When my house got caught in a flood back in... 2005, I think it was, one of my possessions I most regret losing was a trunkfull of books. A lot of them can be replaced, but there are some, especially books I read as a child, whose names or authors I can't remember. Just a memory of their covers, or a story or a poem written inside.
I woke up this morning with a line from a poem running in my head, one I'd last read in an anthology of interesting little poems. So I googled it, and it turns out to be The Engine Driver by Clive Sansom, an English poet. I remember reciting it for a competition at school when I was about 8 or 9 years old. It is probably the only poem I've completely remembered all these years and I've always liked what to me is its quirky oddness. And of course, the train travels.
A lot more research than my basic googling skills will be needed to find out the name of that anthology, and unfortunately, Clive Sansom has not warranted a Wikipedia entry. But it does provide an interesting project for my free time: tracking down these books and others like them.
Two other books that I now want to find and own have incredibly useful titles: 365 Bedtime Stories and 366 Bedtime Tales, or something to that effect. What I can remember about the first one is that it had extremely beautiful, colourful illustrations with every story, and a fairy tale called The Goose Girl that isn't the Grimm Brothers' version at all and one I haven't come across anywhere else. I could be confusing the story's title, of course.
All I can remember of the latter is that it was passed down to me from one of my cousins on my father's side, and that it was old and smelt of old books and cookies. There was a story that involved a character called Sammy the donkey, who sang, a birthday song I think, for the farmer along with his other farm friends. Again, it had interesting little illustrations for each of its stories, and these stories were definitely ones I'd never anywhere else before, nor have I found them anywhere else again. No Grimm's fairy tales in this one.
So, if anyone does have any idea where of websites and such where I could search for these, it would be lovely if you dropped a line. Meanwhile, here's The Engine Driver by Clive Sansom:
The train goes running along the line,
Jicketty -can, Jicketty -can.
I wish it were mine, I wish it were mine,
Jicketty -can, Jicketty -can.
The engine driver stands in front
He makes it run, he makes it shunt;
Out of the town,
Out of the town,
Over the hill,
Over the down,
Under the bridges,
Across the lea,
Over the bridges,
And down to the sea,
With a Jicketty -can, Jicketty -can,
Jicketty -can, Jicketty -can,
Jicketty -can, Jicketty -can…
