On Being Creeped as a Kid.

The part of To the Lighthouse which I’m currently reading reminds me of Mrs MacMurdo’s bed and breakfast establishment in which we stayed for four consecutive years during our holidays to Paignton in Devon.

I was a child then, of course, and children were sent to bed early in those days. My bedroom was at the back of the house, and one night, while my parents and Mrs MacMurdo were still downstairs, I heard the rocking chair in the front bedroom creaking rhythmically. The front bedroom was the one occupied by my parents.

The following day my mother told me that our little dog (a black miniature Pomeranian which always came on holiday with us and was allowed to sleep in my parents’ room) jumped onto the bed and burrowed under the bed clothes, apparently in fear. I don’t remember whether I told my mother about the creaking rocking chair. I probably did because I could be a little thoughtless when I had something interesting to communicate.

On another occasion I heard a lion roar beneath my bedroom window. Having always had a serious fear of lions which I would now guess amounted to a neurosis (I wouldn’t even walk past a concrete one which stood impassively on the portico of a pub called the Red Lion close to where I lived), I went downstairs and told the assemblage of parents and Mrs MacMurdo: ‘There’s a lion in the back garden.’ ‘No, no, dear,’ said Mrs Mac, ‘don’t you worry about that. The sound is coming from the zoo across the fields. It does that when the wind is blowing in this direction.’

I didn’t believe her, of course. That lion was definitely in the back garden, and the only comfort I could take when I was ordered back to bed was that it probably couldn’t get into the house. I made sure the bedroom window and door were securely shut and went to sleep eventually.