Au revoir my friend

Britannica stops printing after 244 years and is going digital. I read this with mellow sorrow and a lot of nostalgia as it (the Britannica) is tightly woven in my HD reminiscing of my childhood. A childhood which led me to my love of stories and the art of story telling......and research for story telling.

My dad is a good guy and wanted his family with him at most of his stations hence (why does this word exist?) yours truly is a bonafide military brat. We moved around pretty much. I seemed to always be the new girl at school(s). For a really social child, that hurt. I really wanted to be a part of something but even I never had much hope that it would last. Don’t get it twisted though, I love to travel and meet new people. As the years went by I became quite the emotional nomad but that’s a story for another day.

One thing that was permanent in all our homes though was a library. I most remember the one at Off Ja Abdulkadri Ungwan Rimi, Kaduna, and it's persistent heavy mothballs smell. A connecting door had been installed between two of the Boys Quarters rooms and that was our library. Cramped too it was, books covering all the shelves from ceiling to floor.  My dad is an avid reader. There is a permanent build up of books by/in/on my father’s bedside drawer which my mom would so much rather live without.

What does this have to do with Britannica?

I would spend hours and hours reading everything I could lay my hands on. I travelled the world over seven seas, sailing right from Arabia to Lilliput and to magic and fairy kingdoms.

Hans Christian Andersen, the great big Mother Goose book, Enid Blyton and countless other authors and books were always with me. They were my friends, my world, they who stirred my imagination and set me on this creators’ voyage. I too would possess peoples time, ensnare their imaginations.

Among these books were a set of Britannica junior (They are still on the book shelf at my parents house). They were to me at the time, the ultimate in reading material after fiction. Here was a different type of story. Here were the stories of facts. They structured my stories around the real world. I cannot explain it but I knew that just like the stories, these books were going to be part of the jigsaw puzzle that would work itself out into my adult life.

Today, I knock back a stiff drink and another as I reminisce over those books that saw me; a little Nigerian girl who had never been to Poland, write a story of a little Polish girl in Nigeria. I knew her favourite snack; sernik (cheesecake) and that she came from the town of Annopol in Poland. I would write and my sister Lola would do the illustrations and we would sell the books and claim the money was for charity(We really did intend to send the money to South Africa to stop Apartheid) :)

So today the 13^th (hmmmm) of March in the year of our Lord 2012, I read that Encyclopaedia Britannica is stopping print to go digital and I can’t help but reminisce; the end of another era; my very first search “engine”.

                                                THE END
N.B
*Here are some of my growing up favourites. Tintin, Asterix , Richie rich, Whizzer and Chips, Beano, Buster ,DC comic's,  sweet dreams, sweet valley high, pacesetters.  What are yours? Share, lets see how far this goes.

                                                                                                               Rio