'Oh, I didn't need books when I was in the first flush of puberty,' he said. He's a pretty quick-witted guy, actually. 'When reading your last email to me,' he said without hesitation. 'When was the last time you got an erection while reading in a public place?' I asked eagerly. 'But also because my blood is more sluggish and I have lost the vigour of youth.' 'Because you are cynical and you've seen it all before?' Isn't that what you meant? It doesn't happen so much now,' he said. I asked my boyfriend if he had ever been physically aroused by a work of fiction while reading on a bus or train. But perhaps my evidential nostalgia confirmed otherwise. Rediscovering Laurie Lee's beautiful wordplay made me initially think that his prose was wasted on a boy who could clearly imagine a clean-shaven Tarzan swinging from vines through the jungle.

(Were it written today, I venture it might be titled Drinking Cider With Rosie Behind Tesco Express). The story harks back to the rural hardship of an English village shortly after the Great War, long before such villages were served by gastropubs, delicatessens, or even motor cars. though herein lies a Steinbeck-esque darkness. Gosh! I had previously read this a gazillion years ago, at a time when even Tarzan didn't seem at all far-fetched.Ī quick shufty through its sepia-hued pages reminded me what a terrific writer Lee was, with indelible characters such as Cabbage Stump Charlie and Harelip Harry.įor me, his sumptuous imagery and poetic prose ( and the fact that this was an autobiographical memoir, which reads like fiction) drew a comparison with Gerald Durrell's My Family and Other Animals. 'Well, I never! Cider With Bloody Rosie.' (You see, I repeated the word 'bloody' yet again, such was my cock-a-hoopedness). 'Cider With Bloody Rosie,' I gasped (um, mine wasn't a version with 'bloody' in the title, just so you know). Then, delightfully, I spied a book that triggered a wave of nostalgia: There was a reassuring prevalence of Penguin books, resplendent in orange cummerbunds, as I rummaged through a squished cardboard box in my attic.

Cider with rosie setting