Duncan Fisher

Laurie Lee with his wife and daughter

In 2001, John Lewis-Stempel produced Fatherhood: an anthology.  I love this book and would like to indulge occasionally in sharing some of my favourite passages.

From Laurie Lee’s Two Women (1983)

“As she grew and changed, I was increasingly wondering what this new girl could be, with her ecstatic adorations and rages.  The beaming knife-keen awakening, cracking the dawn like an egg, her furies at the small frets of living, the long fat slumbers, almost continental in their reaches, the bedtimes of chuckles, private jokes and languors.

“And what was I to her?  The rough dark shadow of pummelling games and shouts, the cosy frightener, the tossing and swinging arms, lifting the body to the highest point of hysteria before lowering it back again to the safe male smell.

“But she was my girl now, the second force in my life, and with her puffed, knowing eyes, forever moving with colour and light, she was well aware of it.”

Fatherhood Add new tag, Fatherhood