Memories of Malaya - 10. Reading and Books

For as long as I can remember, books have been a part of my family. Family outings at the weekend would be to the bookshop. If we did well at school or were good at the dentist, our treat would be to choose a pile of books and comics to call our own. My Dad would come home from work and flop into bed with a good book. Here is a photo of me, aged six months, reading in bed just like my Dad!

So I was chuffed when my Dad emailed me his latest blog post for his series Memories of Malaya, all about the role of reading and books in his life.

He writes:

One of the principal pleasures in my life is reading without having any pressure to stop at a certain fixed time to go and do something else – like going to work or to the supermarket or to do household chores. Many of my friends ask me what I do when I visit London in the summer every year, besides visiting and keeping in touch with my grown-up children and their families. They think I am mad when I say that I am happy to read sitting by an open window with the cool summer breeze blowing in. I do not stay long enough to finish a novel or a full length biography, so my reading consists of essays, on social political and biographical subjects, and the main daily newspapers. I would like to watch an occasional play or to go to a concert but it would be difficult to get a ticket because my stay is short. And very often if I booked for a show some day ahead I may find myself too lazy, too tired or just not in the mood when the day of the show arrives and then it becomes a chore to make the expedition from the suburbs to the theatre. In my short stay I am however able to visit and browse in bookshops and buy some books. Our house is also quite well stocked with books left by the children who now no longer live with us. So there is no shortage of reading material, and, if I need other titles there is a public lending library within walking distance.

My three younger brothers and I come from a family surrounded by books. Though my late Father was a medical practitioner he had time to read what are considered the classics like Dickens Dumas Austen etc mostly published by Collins. He had the whole set of 7 volumes of The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire and all the volumes of the History of England by Macauly. Although we were comfortably well-off my Father did not believe in furnishing the house with luxuries. But we always had good and nourishing food and money for the purchase of books.

When we were very young my Mother would buy comics which were shipped from England. They were Beano, Dandy, and Film Fun, etc. She would buy them from a small bookshop belonging to an Indian Muslim. Its name was MM Ally. It would hang out a little board with the Union Jack painted on it and the words, “Mail Arrived” to indicate that a new shipment of books, comics, newspapers etc from England had arrived and we would rush there to buy the comics.

I still remember some of the names of the comic characters like Korky the cat, Desperate Dan, Minnie the Minx, Lord Snotty, etc. The stories would follow the seasons of the year. In summer the story would be centred on the seaside and in the winter months it would be Christmas and Father Christmas. (Malaya has no seasons). When the characters had a Christmas feast there would be pies, legs of ham, strings of sausages. I became fascinated with pies and had wanted to try them which I did when I arrived in England but did not find them very exciting. When the characters spoke they were given bubbles with the words in them. Film Fun requires more literacy. Besides the bubbles, beneath each frame were full sentences describing the action in detail. At the beginning my Mother had to read this part to us. The characters that I remember, were Laurel and Hardy, Mother Riley and her daughter, Joe E Brown, Max Miller Bud and Costello and there was always a short story featuring Sexton Blake. I received most of my impression of English seaside towns with their piers, the snow, the small working class houses and dress from these comics.

mmlya