s Tuesday and the two halves can never agree on anything.
When the wind finally changes and they leave, the two children fall asleep in the boat, and wake up just as they are sailing up to the jetty to find that their parents have no recollection of the wonderful island. But both of the children had the same dream – so of course it was all true!
Mixed-Muddly Island has a church, a school, a North End, a South End and many interesting characters who often disagree.
I wonder if Doris Rust ever visited Gabriola?
* Mixed-Muddly Island, Doris Rust, illustrated by Shirley Hughes. Faber and Faber, London 1958.
The Blethering Ant 