Daddy Reading The Gingerbread Man To Me, Guessing Late 1966

Some bants on King Cricket today, 13 March 2017, in the matter of one of my Ged pieces as it happens – click here – have led me back to the very oldest tapes in the family collection.

Both of my parents, dad in particular, made recordings of my favourite books being read to me. This was mostly, I suspect, because they knew that I couldn’t resist fiddling with the old Grundig and so would listen to the recordings rather than nag them to read the book again. Fiendish, cunning and I very much approve.

Grundig TK35, ram-packed with thermionic valves. Photograph by Michael Keller, from Rad-io.de.

One of those wonderful recordings is The Gingerbread Man, the very book that Joe over on King Cricket was complaining about having to read three times a day.

Always keen to help out, here is the recording of my dad reading The Gingerbread Man to a very little me:

I don’t have a picture of me around that time with that book, but I do have a picture with a similar book, long since forgotten and I don’t think ever recorded:

A Very Little Me With the Big Brown Bear Book

Simply adorable I was; goodness knows what went wrong.

I do still have my dilapidated copy of the Gingerbread Man. Not too many of my children’s books survived the cull, but (probably because of the recording) I couldn’t bear to part with that one.

Thanks for triggering the nostalgia, Joe. I’d been trying to pluck up the courage to listen again and start uploading these recordings to Ogblog. You gave me cause.