I subsequently found that this edition does the pictures a disservice by enlarging cropped sections and missing out the rest, so of course they appear less detailed.Ĭoming across some more of the books in a Shelter shop (laid out right across the window, as though to make sure I didn't miss them), I suffered the further disappointment that Douglas and Donald, the twin engines and old favourites of mine, actually have pretty awful Scottish accents. Yet they were certainly the same pictures: Henry's face, half hidden behind the wall built to keep him in the tunnel from which he'd refused to emerge whilst it was raining (not one of the series' most plausible plots), has its eyebrows raised in consternation as before. The stories so short, the writing so big! As for the pictures, they were scruffy and clumsy, not at all the precise depictions of twenty-four years ago. I bought the modern edition of 'The Three Railway Engines', blanching slightly at the bright orange cover, and was surprised at how different it seemed from its former self. modest, moral tales in which mischievous engines get their comeuppance. 'Self-effacing' is wrong, since they are neither autobiographical nor first-person, but. has been buying for a nephew and a godson, I wanted to see the books again, if only to reclaim the characters from the tiny tot day glo version which incorporates helicopters and doesn't in the least reflect the muted colours and self-effacing stories of the books I remember.
Confronted recently with a stream of spin-off toys from the TV series which S. I didn't have anywhere near all of them, but the four or five books I did have provided the requisite doses of comfort and excitement, and I was fond of them. Doing this can also, of course, demonstrate how unreliable direct experience can be.Īs a young boy (Six? Seven?) I used to read Thomas the Tank Engine stories, in common with most young boys of my and preceding generations (and succeeding generations? An awful lot of them are out of print now). A photo can show what things looked like in 1982 (or whenever you were first able to read), but it fails to jog the memory in quite the same way as reading the same words and looking at the same pictures 24 years later.
It's a way, too, of stretching across time, as far as it is possible to stretch within the frame of direct experience. Remembering who you were before you made the decisions or non-decisions which took you away from the person who originally read them, got you where you are today. There is undeniably a fascination in re-reading books from childhood.