Memories of a rural childhood – L is for lambs and libraries

memories

Lambs

Sometimes a few lambs were rejected by their mothers or needed special care. When this occurred, we kept them near the house and fed them by hand. They were often so eager to drink their milk mixture from the bottle, that we were in danger of being knocked over. I remember that, at one stage, an old cupboard with a centre shelf was placed on its back as a convenient way of restraining two feeding lambs.

Libraries

An avid reader as a child, each Tuesday, I was eager to climb the stairs above the supper room in the local hall to borrow books from the tiny library there. Enid Blyton’s “Secret Seven” series was my favourite for a while. The “Famous Five” books scared me at first so I was told not to read them till I was a bit older. The two books per week that we were allowed were often read by the next day. It was a long wait till I could borrow some more. My high school was very new and didn’t have a big library, but it had more choices than I was used to! An early favourite was Rosemary Sutcliff’s historical fiction series – perhaps an indicator of a future interest in family history?

 

14 thoughts on “Memories of a rural childhood – L is for lambs and libraries”

  1. Memories – you have reminded me of a kind nun who used borrow books from the mobile library for me so that I could have more than the limit allowed.

  2. Oh what an agony that wait must have been. Yes I used to polish books off very quickly. I remember spending my 45 cents pocket money every week on a new Enid Blyton paperback.

  3. Loved our pet lambs on the farm but it was always sad when they suddenly ‘disappeared’ while we were at school. One of my sisters tells a story of going to the abattoir with Dad and realising a previous pet lamb was in the back of the truck with other sheep! She cried all the way home.

  4. I remember reading Enid Blyton as a kid and the library being my favorite place. It is interesting to read your memories of growing up in the countryside.

    1. The lambs were lovely but couldn’t be fussed over as they needed to reintegrate with the rest of the sheep as they grew older.

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