Contents
A great adventure
No trees, no gardens, no fences
Mac
Family
Friends and neighbours
A few shaky steps
Tiny grey rabbits
A shaggy brown pony
Peter
Show season
Tweed
Plenty of pets
What’s the matter?
Her name is Pamela
The fatal gate
How Misery got her name
A very handsome animal
The little duck
The guns
The missing eggs
I wish we could find the horses
It’s our secret
The photos and footnotes were added by me. ~ Ian
Dorothy McCarroll had a magic childhood in the 1920s and ’30s, which she wrote about in these beautiful little stories.
For me, three things stand out. First, how she adored her father and mother. Second, how she loved the farming life — especially the animals she surrounded herself with, and succoured. And finally, how the reality of life and death revealed itself to even a little girl. The stories are told in the naive voice of a ten or twelve year old, but they’re not sentimental.
I don’t know when Dorothy wrote them, but most likely in her fifties and sixties, when Cliff was writing his own stories, and she was typing them. I don’t know why she wrote them in the third person either, or why she called herself Beth, but they’re definitely about her — at least until the last few tales, when the ducks start to talk to each other, and the kids become young detectives. But maybe those stories are true too. ~ Ian