Russian Dolls

The lack of sleep has caught up with me this week and the only resolution to the problem is going to bed early. This helps enormously but I cannot bring myself to do it regularly as it is mildly depressing. One of the signs that its time to hit the bed early is when I am so exhausted that I start having visitations from fictional characters. Thankfully this happens very rarely nowadays, but that wasn't the case always.

It all started the summer I was 9  years old and took out the first tome of Les Miserables. It took the whole of that summer's holidays and of the next summer's holidays to finish it. I was not allowed to read it during the winter because it interfered with school. So for a whole two summers and a winter and a bit longer I was completely consumed by the story. Little Gavroche was the character I connected with the most and for all that time he did not leave my side. I started learning French and excelled very quickly, I wore the same clothes and played  roughly in them till they looked completely used and permanently dirty, I got into trouble at school and started to look like Gavroche dangerously. Maybe this was due to an over active imagination or maybe all single children get this. Gavroche was only gone from me when I started reading the very nostalgic for me Maurice Leblanc. His unforgettable character of the gentleman thief Arsene Lupin was my next companion. Extremely romantic and dangerous he was my secret weapon when school children were unkind or just plain boring. I felt very strong indeed. I have not been able to read these novels again in case the whole thing was so beautiful because I was just a kid. I remember L'Auiguille Creuse, The Hollow Needle, and La Comptesse Cagliostro, The Countess of Cagliostro, as totally thrilling. The next book I picked up was The Big Sleep by Raymond Chandler and by that time I was reading books in the winter too, secretly. Philip Marlowe is still my favourite character and he was hanging around for at least a couple of years. He got me to start smoking a pipe-that's what I said when I got caught. I remember my intense anger and frustration with Raymond Chandler after finishing all his books that he did not write any more. I am still angry with him.
And thankfully the final fictional character to accompany me around was in the last years of school when I read all the Agatha Christie novels in a year. I maintain that this is the best way to learn English as a second language. Beautifully written, very flowing and easy language and writing that brings you straight into the British world. Some of them start with creepy British nursery rhymes; more mysterious than the stories themselves. Captain Hastings appears only in a few of the novels, but he is a sweet, slightly slow but extremely loyal and lovable friend of Poirot's. He is like the perfect uncle and he is the one that still visits me, albeit very rarely. In a way I am very happy that it is him and none of the other ones, as this would be much harder to deal with these days.

Sometimes I think someone should have been censoring the bookcase at my childhood home, as I am sure half of these books were not age appropriate. I have been always reading after that, but thankfully, although other amazing and memorable fictional characters came, I have never had such problems with them.  Although I do not regret reading novels, I do often wonder how I would be had I not. And I am jealous sometimes of people that have not read novels and who might have a clearer, unpolluted mind. Mine often feels extremely heavy, like I am carrying a little bit of fiction around.

And below a healthier version of the "hidden character" situation I made for Aretousa.