An Easy Reader | 1001 Stories

#191 Rita An Easy Reader

She just let me go in there and choose what I wanted.

Rita

As a child, I used to cycle with my friends over to Cross Gates from Seacroft. This journey was a necessity because the library was at Cross Gates and I had to go to the library every week.

I’ve always been a reader, I don’t remember learning to read, I could just do it. When I was at junior school the teacher used to just let me loose in the book cupboard, which was full of reading schemes and odd books. She just let me go in there and choose what I wanted.

I can remember when I was first taken to the library by my parents. I was six and you weren’t allowed to join the library until you were seven, so I had to prove that I could read. I was given this book, it had a small print, a lot of print on one side and then a picture on the other side with all these little figures on it. It wasn’t what you would consider an easy reader these days, but I managed it.

When I was older I became a librarian.

Precis

The beauty of being in a company of older performers is the kaleidoscopic range of real-life experiences that they bring to the table. These experiences cover everything from the vivid and strange world of childhood, to the unexpected late awakenings of old age. Take our newest batch of anecdotes, for example. These new stories are delightfully diverse: from the earthly, sensual joy of baking bread, to the cosmic dreams of outer space; from an unnerving encounter with a poltergeist, to the risqué glories of adult pleasure products and burlesque. Running as a rich theme throughout, is the possibility of love, and the simple wonder of human connection. As one writer tells us, in her story of funeral rites and flirting, “Amidst death, life goes on”, and indeed it does, delightfully so.

Edited by Barney Bardsley

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#191 Rita An Easy Reader

Precis