The "Koh--i-noor" pencil

 

Just realized this pencil in my pencil box must be pretty old. This brand was the source of the joke in 1066 and all that about someone presenting Queen Victoria with a giant pencil. 

1066 and all that was a very popular book at school. I read it dozens of times, along with Molesworth, Three Men in a Boat, P. G. Wodehouse, Jennings, Enid Blyton (Famous 5, Secret 7) and cowboy books. This was especially age 13-16; before that I read much more widely, and "better" children's lit -- Michael Joseph translations of Edith Unnerstad and Astrid Lindgren, for example. And afterwards I discovered "literature". But, in the mean time, Wodehouse rather strangely combined with my new passion for pop music -- T.Rex, Slade & very soon Family, Procol Harum, Van Der Graaf Generator, Can and Pet Sounds. The Faust Tapes, Jethro Tull's Living In The Past, Slayed!?, Great Western Movie Themes (Geoff Love & his Orchestra), Roxy Music and For Your Pleasure, Bandstand, Landed, Chameleon In the Shadow of the Night, Grand Hotel, Old Soldiers Never Die, Friendliness, Pour Down Like Silver, were some of my earliest LPs. 

It's confusing because some of my favourite music belonged to other people. John Scott had Electric Warrior and Robin Trower; Anthony Aloof had Ziggy and Aladdin Sane. Records went rounbd at school -- I seemed to know everything. And I had Sibelius' 5th and Brahms' Clarinet Quintet, & a piano in my room, & violin lessons. I looked at the Collins Field Guide to Birds of Britain & Europe, but I didn't have the patience or energy to watch birds. In Sweden I played the guitar and made recordings with Annika. I wrote more than 100 songs -- mostly they sounded like Neil Young, but I know I didn't discover him until the chantier in Bonnet when I was 15. I think I might have read Le Grand Meaulnes a few times, and The Trial. I roamed with Beth (collie) over the fields & through the woods to the "Roman campsite" (in fact, an ironworks). I climbed the beech tree and the larch in the big garden -- I walked on the wall of the walled garden. I had 20 numbered camps in the laurels and I directed epic films about wars in some kind of Mexican America. 

[memory dump found in a notebook.]