There have always been words. Not necessarily words that together make any sense, but words have always been there. Of course, by always, I mean, since 1976.

1976 was the very hottest of summers, with endless days of blue cloudless skies, scorching sunshine, cracking pavements, sticky tarmac roads and of course the obligatory hose pipe ban. There seemed to be a heat haze wherever you looked, all the kids found out what mirages were and understood, while even the shade or usually cool rooms seemed to offer little relief.

I got badly sunburned playing out in the paddling pool dad had erected in the back garden. The inflatable pool has yellow walls and is blue inside. Through my minds eye I can see the reflection of a skinny little nine year old staring back at me from the large conservatory window. He has short, almost white fine hair atop a face that is just slightly pinker that normal and up close has that beautiful unblemished look as if the skin of a fresh peach. His eyes are large, green and timeless, with a life unknown ahead of him. He wears a wet t-shirt that is usually white when dry. You wouldn't know but the t-shirt is stuck to the blistered skin of his back and the cool of the pool is blessed relief.

Primarily, despite the glorious weather and painful sunburn, the summer of 76' was most notable for an event that took place just before we broke up from school; I had been placed in remedial class for slow readers as basically I couldn't’t, read that is. At least, not to the level that was expected of little boys. But then, nobody had given me anything that I wanted to read, so I hadn't.

Mrs. Hanks was my remedial teacher and remember thinking at that tender age that she was particularly beautiful. Browsing now through these images of the mind, recorded through a child’s eye during that summer; she had long mousy hair, an attractive but slightly pock marked face and was slim. She looked a bit like a hippy, but dressed better in what seems like dark corduroy, but I suspect the last is influenced by images of teachers from that time I have since seen.

Of course these images were recorded some years before it would have occurred to me that any other details were worth recording. I think in the main that she seemed attractive then because she was very kind and patient.

Mrs. Hanks told me, amongst, I am sure, many other things that I don't recall, that it would be a good idea to join the local library. In particular she thought I should spend the summer reading some of Enyd Blytons books. The ‘Famous Five' was proffered as good a place to start as any. I wasn't particularly thrilled, sounded entirely too much like work and during the summer holidays!

So it was that I found myself sitting on the extremely hot black seats in the rear of my dads White Vauxhall Viva, heading back home with a brand new library card and a famous five book in hand. I doubted a murderer could possibly feel any guiltier than I currently felt. Mum and Dad had not been impressed with the whole 'remedial' concept and had reacted with a typical Victorian sternness.

It was probably a good thing that it was the summer as I might have wallowed in the ignominy of remedial for a good deal longer. But as it was, during the summer months, mum had pretty much had her fill of kids come 5:30pm and both of us were tucked up in bed, fed, freshly washed and with clean teeth by 6pm.

Of course we, or certainly, I, was wide awake at 6. Hell! I could still hear all the other kids playing 'simple simon' out front and occasionally the blood curdling screams as agonising death overcame pre-teens hotly contesting a round of ‘war’; which basically involved one kid sitting on a wall legs a dangling, while all the others ran at him or her. The kid on the wall would then toss an imaginary grenade amidst us and the winner would be whoever managed to pull off the most graphic and noisiest of deaths.

Everything always sounded better while we were lying in bed during those summer nights, whoever was sitting on the wall must have had some really big grenades.

Usual fair, post 6PM for this nine year old was a selection of comics such as Look-In and Beano but these usually lost appeal within an hour or two. From there I would normally lay in bed listening to radio two, hopefully there would be a European game on and even better if it was Liverpool!

The prospect of opening an actual book was somewhat daunting. I remember, out of boredom mostly, leaning over the edge of my bed on a number of occasions, picking up the book, opening it, looking at all the words and thinking gosh! There just seemed so many. I would then lean back over the bed and place the book back down on the floor and carry on listening to Radio Two. I would deliberate on many occasions the possibility of finding a magical way to just suddenly learn how to read good without going through the hardship of actually learning. Of course the magical solution evaded me, at least for the time being.

On one particular night where the radio wasn’t good or wasn’t working, I can’t remember! I picked up the book out of abject boredom and read the bit on the back for the hundredth time. I decided it was time to read the first page and see what it was like.

It is past midnight and the room is moonlight dark save for the increasingly failing small glow in the corner of the room. The glow is barely encompassing a white haired head set around drooping eyes. I turn off the torch and lay the book down beside my bed. Sleep reaches out.

For so many of the long nights that had passed before, I had dreamed of some magic to make me read and all the while it had been sitting beside the bed. In one night an imaginatively well written book had turned a remedial nine year old kid that just about finished comics, into a child that was to be removed from remedial almost as soon as school restarted, had finished all 21 Famous Five Books before the end of October and spent that Christmas reading Jaws.

Of course within six months I was being chastised for spending to much time reading books but then that’s just life when you’re a kid.

Words started coming soon after. Words of my own that kinda almost made sense in a story that always seemed to big to make sense of, or write down for homework. There was one outing that seemed to please Mrs. Hanks beyond my usual endeavours, but very few more of the words were to go any further than my mind whilst lying in bed during the dark winter nights where daylight failed at 4 and pocket money didn't stretch to enough batteries for the torch and radio.