Everyone knows those pre-cut activity books where you pop out and fold and you have a cardboard toy? Right? Right.
Strap in. I’m going to take you on a journey.
Let me introduce you to the child’s book : “Build your own birdhouse”, a book purchased from Coles for $2.38 in (presumably) the 1970s. It’s totally intact and in very good condition for a 40 odd year old book. No one ever played with it. I can’t get a match for the ISBN number and the publishers (Litor Publishers Ltd – Brighton) don’t seem to exist where I can find them.
The colours are bright, the birds are pretty, and there is a house to create.
One of the features of the book is a little story in the middle, which should be perhaps to illustrate the joys of having a birdhouse to kids so that they will want one or to give a framework to be able to play with the toy. A story of this kind should perhaps be one in which little kids build a birdhouse and have some sort of mild adventure. Or point out what goes on in the birdhouse. List the birds. Give them names, personalities. Something like that.
You’d think so, wouldn’t you.
“A visit to the country” is the name of the story. It’s 16 pages long.
The subtitle is missing: it should be “A disappointing and loveless marriage is exposed during the offloading of the children to relatives when their mother gets cancer.”
Who the heck wrote this? Who the heck okayed it for publication in a child’s book? I am going to give you the story here in full. It should not take long to read it. ENJOY!
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“To make your own bird house just press out the pieces in this book and follow the diagrams. There’s a ready-made flock of birds to visit your bird house too.
Paul and Beverley lived in a big city in the Midlands where they hardly saw any birds at all. And they didn’t even notice the ones that did visit their backyard.
One day their mother had to go into hospital to have a rather serious operation. As their father couldn’t look after them as well as cope with his work and visit their mother in hospital it was decided that the two children should go and stay with their Uncle George and Aunt Mary for a couple of months or until things were running more smoothly at home.
Paul and Beverley were very fond of Uncle George and Aunt Mary and if they had to go away from home for a time they couldn’t think of anywhere they’d rather go. They were worried about their mother though. They had never known her to be ill before and it all seemed very strange. Still, when Uncle George and Aunt Mary arrived to take them, they promised the children they could ring home whenever they liked to find out how their mother was.
Uncle George and Aunt Mary lived in an old cottage in the country and they had a huge garden with n orchard at the bottom. Uncle George was a farm labourer on a nearby farm and Aunt Mary sometimes helped out there too when things were particularly hectic. Most of the time though she was at home in the cottage, and she was always very busy. She made all her own jams and pickles and things and bottle fruit and froze vegetable from the garden for the freezer so that they would have plenty of food in store at all times of the year. After all they never knew if they might get cut off by snow in the winter and then of course there was often a lot of flooding in the spring too. AM did most of the gardening as well as looking after the house but Uncle George did all the heavy digging.
Paul and Beverley found it all very different from home. Their mother went out to work in a factory making biscuits. Their garden was too small to grow any vegetables in and anyway there were plenty of shops nearby so they never had to worry about running out of things.
They still had to go to school but even that was quite different from back at home. Instead of the hundreds of children in their own school there were only ninety in the whole village school and that was including infants and children right up until the age they went to middle school. The children came from farming backgrounds mostly and they were all horrified to find that the things they took for granted were things that Paul and Beverley had never experienced. Presumably they would have had a few surprises if they’d had to go to ta school in the city all of ta sudden. Anyway, on the whole, Paul and Beverley got on quite well with the other children and soon they had made some firm friends.
They didn’t see much of the other children outside school because they all came form a wide area and no one lived very close to them, so they had to amuse themselves as best as they could in the evenings. At first it was easy – there was so much to explore and lots of trees to climb but after a short while Paul and Beverley found they knew their way around very well and there wasn’t much left to explore. They began to get fed up with one another too and they had a lot of fights. Sometimes they wished they could go back home where everything was familiar.
It was Aunt Mary who first noticed that the children were beginning to look rather miserable. It was their appetites that gave them away – they had lost all interest in Aunt Mary’s food. And if you knew what Aunt Mary’s cooking was like you’d soon realise there was something wrong with anyone who wasn’t eating it. Now Aunt Mary was a very motherly sort of person even though she didn’t have any children of her own and she was very upset to see Paul and Beverley looking so unhappy. She decided to have a word with Uncle George about it when he came home, though heaven alone knew when that would be. If he wasn’t working he was always off bird-watching or fishing and even when he did come home at last he usually hid himself away in a shed at the bottom of a the garden where he did all the woodwork.
That evening of course Uncle George came home even later than usual, just to be awkward. He’d been to the local for a drink with the lads and forgotten to let Aunt Mary know. She was furious. It was just as well Paul and Beverley were in bed or they might have been even more upset If they’d heard their aunt and uncle arguing. But their arguments never lasted long and soon Aunt Mary and Uncle George were back to normal and UM was able to tell Uncle George about Paul and Beverley not eating. She told him she though they were bored and needed something special to keep their minds off home. And she couldn’t help saying that if Uncle George were home more often he might be able to keep them amused himself. Uncle George looked guilty but he thought a lot about the problem that night, and the next day he came home from work straightaway. Aunt Mary could hardly believe her eyes when she saw him coming in the back door.
They all had supper together that evening and Uncle George suddenly announced that it as time Paul and Beverley did something useful around the place instead of wasting their time just mooching around the garden and climbing trees.
Now you might think that Uncle George was a bit hard on the children saying that but he always spoke rather gruffly and Paul and Beverley liked the way he spoke. There was always a twinkle in his eye and a hint of mischief in his voice. Actually there was nothing very wicked in what he was planning. He simply wanted a bird table for the garden and he thought that it would be a good idea if the children made one each. Then they could take one home with them too.
Paul and Beverley were really excited about this – it gave them something new to think about and so instead of wandering around aimlessly they spent every evening closeted with Uncle George in his woodwork shed. Aunt Mary found life quite peaceful once again and she was glad to see the dinner plates empty after supper too.
It only took Paul and Beverley a few weeks to make the bird tables and soon one was standing proudly in the middle of Aunt Mary’s front garden where they could all see it from the sitting room window. Paul and Beverley knew nothing about birds and it was absolutely thrilling for them to sit and watch the different species coming to the table and eating and drinking there. Uncle George told them a lot about the birds habits and their songs and she even took the children to see some nests he had found but they had to be very careful not to frighten the birds.
Paul and Beverley were very happy now. There was nearly always something different happening at the bird table. Sometimes the squirrels came along and pinched all the food and twice they saw a young fox club. That was really exciting.
But soon they heard from their father that their mother was coming out of hospital and going home and in a few weeks they could go home too. Paul and Beverley didn’t know what to think. On the one hadn’t hey were delighted to be going home because they missed their parents but they have grown to love living in the country too.
Then all of a sudden their parents arrived at Aunt Mary’s house. Aunt Mary didn’t seem all surprised but Paul and Beverley were and they were excited too. Their mother still looked very pale and thing but she looked much better than when they had left. When their father told them he had come to take them home straightaway Paul and Beverley were a little disappointed but they tried not to show it and they said goodbye to Aunt Mary as cheerfully as they could.
The two children waved sadly to her as their father drove off. But imagine their surprise when they stopped again only half a mile away and saw Uncle George banging the second bird table in the lawn in front of a neat little cottage. It was their new home. Their parents had decided to move into the country. Their father had got a job in the local garage and their mother would be taking things easy for a while. Paul and Beverley could hardly believe their luck. They wouldn’t have to leave the birds after all.
They would be able to see Uncle George and Aunt Mary whenever they liked. And that meant they could eat lots and lots more of Aunt Mary’s cooking. And Uncle George promised to take them all fishing too.
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