Bookwitch

It would have been impossible to foresee this. The blogging, I mean, and for it to be about books.

As a teenager I couldn’t analyse a book to save my life. I’d still not like to depend on the analysing too much, for longevity. I read voraciously, to the extent that I’d stand in the corridor outside the next classroom reading while waiting to go in. In those days it wasn’t even a ruse to cover up friendlessness with a book. I just felt that I mustn’t waste any time.

But once inside the classroom, if it was literature, I’d had it. My Swedish teacher for the last two years at school despaired. She really liked me (!), and wanted me to do well. I did well in Language, and wrote essays which she loved and was forever embarrassingly reading out to the class. (I wish they wouldn’t do that.)

Mother-of-Witch, who also taught at the school, reported being cornered by my teacher, who enthusiastically compared me to the great old poet Anna Maria Lenngren (I recommend Wikipedia). Well, it’s nice when someone can see something good somewhere. Still don’t know quite what she meant.

And it’s nice being appreciated. This teacher also taught RS, and I had her husband for Philosophy. Just their luck to get the fledgling witch in what felt like the least inspiring subjects ever. Anyway, my grades for Language were as high as you get. Grades for Literature, sufficiently low to embarrass my teacher, who felt that was no way to begin life. So between them, Mr and Mrs S “adjusted” my results.

I left school with much better marks for Literature, having paid with a middling grade in Philosophy. It’s never been that important to me, but it was lovely to feel they cared. Once at university, a few more light bulbs eventually switched themselves on, but it still feels like a joke that I’m spending my time writing about books.

Somewhere I read that to be bilingual is not to be equally perfect in two languages; it’s to use them both in daily life. I think that’s a good definition. And on that basis, I’m inching towards the idea that I could, perhaps, count as a writer. I mean, I write daily. Bilingually, if necessary.

I’d like to think that Magister Sköldenborn is sitting up there somewhere, smiling down at her difficult pupil. Do they have the Internet in Heaven? According to Eoin Colfer’s The Wish List, both St Peter and his colleague in the hot place, use mobile phones. So maybe.