Fragments.

Funny what you remember.

I was ten years old, and had recently moved house. New house, new school. I was in either 3rd or 4th year primary school, and the teacher, who's name eludes me right now (she was a female teacher, married to a male teacher with the same surname - Mrs Veats?) was reading us a story.

It was actually just a bit of a story. She would have read the preceding bit the previous day. She would read the next bit on the day after.

This is part of what happened when you were at primary school. Teachers would read you stories. I had Jonathan Livingstone Seagull read to me when I was perhaps 8 or 9 by Mr Dolby, my teacher in my previous school in North Wales, and I can still recall the sense of wonder I got, even if I didn't really understand it in the way I would now.

Anyway, on this occasion, Mrs Veats scared the living daylights out of me, because she ended that day's segment staring at the class, round eyed, and saying, "They weren't stars at all. (dramatic pause...) They were eyes."

There is nothing else I remember of this. Just that one fragment, and until about 10 minutes ago, I'd never thought I'd be able to expand on that. But of course, these days we have free and easy access to everything that ever was thanks to the internet, and typing that one phrase in revealed that the book it comes from is called "The Owl: A Novel of Extraordinary Fantasy" By Allan Sussman.

If you're ten years old, I strongly recommend it.

Edit: Just looking further, ths one was written in 2009, so it's not the one I thought it was. Ooops.

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