Childhood imaginings

I have just been reading Stephen King's 'On Writing' where he talks about his earliest writing attempts as a child and the imaginary worlds he created in his head. Reading this got me thinking about my own childhood and some of my earliest memories involving imagination.

I must have either read or listened to someone read Jill Murphy's 'The Worst Witch' because a school where young witches learned how to do spells was the theme for my imaginary world. It was not just me living in this world, but my then best-friend Sarah was also there. We would see each other during the day, then say "Bye, see you tonight at Witch School".

At night, in my dreams and imagination, we would both leave our homes and ride off on broomsticks to our 'other' school. Here we would meet up with our schoolmates and study spells, potions, transformations and how to fly. We had adventure after adventure, sometimes there were incidents in class where someone would mess up a spell and end up turning themselves into something unpleasant by mistake. Tricks were played on teachers, familiars were misplaced and friendships changed over time.

The part that I find most fascinating as I look back is that when Sarah and I would meet the next day, we would talk to each other about what had happened the night before at Witch School. When we discussed the night before we would have the same stories, when one of us started talking about "so-and-so doing this" the other would say "Yes, and then she did this". It was fun and incredibly entertaining.

All that fun and imagination seems to disappear as we get older. Although if I am being honest, I do still fly away to different places and worlds