Moments in my eBook Library — 5 — William books — pure nostalgia

When I was a lad going to Sydney Boys High in 1955 I borrowed many a William book from the school library.

So I was chuffed to find that Project Gutenberg could take me back all those years, and indeed to the decades before when these books were appearing.

I have placed four in my eBook Library on Calibre.

I wonder who else remembers them?

There was a TV series in the 70s. I do not recall seeing it.

CHAPTER III
WILLIAM BELOW STAIRS
William was feeling embittered with life in general. He was passing through one of his not infrequent periods of unpopularity. The climax had come with the gift of sixpence bestowed on him by a timid aunt, who hoped thus to purchase his goodwill. With the sixpence he had bought a balloon adorned with the legs and head of a duck fashioned in cardboard. This could be blown up to its fullest extent and then left to subside. It took several minutes to subside, and during those minutes it emitted a long-drawn-out and high-pitched groan. The advantage of this was obvious. William could blow it up to its fullest extent in private and leave it to subside in public concealed beneath his coat. While this was going on William looked round as though in bewildered astonishment. He inflated it before he went to breakfast. He then held it firmly and secretly so as to keep it inflated till he was sitting at the table. Then he let it subside. His mother knocked over a cup of coffee, and his father cut himself with the bread knife. Ethel, his elder sister, indulged in a mild form of nervous breakdown. William sat with a face of startled innocence. But nothing enraged his family so much as William’s expression of innocence. They fell upon him, and he defended himself as well as he could. Yes, he was holding the balloon under the table. Well, he’d blown it up some time ago. He couldn’t keep it blown up for ever. He had to let the air out some time. He couldn’t help it making a noise when the air went out. It was the way it was made. He hadn’t made it. He set off to school with an air of injured innocence—and the balloon. Observing an elderly and irascible-looking gentleman in front of him, he went a few steps down a back street, blew up his balloon and held it tightly under his coat. Then, when abreast of the old gentleman, he let it off. The old gentleman gave a leap into the air and glared fiercely around. He glanced at the small virtuous-looking schoolboy with obviously no instrument of torture at his lips, and then concentrated his glare of fury and suspicion on the upper windows. William hastened on to the next pedestrian. He had quite a happy walk to school.

School was at first equally successful. William opened his desk, hastily inflated his balloon, closed his desk, then gazed round with his practised expression of horrified astonishment at what followed. He drove the French master to distraction.

“Step out ’oo makes the noise,” he screamed.

No one stepped out, and the noise continued at intervals.

The mathematics master finally discovered and confiscated the balloon.

“I hope,” said the father at lunch, “that they’ve taken away that infernal machine of yours.”

William replied sadly that they had. He added that some people didn’t seem to think it was stealing to take other people’s things….

Me as an avid reader of William books 1955,