Their names remind me of Terri Doolittle in Jumpin' Jack Flash, playing the computer key board and warbling: "This is Bliii..iind Terri Doolittle. I wan'me a Jack bam-bam bam-bam. I wan'im come back bam-bam bam-bam. He's screwing ma mind bumbum bumbum. Ah'm busting ma behind bambam bambam...

The young Billy Holiday

Alarms and excursions.

It has been an up-beat and very full week. Sophie came up on her summer visit from London; I treasure the time we have together and appreciate the effort it is for her to get here. It's a horrible journey whichever way she does it; train this time, hot, crowded and noisy for eight hours. That's a true test of love. Her visit coincided with Sandy's induction as a weekly boarder at the local prep school. This was all a rather last minute decison and much panic ensued over the acquisition of uniform, a kilt, 3 pairs of everything else including very purple rugby socks, gum guard, tuck box etc. etc. and much sewing on of name tabs. No-one asked me to help with that chore mercifully. They know how enthusiastic I am about sewing. No owl was required nor a cauldron. Shame really. He appeared last evening after the first three days looking cheerful in the extreme. So far he seems to love it, even the rugby. (He still has both ears.) It's the first time I've heard him rave about a lesson - history kicked off with the Aztecs, always a good one to catch the imagination of the bloodthirsty ten year old. They were given pieces of the Aztecs greatest gift to mankind (apart from football which IMO is of debatable benefit) - chocolate.

The shop has been discreetly quiet - well, hey, what else has it been all summer? At least I had plenty of time to sit and gather strength between family meals. The vinyl has been quite a challenge, wading my way through checking it and trying to locate other copies for sale on the net to give a guide to scarcity and possible pricing bands. A kindly fellow from the seller's board gave me assistance with the LP's but then I got the idea, found the appropriate sites and managed the EP's and singles on my own.

I've become accustomed to the radical drop in income now and am adjusting my sights accordingly. Thank the overlighting forces I don't have rent to pay! A consigment of a newly printed paperback edition of a local book 'In the Shadow of Cairngorm' arrived yesterday and is already selling well thanks to the large number of Stewarts in the area. It contains a lot of their family history between its covers. Coincidentally I had an unscheduled meeting with one of the Stewarts who is the best customer for these books (even in the days when they were hardback and expensive.) Peter Stewart installs security equiptment and I inherited a system he put in the shop here for the last owner. I have ignored it for five years (I never switch it on because I know I'm going to forget how to switch it off or get something wrong.) Peter had told me it needed servicing, warned me repeatedly that there would be a reckoning one day and I had stubbornly ignored him because I hadn't wanted the thing in the first place. The day of reckoning came at 6.30 Wednesday evening when the battery started to run out. It alerted me of its imminent death. And then it alerted me again, and then again, and finally I had to ring poor Peter who was having his evening meal. He came rather grumpily (understandably) and rescued us from a night of switching the thing off every ten minutes. I owe him a free copy or two of this book now!

Tomorrow our son, grandson Finlay, and pregnant daughter-in-law arrive from Cornwall so more family meals and chaos are promised. Extra chaos as the fireplace will be ripped out of my living room. I was never going to light it (the chimney is blocked!) It made a traditional centre piece but is rather overwhelming in a small room, the fire back being very black cast iron. Costa will take it away to his large house down south and I will have a nice low bookcase/TV shelf built in its place. Everyone's a winner.

Vinyl

These tunes were everywhere in my youth. Tea for Two on this Art Tatum EP, and Tiger Rag

Cat in the hat syndrome

The sun did not shine.
It was too wet to play.
So we sat in the house
All that cold, cold, wet day.

I sat there with Sally.
We sat there, we two.
And I said, "How I wish
We had something to do!"

Too wet to go out
And too cold to play ball.
So we sat in the house.
We did nothing at all.

So all we could do was to
Sit!
Sit!
Sit!
Sit!
And we did not like it.
Not one little bit.

The reason for this addition? Twofold. Firstly it is wet wet wet wet and I am sit sit sit sitting. Secondly the book came in recently and I can't get the jolly anapestic tetrameter out of my head. Everything thought is coming in on the same beat.

(None of the following will be written in it though.. too demanding making it make sense.)

I have forty vinyl Lp's and 60 EP's to sell now. They are taking a lot of time to sort, photograph and price before putting them in an ebay shop. Most are jazz and many are desirable (I'm fed up with the word collectable.) I wish I could play them, especially the Bessie Smith, but don't have the equiptment .

I also picked up a nice set of leatherbound Dickens, the complete works in 20 vols. I wasn't hopeful when offered them - too many Dickens around even in leather to be getting excited but these are handsome and I can decently ask a good price for them. They will grace a private collection somewhere. There was a 1st ed. of Cobbett's Rural Rides, half bound and a Yeats Folio Society. Altogether a good haul. The Austens were sadly faded and the Potter's (Beatrix) very tired. Evidently a family who loved their books though.

It is much more interesting when I can buy books. The discipline of holding back has been agony.

