Back to Childhood (1)

New Zealand Listener, Volume 37, Issue 940, 16 August 1957, Page 22

Back to Childhood (1)

ERHAPS one explanation. for so much going back to childhood in literature these days is that in a chaotic world only childhood experience seems to have a simple, sharply-defined pattern. Wherever it is lived childhood is inevitably contained and circumscribed, and containment is what we are looking for. In a rootless community like ours the pattern found in childhood seldom has more than a personal meaning, but there are places where it can mirror a community as well, and one of these was revealed by W. R, Rodgers in his BBC reminiscence, The Return Room, Belfast would not seem a place to provoke a beautiful evocation, nor did it; but it provoked a rich one, a "criss-cross place’ where green and orange were joined in holy deadlock and even children’s skipping-rhymes had the flavour of religious controversy. The family’s best friend was a philosophic undertaker; the father liked the texts which reminded him that flesh is as grass and flowers fade. But, Rodgers concluded, "I would give a roomful of small talk for the bitter tongue of them." This programme had a special meaning for me, for it showed me some of my ancestry; it also reminded me how much good stuff comes from the BBC regional studios. But I wondered how listeners with less practice than I got on with the accents.