moomins, y'all

I have a bad memory for books in general, but I think of all the Moomin books I had as a kid this was my favorite. I mean, shouldn't it have been? LOOK! Look at them on their stilts! Stilts and comets! That's a winning combination if ever there was one. I was trying to remember how I started reading these books, thinking it was my Finnish grandma, but no - I think I happened upon them in the bookstore in Dublin as a kid. I still remember the bookstore we'd go to during the two years we lived there. I remember how it smelled, and I remember that the book selection was totally different and that was exciting. So I read Moomins, and I read two boarding school series by Enid Blyton, Malory Towers and St. Clare's.



In these books there were lots of sensible English girls and one or two headstrong ones, and usually a spoiled, glam American nuisance with a lazy drawl and maybe a hot-blooded Spanish girl. At least one of the group would be horsey, one would be strong and athletic, one would be dumb as a stick, and one, whipsmart. They'd get into scrapes and arguments. At least once a term they'd have midnight feasts by flashlight, tucking into tins of pineapple, lovely cakes, and orange fizz sent in parcels from mummy and daddy. Sometimes they'd be careless with the crumbs and would get caught the next day and the headmistress would have to give them a frightful scolding. Sometimes they'd sneak out at night and fall off cliffs, or get dragged by a wild stallion, or stubbornly try to prove themselves by swimming in a dreadful current. They never seemed to meet any lads, though. Pity.

Yeah, I thought it all sounded pretty exciting, that English boarding school life. Looking back, though, Moominland would definitely have been the better place for me. I found some Moomin song clips at http://www.moominvoices.com/listen.html . Some are pretty wild, consisting of multiple layers of moomin voices.

I'm glad that when I can't sleep I can get online and look up things like "moomins." There's over a million sites. A whole lot of obsessed souls out there, which works out great for me. But these two? These two give me the creeps! I knew a few people in Japan who had gotten married at Disneyworld, though, so I guess between the two, a Moomin style wedding is way cooler. I would have included stilts, of course, in case of a comet.