So the more observant of you may have noticed a few changes to my header. Includes one of my favourite pics taken with the Simunye kids in Bhekuwandle but also a picture of one of the flagstones outside the Writers’ Museum in Edinburgh with a quote from one of my favourite childhood authors, Robert Louis Stevenson.
There were a few books, mostly hand-me-downs of my Mum’s and my cousin’s that stayed in my Nana’s house. The three books I remember…Laura’s Summer Ballet (a prize my Mum got for good attendance at Sunday School); The Complete Works of Beatrix Potter and A Child’s Garden of Verses.
In the last, there was a poem called The Lamplighter.
I loved that poem. Perhaps because I could imagine it all, my Nana living round the corner and up the hill from where RLS had been born, lived and gone to school as a child.
I knew it off by heart.
And if I ever read it aloud, I think it’s the only thing (apart from being angered about something) that makes my accent at it’s most Scottish! 
My tea is nearly ready, and the sun has left the sky;
It’s time to take the window to see Leerie going by;
For every night at teatime and before you take your seat,
With lantern, and with ladder, he comes posting up the street.
Now Tom would be a driver, and Maria go to sea,
And my Papa’s a banker, and as rich as he can be;
But I, when I am stronger and can choose what I’m to do;
O Leerie, I’ll go round at night and light the lamps with you!
For we are very lucky with a lamp before the door,
And Leerie stops to light it as he lights so many more;
And O! before you hurry by with ladder and with light;
O Leerie, see a little child and nod to him tonight!
The Lamplighter by Robert Louis Stevenson © A Child’s Garden of Verses – 1913
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