I did not finish this generous extract as there were a number of things that made me stop reading. The first I noticed the term "gypsies" was used as if it were a normal description. I don't refer much to the travelling community but my understanding is that this is an offensive term. Again, I saw this in the disenchanted use of the offensive term "Japs" when describing what i'm assuming is a game that was played at the time, which she calls "Japs and Commanders". She does not explain this at all, my assumption is that it was called that at the time, but she simply uses the term as if it were a normal thing to call someone.
Again, where the author doesn't explain things is when she refers to the "NAAFI shop". There was no explanation of that abbreviation. I had to google what that was, even if she just put in brackets what it was I may have gotten a better understanding of that sentence.
The lack of explanation continue when she refers to the "offy". Being British I know what the offy is, however if you were not familliar with the British slang it's not at all explained here. A reader unfamilliar with this term would wonder what this means. As a result the sentence wouldn't make sense.
The author continues to mention things like "Noel Edmonds Multi-Coloured Swap Shop" without any explanation of what this is (I'm assuming it's a TV show from the context of the sentence, and from my knowing who Noel Edmonds is). If you were not familliar with the show whether because of your age or not having originally lived in the UK at the time, you wouldn't know what this show was or even that it was a TV show. The sentence there would not make much sense without explanation.
When the author started to phonetically spell the quotations I was entirely put off and stopped reading onwards. Whilst I understood what the message was, I felt that if you weren't familliar with the accent you might not understand the phonetic spelling. I was not feeling any flow with this book or any interest with the content, so I had to stop.
The book cover is also unfortunately unappealing to me. I would not pick this up off a book shelf. The chapter names did not draw me in. This is probably because I don't know what Sketty means and those other Chapter names don't make sense to me. My culture is different so my childhood experience was different. These chapter names might be appealling to those it makes sense to. From what I have read I deduce that I am not the target audience for this book, and it's more of a - you have to have been there - kind of book. Unfortunately this cuts off a wide range of readers who might have been interested in reading the authors memoirs.
Again, where the author doesn't explain things is when she refers to the "NAAFI shop". There was no explanation of that abbreviation. I had to google what that was, even if she just put in brackets what it was I may have gotten a better understanding of that sentence.
The lack of explanation continue when she refers to the "offy". Being British I know what the offy is, however if you were not familliar with the British slang it's not at all explained here. A reader unfamilliar with this term would wonder what this means. As a result the sentence wouldn't make sense.
The author continues to mention things like "Noel Edmonds Multi-Coloured Swap Shop" without any explanation of what this is (I'm assuming it's a TV show from the context of the sentence, and from my knowing who Noel Edmonds is). If you were not familliar with the show whether because of your age or not having originally lived in the UK at the time, you wouldn't know what this show was or even that it was a TV show. The sentence there would not make much sense without explanation.
When the author started to phonetically spell the quotations I was entirely put off and stopped reading onwards. Whilst I understood what the message was, I felt that if you weren't familliar with the accent you might not understand the phonetic spelling. I was not feeling any flow with this book or any interest with the content, so I had to stop.
The book cover is also unfortunately unappealing to me. I would not pick this up off a book shelf. The chapter names did not draw me in. This is probably because I don't know what Sketty means and those other Chapter names don't make sense to me. My culture is different so my childhood experience was different. These chapter names might be appealling to those it makes sense to. From what I have read I deduce that I am not the target audience for this book, and it's more of a - you have to have been there - kind of book. Unfortunately this cuts off a wide range of readers who might have been interested in reading the authors memoirs.