When I was a child reading aloud and being read to were two very different experiences. When I was forced to read to others it was a stumbling humiliation where words would duck and dodge like fleeing rabbits and disappear into dark holes on pages of featureless, alien territory. Being read to was like slowly drifting in a sun filled river finding chimera in the sky and rich emerald forests in underwater weeds, waving in the gentle current. Although I enjoyed literature, my struggle to read and write led me to seek out other means of expression. Recently I have been clearing a former studio that, for the past twenty years, has been a neglected store. I am reminded in more ways than one of listening to Frances Hodgson Burnett’s The Secret Garden.
The shed stands on a former vegetable plot. I had to hack my way through hedges that had become trees and entanglements of brambles that would intimidate an army.
