Seeing connections with Faraway fantasies

I FOUND a book. Not just any book, a very special and magical book, a book where dreams come true and “childhood” lasts forever.

Another day of cleaning Mum’s unit while she is being treated like a queen in her retirement resort, and yesterday it was her bookshelf, or rather bookshelves.

Mum loves books, mostly those about the royal family, especially Diana and Charles.

Actually mostly Diana, Mum has rather unkind words on the male members of the royals.

Anyway she has enough books to make a bridge to the isle and to pave the Radical Bay Rd as well, so I have to sort them.

What a job, but nice memories.

I was near the end of a bottom shelf and nestled in the corner, as if it was waiting for me, was a little yellow book with a few cartoons on the front.

I nearly threw it in the garage sale pile, but something made me look at the cover and it was then a flood of memories returned.

It was my favourite book as a little bloke, The Magic Faraway Tree by Enid Blyton.

I‘m sure I am not alone, and I dare say a new generation is reading it now.

How we all imagined jumping over the ditch and into the Enchanted Forest, and there in the middle, the Faraway tree, with a host of unusual characters living in it.

And of course, swirling above in the cloud, the different lands that the children, and the reader, would visit.

I stopped my packing and read a few pages, and this is why the packing will take me until the corona is in a Corolla and driving away forever.

I couldn’t stop reading until Dame Washalot came along and made me keep packing.

Maybe, just maybe, we have a connection.

Like our own ditch on the side of the Castle Hill Rd, and our Cutheringa could be the Magic Faraway Hill!

Yes, imagine the similar characters. Instead of the famed Dame Washalot, Jenny Hill could be Dame Wishalot, as for Moon Face, our ex-mayor Tony could be Mooney Face.

There’s the Saucepan Man, wonderful character. I suppose he would be with Mooney Face (as Tony is boss Stethoscope at our hospital), Saucepan becomes Bed Pan Man.

There’s other characters such as Mr Changeabout, well that could be our southern pollies, and Mr Watsizname, which is everyone after a long lunch.

Oh, the fun continues! Imagine the lands at the top of our Magic Faraway Hill, and these lands are in Enid’s book too.

The Land Of Topsy Turvey, well that’s obviously been here for too long now, The Land Of Do As You Please (and it’s also in the book) must have been in the cloud on the hill for a while and some kids went there, came home, and forgot that the land has since moved on.

Also in the book there’s the Land Of Take What You Want, best we not mention that.

As I put the book down, I open the front page, and someone has written many mango seasons ago, “Steve may all your fantasies come true as Enid’s did”. Actually, they did. I live in a wonderful Land, and it’s not floating off in any cloud, ever.

Happy days, oorroo

PS. Maybe it’s “The land of Sunshine and Kindness”.