Reading - you never know what you'll learn

I love reading. Ever since I was a tiny tot. Before I could say the alphabet or knew what it meant, I would sit for hours looking at picture books (which were few and far between in those days - mostly handed down from cousins or other families) or the occasional "word" book. Even though I had no understanding that the dots on the page were actually words I would make up my own stories by turning over the pages like the grownups.

So I've grown up with books - they are my friends. Some I have had since childhood, others I've collected over the years.

You can gather from this therefore that I enjoy reading - a lot. I love the pictures that words conjure up in my mind. When I read I inhabit other worlds, both imaginary and real. I gain knowledge, I can easily fall in love with a hero or dislike intensely a rogue (even vice versa). I can laugh and I can cry.

At the moment I'm re-reading my series of Precious Ramotswe books. Written by Alexander McCall Smith who has a deep love and understanding of Botswana and it's people, Precious is a woman of our time. Independent, morally strong, valuing good manners, kindness, a love of her country (even though she recognises some faults in both the country and its people). Her intuition and instinctiveness to see behind untruths and pretenses reveals to us many of our own characteristics.

But what I love about Precious Ramotswe is her self-awareness. She is under no illusion that to be happy and to be a contented woman she has to be thin. Quite the opposite. She describes herself and is proud to be spoken of as being "traditionally built". She finds no reason to even think about her weight as a negative within her life. She is fat.

Let me quote from "Morality for Beautiful Girls".

"She finished her tea and then ate a large meat sandwich which Rose had prepared for her lunch. Mma Ramotswe had got out of the habit of a cooked lunch, except at weekends, and was happy with a snack or a glass of milk. She had a taste for sugar, however, and this meant that a doughnut or a cake might follow the sandwich.

She was a traditionally built lady, after all, and she did not have to worry about dress size, like those poor, neurotic people who were always looking in mirrors and thinking that they were too big. What was too big, anyway? Who was to tell another person what size they should be? It was a form of dictatorship, by the thin, and she was not having any of it. If these thin people became any more insistent, then the more generously sized people would just have to sit on them. Yes, that would teach them! Hah!"

I couldn't have said it better!