David eggleton

“An Autumn Morning” Annual 2

I am a poet and a writer, and sometimes I go bush tramping and exploring. I live in Dunedin in a two-storey house that has a view of Otago Harbour and the Dunedin Stadium and is within the sound of Knox church and the town hall bells. 

When I was nine, ten, eleven, I read mostly comic books, which I used to swap round with my friends – war comics, Phantom comics, Archie comics, Disney comics, Superman comics, Mandrake the Magician comics, Mad comics, and Classics Illustrated. They were all different and wonderful and took you to different places. Classics Illustrated were comic books with good stories such as 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea by Jules Verne, Moby Dick by Herman Melville, and the Greek myth of Jason and the Argonauts.

Books that I remember reading were: Treasure Island by Robert Louis Stevenson and Robinson Crusoe by Daniel Defoe in shortened versions; and when I was eight, in hospital with a broken arm, I also read a book called The Swiss Family Robinson, but I wasn’t sure who wrote it. I also really liked the scary fairy tales written by the Brothers Grimm.

My brothers and sister and I were made to go to Sunday school, and there we read Bible stories from both the Old and New Testaments, and we also heard and sang church hymns and gospel songs and folk songs. We listened to pop songs on the radio a lot and were keen on jokes, riddles, skipping rhymes, and tongue-twisters. We didn’t have many books, but we did have quite a few vinyl records and a record player, and I used to like a Gilbert and Sullivan set of record albums that had some neat tongue-twister songs, such as this from The Mikado.

To sit in solemn silence in a dull, dark dock,
In a pestilential prison, with a life-long lock,
Awaiting the sensation of a short, sharp shock,
From a cheap and chippy chopper on a big black block!
To sit in solemn silence in a dull, dark dock,
In a pestilential prison, with a life-long lock,
Awaiting the sensation of a short, sharp shock,
From a cheap and chippy chopper on a big black block!