The Toilet Roll Archives (8): Dad's Corona Cleanout ft Matilda
I don’t think I could love anyone who doesn’t like Matilda as much as I do.
Ok, bold statement. But bare facts. Matilda was my favourite book/film for as far back as I can remember. It’s a given to my closest friends and family. Like, one weekend, I text my sister: “What’s the best film to come out of the nineties that I am watching right now?” She replied promptly and correctly. No one knows you quite like your wee sis, I suppose J xo
This is all stemming from a phone call I had with my Dad late last week, who was emptying out boxes of books I had hidden up in my parents’ house (lol surprise! soz Mam). He’d torn them out in this big Corona Clean he’s got his mind set on and, over video chat, we went through each book one by one, separating which I wanted to donate to charity, which I wanted to give to family and friends with small children and which I wanted to keep.
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Quite an emotional phone call actually, ngl. Dad held each book up to the camera, one by one, going through title after title. I shouldn’t be so silly hoarding such sentimental items but as he read each title out and looked at me quizzingly, I was able to recall which shop I’d bought every book or from where/who I’d stolen it from, what age I was when I first read it…all that good stuff. In the same way people hold certain treasures to mark different periods and celebrate moments of their lives, I have books to mark mine. Lame, sad, stupid, I know. We went through over a hundred of them.
As a child, my mum would often send me upstairs to clear out old books I “didn’t want.” I would sigh and supposedly comply. We both pretended I would do it. I would always make my way back downstairs some time later claiming the job was done when, really, I had spent my time rearranging the shelves to hide as many titles as possible. I don’t know whether my attachment to books amused or concerned my parents. Maybe a bit of both. After all, I used to spend all my pocket money on books. A book was always a birthday and Christmas present – even for my 21st, my brother and sister bought me a precious edition of Les Misérables.
I’d pick up a title and engulf its contents. Didn’t matter who had written it. Didn’t matter what it was about. Books would be hidden on my lap at the dinner table, taken into the bathroom with me when I was brushing my teeth, thrown across the sofa half-finished so I could start another and read them simultaneously. I would even openly admit to taking them to sleepovers and parties “in case I got bored” (how did I have friends!?!)
I digress. Dad found the entire series of Harry Potter and I opted to keep them; not because I loved Rowling’s stories but because those bad bois are gonna be worth tons in the future and will look amazing on the bookshelves that will mount the walls of my future home, replacing paint or wallpaper. Not to shit on ‘the boy who lived’ too hard but HP was never my thing. I wasn’t as obsessed with owls and magic as other children were.
I gave Malory Towers, the book series that inspired me to print out one too many brochures of boarding schools and endlessly beg my Mum to send me away and, in my own words, “get rid of me” (apparently convincing her that she didn’t love me enough), to an auntie to give to her daughter. Hope she loves them as much as I did!
Wilson, Wordsworth and three (different) copies of Little Women later, my Dad came to a small pink paperback with a tattered spine and half a front cover. He looked down at my old copy of Matilda; even he said: “Oh, nah, you can’t give this one away, can you?”
Over time, I’ve moved copies of my fave books down here with me (including my fourth copy of Little Women :/ what is “too many?”) But Matilda always stayed at my parents’ place. I thought there was something so overtly sentimental about my favourite childhood story that it felt wrong to peel it away from my childhood home; I chose to keep it hidden upstairs underneath boxes of other titles.
A World Book Day survey taken by primary school aged children showcased how Roald Dahl’s brilliant and bright Matilda narrowly got pipped to the post, coming second as the most inspirational children’s book character to, yep, none other than Harry Potter. Sure, he may be the boy who lived and magic and all that, but Harry’s wet personality is nothing on a five-year-old girl’s grit, courage and optimism and that’s facts and I won’t hear any arguments or objections because some things are just the way they are thank you goodnight fin *drops mic. J
I remember picking up Matilda in the local library when I was really small. My mum would take me up there once in a blue moon because endless book buying was getting expensive and probably a pain in the arse for her, as much as she encouraged it – remember a life before Amazon Prime? Can’t relate. I devoured it as feverishly as Matilda did her precious contraband (in her profoundly anti-reading family) from the library, mainly because I saw myself in her. Not to say that my family are TV-addicted-leopard-print-jacket-wearing-fraudulent-car-mechanics, obviously. I mean, they found my obsession with books a bit weird, but they never actively discouraged me from reading. They bought me my own copy of Matilda for my birthday later on that year. It is the copy I still have today.
I always found that bookworms had few role models in the real world. Instead of turning to the internet or TV or whatever to learn about heroes, we would seek them out in our books – lol, obvs. And, in that sense, Matilda was the nonpareil bookworm I always sought to be like. Independent, brave, resourceful, a girl who only got cooler under pressure, even when it was being applied by one of Dahl’s finest villains, Miss Trunchbull – who could fail to clutch her story in one’s arms and keep her as inspiration over the years? And that’s before you even begin to remark on her telekinesis (which is far cooler than telepathy and no, I am not wrong!)
The book and film work its same magic on me even to this very day, no shame. I always say my two fave films are Goodfellas and Matilda – proper contrasting but both incredible in their own right.
Matilda succeeds and endures not only because it so brilliantly reproduces the book’s wonderful and quintessentially Dahlesque style when it comes to throwing children out of windows and putting any human off chocolate cake for the rest of their lives, but because it channels the book’s heart: its essential optimism.
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| Source: Pinterest (I know, I'm on a rampage xo) |
The stoic little girl with a light of unquenchable intelligence burning fiercely behind her eyes was everything I wanted to be, and more. Idk why I have always liked stoics so much – maybe it’s their calming presence or something? I wanted to move things with my eyes and walk to the library and carry fifteen books out with a wheelbarrow and work out what 13 x 379 was in my head.
Matilda’s message is that you can forge your own fate – that biology is not destiny and that even if your parents (who dress fantastically in head to toe leopard print) are awful, loud, borderline-abusive horrors who do not, cannot, will not ever understand you, you can always find a refuge.
Books are a source of refuge. Characters and plots that are incredibly distant happen to be the perfect escape. So is love and friendship (all hail Lavender and Hortensia, who steer our heroine through her first tricky days with the help of friendly advice and a newt). Of course, not forgetting the caring Miss Honey, Matilda’s teacher who revels in her student’s intelligence and spirit instead of instinctively looking to squash them like her parents do. Miss Honey symbolises the soulmates we all look to find in life – partners, friends, family, whichever. Soulmates come in all forms.
I agreed with my Dad and asked him to put Matilda back in the box. I haven’t picked it up in years, not that I have ever really needed to. Its funny names, engrossing speeches and silly sketches are pretty much engrained in my memory at this point.
Matilda was the last full-length book for young readers Dahl wrote before his death in 1990. He once described his writing arm as “six thousand miles long and that the hand that holds the pencil is reaching all the way across the world to faraway houses and classrooms where children live and go to school.” And it is beyond true. From Dahl’s pen, Matilda danced across the length of England right under my pillow because I could never sleep comfortably without a paperback underneath it. It touched me greater than any story ever could. It reaches even deeper than the house and the classroom, like Dahl suggested. Like thousands of readers in the past and thousands of more yet to come, I carry the spirit and fire of Matilda in my mind wherever I go. Sure, she might be fictional, but the very essence of her character is real.
Day 42 of self-isolation by the time this is published. Wow. Who knew that an abundance of time could be so taxing? At least I’m ‘pulling a Matilda,’ in the sense that I’m reading a whole lot more these days. And I still sleep with a book under my pillow sometimes – old habits die hard, I guess ;) .
All the love, u funky bunch xoxo have a good week xoxo
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