Requests.

Mazo de la Roche (three specific titles.) The story of the Union flag for children with special attention to the story of the flag of St. Andrew. Puree recipes for nervous mothers with first babies. Guides to whisky distilleries. A book with pictures of posies 'because my girl friend wants me to paint some posies of flowers on the bathroom door.'

A sample of requests from my day. Not ONE of which could I satisfy from my shelves. I had books illustrated with paintings of flowers, some of them even in posies; I had a book about flags that included the history of the UK flag, but both were declared much too expensive to be bought at £5 - £10 a piece.

Each request involved a long conversation which sent the seekers out empty handed but happy, feeling that at least I had done my damndest for them.

Tracey Emin again

It took me a while to understand the Chillside post and even longer to tumble to the fact there was a pre-dated post added about TE. Doh! Not very bright-brained here yesterday.
It was an excellent piece of writing Chillside, and a good expression of your response to TE's work. Plenty of people seem to think she's 'important' but not many make a good case for just why she's important. I'm going to hold back any more personal responses until I've seen the exhibition in Edinburgh, but for the moment I have to say that it all sounds a bit passé to me. Stream of consciousness/women's angst/kitchen sink stuff might be newish in the world of tactile art but not in literature. Doris Lessing explored it all with intelligent perception, in a more measured way, in the Golden Notebook - even to the distasteful smell of her own menstrual blood. There were plenty of women's writings that added to that over the 70's & 80's and onward. The whole 'woman's world, woman's psyche' thing has been done. Self-expression and emoting on our messed-up lives is more or less accepted mainstream coffee-shop chat nowadays. I thought artists, who are generally seen as being in the van of current thought-forms, might have moved on a bit by now.

I wonder if TE will manage to change my mind?

Not too bad after all.

Alsace Reisling helped.

It (the Reisling, the conversations, the looking back and the catching up) kept me awake for most of the night afterwards though!

I've managed to change the display of books in the window, 5 days late ths time; they usually get changed on Wednesdays. Poetry gets its turn again, the Big Burns providing the centre piece, though slightly to one side so no-one can grab it.

I don't feel particularly focused today. The sun is shining and Sandy is upstairs with nothing to do till he gets taken to buy the new school uniform this afternoon. I feel a walk on the beach mght be good for us both.

Why oh why?

Sunday and the phone rings: "Hallo Carol, this is Jolly D. Remember me from Brussels days? M and I are in Findhorn right now. I've just had such a lovely conversation with Nick and we would love to meet up with you both. We were all such good pals..."

OH NOOOO!..... We weren't such good pals! I REALLY don't want to meet up!

Force majeur I am about to.

Why is it such a terror to meet someone I haven't seen for 30 years? Especially this particular woman, who I just know will be eagle eyed for the clothes I am wearing, the signs of ageing, the sagging decrepitude; the poor account of what I have done with my life!

It's me who will be taking account of course. I hate looking back. I hate being reminded of potential lost and mistakes made.

It was such a peaceful day until that phone call.

Hard Labour for Life

In 'A Book for Brides’ Marghanita Laski has written a chapter called ‘Hard Labour for Life.’ If I had read it when I was twenty I think it would have put me off marriage completely. I discovered by experience that her views on marriage in 1948 continued to be valid although the book was published 18 years before I got married. Things might have been expected to have changed a little in the swinging 60’s but they didn’t.

Her opening sentence is: “The most important fact about marriage to my way of thinking is that from first to last it is unremitting hard work” and she goes on to itemise the ways in which this need for hard work manifests.

“One of the things your husband undoubtedly envisages getting out of marriage is ‘a nice home.’ It’s YOUR job, not his, to make it so. It won’t matter in the least if you as well as he leave the house at eight thirty each morning and don’t return till half past six. It’s still your job to order the groceries, queue for the fish, organise the dinner party, count the laundry, and darn the socks. If he helps you with the washing up it’s a grace and you’ve got to say ‘thank you.’”

I certainly felt that home making was my responsibility and I didn’t just ‘count’ the laundry either, I washed it by hand and ironed it. I watched my friends assuming the same burdens and I own to being slightly appalled when my daughters don’t do it all now.

Marghanita moves remorselessly on to deal with even more unpalatable facts. Firstly, she points out that soon after the wedding at least one of the couple will stop trying to please or be attractive to the other. ‘However gay and gallant a man may be before marriage he’s awfully apt to slip gratefully into more or less dependable dullness afterwards - at least as far as his wife is concerned.” (How true.) Is it possible to tell ones husband outright that he is getting dull? Marghanita wisely says not. “It cannot be sufficiently stressed that you never do any good with a man by ticking him off. It is equally and uncontrovertibly true that the judicious use of flattery has the most amazingly constructive results.”

Massage and manipulation are necessary for a happy marriage.

She goes on to warn that it is best to keep ones own troubles and feelings under wraps. No good will come of weeping, shouting, nagging, swearing or throwing things. (Well, she’s right abut all that. I know. I tried.)

