Torchlight Yesterday and Today

Remember when you were little and spent time under the bed covers with your torch? Perhaps you call it a flashlight? Nevertheless, wasn't the secretive nature of it so special? What did you used to do under there? What were you reading, listening to, or looking at? Who were you hiding from? What was it that you didn't want that person to see? Growing up on Africa, I can remember listening to pirate radio as a boarder at prep school. Whispered planning would start hours before the housemaster would appear for prayers and "lights out" and even longer before Matron would stalk the long dormitory floor to seek out those who were still awake because of forbidden activities. Once the coast was clear and Maton had shut and locked her door for, hopefully the final time, the activity would start. My closest friend would join me under my sheet and blanket and share the ear phone. We would lie together in our pyjamas stifling giggles about the lyrics and whispering suggestive thoughts about the singer. In the school holidays my parents would send me to bed and I would always duck under the coves, turn my torch on and read. I loved Gerald Durrell's books. Not only did I like the animal content but I couldn't get enough of the explicit couplings he descibed. When I was older I remember finding Harold Robbins "Goodbye Jannette" in my father's study. The sex but more so the spankings in that book made an everlasting impression on me. You have no idea how many nights the torch was out as I read and re-read the passages of what has now become a favorite tgi for me. My fathers copy was unfortunately confiscated by Matron (I had "borrowed" it from father and taken it to school at the end of the holidays) when she caught me and my torch reading to a group of engorssed chums a long time after lights out. I was not alone in "showing" how much I was enjoying the story line. My poor bottom!

It is fun to think back to childhood but I wonder if the situation is any different now. Children sneak extra time on the PC when they should be sleeping. They are on Facebook and MySpace and on their mobile phones. Adults do the same. How many people reading this blog sneak away from their partner to secretly read and look at matters that interest them but they don't want anyone to know their secret?

The torchlight lives on.

S