Readings from the Workbook.

The reading taken from Ake: The Years of Childhood by Wole Soyinka must be one of the saddest things I have ever read. There're many more tragic tales out there; the Anne Frank diaries, one of the previous readings points up the massive canon of writings on wars and the human devastation that goes with them. But this reading plucks at the heart strings in an altogether different way - although as it happens war is actually in the background. What you get in this reading is the breaking of a man's beliefs as a tiny tragedy is played which illustrates how sad it is when a proud and spirited delusion is finally revealed and how soul shattering and bereft that revealing can leave someone. I find this kind of spirit breaking unbearably poignant.

I'll never forget how much of a hero our dad was to us when I was growing up. I believed he could fight the world with one hand tied behind his back. Then one day I saw him arguing loudly with a huge workman who must have been nearly a foot taller, built like a gorilla and who looked menacingly close to seizing my dad who I had always thought invincible. I had a horrible nightmarish image of this monster giving him the kind of hiding I'd seen bigger boys meting out to the smaller ones at school. I had never felt such terror and anxiety, never felt so confused that this strong protector of our family was about be broken like a reed by this huge loud oaf. I tried to remember all those play fights my brothers and I had with him and how dominant he'd always been with his greater strength, twisting us into this and that shape whilst we giggled and raged and submitted. How we could hang off his arms whilst he windmilled us around the room whilst we screamed with delight. I tried to recall all those heavy items we'd watched him heft over the years. And I knew, just watching the threatening build up to the action, that these memories were not going to save him. And I knew that I'd never recover if it happened, if that fearful action had started. And I knew I'd scream hysterically - cry blood almost. But I quietly swore, between stuttering breaths and trembling lips, that I'd grow up fast, hunt down and kill the bastard if my hero dad was to be slayed that day.