Page 2 - tmp

www.ilkestonlife.com ILKESTON LIFE December 2021 2

their natural beauty. recalled:
Local From the Library shelves On his mother’s side there were …we worked up a slide across
Independent five uncles, a galaxy of male role the polished darkness. So
models:
smooth that to step on it while
Fresh Cider with Rosie Squat, hard-hitting, heavy the valley slid past like oil.
Entertaining Laurie Lee drinking heroes whom we loved And the misery of chilblains!
If you don’t get a copy through and who were the kings of our Life was governed by seasonal
changes and also by the rituals of
your door, Ilkeston Life is available youth the church year. There is a magical
online and from various outlets The June grass, amongst which the classic English institutions are To Laurie they brought a taste of
including newsagents, shops, cafes, I stood, was taller than I was, here: village school, church and the outside world, a counterweight passage where Lee describes the
post offices, supermarkets and and I wept …It towered above squire, together with an assort- to his domestic life. They are also a annual carol singing round they
libraries in our growing circulation me and all around me, each- ment of neighbours representing make, trekking across fields from
area. Besides Ilkeston, we are cur- all ages and occupations. reminder to the reader that beyond one isolated house to another.
rently supplying many surround- blade tattooed with tiger-skins the sheltered life of the village
ing towns and villages: of sunlight. It was knife-edged, His family is at the heart of his there was a war being fought. We grouped ourselves round
We also give free copies to Ilkeston dark and a wicked green, life. It is an unusual set up. His Although the prevailing tone is the farmhouse porch. The sky
Hospital, nursing and care homes, thick as a forest and alive with father has absented himself from cleared and broad streams of
doctors waiting rooms, schools, his paternal duties and lives humorous Lee also touches on the stars ran down the valley and
etc. and mail out copies to sub- grasshoppers that chirped and elsewhere. Laurie’s mother raised more troubling aspects of village
scribers. chattered and leapt through the not only the three sons she bore life. Criminal and violent acts were away to Wales.
We are grateful to our many air like monkeys. to Laurie’s father but also three sometimes committed but on the His final chapters record the
correspondents and out volunteers whole the village absorbed them passing of this way of life. His
for their help in fund raising, The opening page of the book daughters from her husband’s and dealt with the perpetrators in childhood was a world governed
distributing the paper and raising plunges us into how it felt, to previous marriage. their own way. Lee confesses that, by the working power and speed
awareness of it. the author’s three year old self. Mother is the centre of their lives had he been brought up in a more of the horse but by the late 1920’s
Editorial office: 1 Bath Street, However, child’s experience : a mercurial, warm and joyous urban environment, he himself the combustion engine had reached
Ilkeston, Derbyshire DE7 8AH is remembered and expressed being with a keen appreciation of would have had a criminal record his village. This, together with
Tel. 07539 808390 through the eyes and language the beauty of the natural world for some of his teenage escapades. the death of the squire, began the
and little grasp of the more prac-
Editor-in-chief: Paul Opiah of the mature writer. The poet, tical aspects of life except for the At that time Slad was a mainly break-up of traditions which had
Ezra Pound, argued that a literary
Editor: Robert Attewell self-sufficient community and in nurtured but also confined rural
news@ilkestonlife.com classic should possess an internal firm belief that the fire must never normal times few of the villagers communities for generations.
Reporter: Rod Malcolm and irrepressible freshness. Cider go out: travelled further than could be
rodmalcolm@ilkestonlife.com with Rosie brims over with this When it threatened to do so comfortably managed on foot. In a Lee writes like a poet. The richness
Feature writer: Patricia Spencer quality. of his language makes Cider with
patricia@ilkestonlife.com she became threatened with bad winter the village might be cut
Photographer: John Shelton Laurie Lee was born in 1914. Ci- hysteria, wailing and wringing off for weeks but they had all they Rosie a book which rewards with
john@ilkestonlife.com der with Rosie captures his mem- her hands, pouring on oil and needed to survive: fresh delights on each reading.
Advertising: Christine Chell ories of growing up in the English
and Paul Opiah, village of Slad in the 1920’s. It chopping up chairs in a frenzy . . . the milkman pushed open Cider with Rosie is available
sales@ilkestonlife.com to keep it alive. the door. The milk in his pail to borrow from Ilkeston Public
Distribution: Paul Opiah is a mainly joyful celebration of was frozen solid. He had to Library.
paul@ilkestonlife.com rural life, peopled with family and He is raised in a world dominat- break lumps off with a hammer. It is also available as an audio
Webmaster: Adam Newton neighbours who are evoked with ed by women who smother and book read by Laurie Lee himself.
adam@ilkestonlife.com great fondness in vivid detail. All mother him and dazzle him with The pleasure of the frozen pond is