Next she pours cold water on the romantic notion that a couple will confide absolutely in each other after marriage. “.... telling each other everything is a rather silly pipe-dream: it is difficult enough for a trained psychiatrist to know what really goes on inside you ... No adult relationship can possible exist on any other basis than a reasonable amount of reticence on both sides.”

She advises confiding in a female friend.

The social chores, like entertaining your husband’s friends (for which occasion he might buy the cigarettes but that is all you can decently expect of him,) having visiting cards engraved, keeping the Christmas card list, sending letters of thanks, congratulations and condolence (not just cards - whole letters) this will all devolve upon the wife. I do think most of that has fallen by the wayside now (though if it hadn’t I might get a birthday card from my son on time and not after his sisters have reminded him!)

The aforementioned trials pale in the face of the final problem the brave Marghanita faces square on: the Predatory Blonde.

“Dealing with casual and predator blondes is about the hardest job any wife can face up to. Upbraiding and reproaches hardly ever work, and even if they do it’s seldom much fun afterwards. Ditto tears.’ She derides the advice to be found in magazine for the emergency facial, new hairdo, or new hat, because the blonde can offer what the wife can’t ‘...a good time free from all taint of responsibility ‘

She doesn’t recommend getting angry and mentioning divorce at this difficult time - it might be taken up. “Undoubtedly the best way to deal with the predatory blonde is to keep silent and hope for the best - and is there any job in the world harder than THAT?”

After all this depressing realism she spends a paragraph making amends by telling of the reward of companionship, love and motherhood “...together with the real sense of achievement in fine craftsmanship that only comes from working hard and well.“

Which leaves me with a bit of a lump in my throat!

A Book for Brides

Type cast

A young chap just bought 'How to Build a Nuclear Bomb.' Should I tremble?

He wasn't wearing a hoody though so I think I'm OK. That's how you recognise the baddies isn't it?

The people that really strike fear in this part of the world are those wearing suits. It just isn't usual. Especially dark suits. They are only for funerals. Not even the Witnesses wear them. Solicitors wear light grey. Estate Agents wear light grey but shed their jackets on hot days and undo their ties. Pushy salesmen wear dark suits, and undertakers.

Creative gardening.

I'm not sure how well this will show but an angel has been mown into the grass.

Dunes

The heather is out on the dunes.

The sea ... the sea...

The sea was very loud today
stilling thoughts

Birthday boy

He's just at that heart-wrenchingly beautiful choir-boy angel age. We had better make the most of it.

A blog about blogs:

I found the following article about blogging today - it's over a year old but still of interest to me as I wonder what it is I'm doing sittng here writing into cyber space about my entirely unimportant life.

In the article I find the dread word 'narcissistic.'

*************************************************************************

Blogs mark the first 10 years

This article appeared in the Guardian on Saturday April 07 2007

Andrew Keen, a former dotcom entrepreneur and the author of the forthcoming book 'Cult of the Amateur: How Today's Internet is Killing Our Culture,' says that though it is enticing to believe that online diaries are empowering, the hype is dangerous.

"It's seductive in the sense that it convinces people to think they have more to say and are more interesting than they really are," he said. "The real issue is whether it adds any more to our culture. Most of it is just so transient and ephemeral."

...er... aren't we ALL transient and ephemeral anyway? Including this Keen chap here?

But he admits that there have also been some important contributions.

"Not every blogger is a narcissist who has nothing to say. In particular there are people in China and Iraq who are blogging - and that is very brave," he said.

Some blogs that have made their mark.


October 2003
Belle de Jour, the anonymous writer of a blog chronicling the life of a high-class London escort, gets a publishing deal, setting a precedent for so-called "blooks"

May 2004
Jessica Cutler, a congressional assistant, details her sex life on her blog, Washingtonienne, sparking a scandal

July 2005
Blogosphere now doubling in size every five months

April 2007
Around 70m blogs in existence, according to Technorati.com
*************************************************

I like the word 'blogosphere.'

I don't like the guy who calls me narcissistic for writing an on-line diary. That smacks of wanting to keep the peasants in their place in case they get above themselves and start to think they are as good as he who thinks he really is important here.

mutter... mumble...

Hair growing success story & where's the fun in an e-book?.

Finally a way to make the news headlines that is achievable: 'Pensioner grows 5'7" of hair.' Now I could DO that. My news link to this item has a video clip too. It promises to be exciting.

Certainly not much else remarkable is happening. I am enjoying my morning drives up into the tree line. The shop did OK yesterday, which sort of made up for the phone calls from bookfair-goers ringing to find out how I am and tell me about their successful weekend of selling. It was really nice to hear from them but did rather rub salt into the wound.

Never mind. I am feeling up-beat and optimistic for no especially soundly founded reason. I just am.

A slightly worried post about e-books on the amazombie sellers board had me unmoved but moved to think of all the experiences we will miss if e-books take over the world. Here are a few:

* Dropping the book in the bath and being able to dry it off on the radiator.
* Losing a £10 note (like the one which I once used as a bookmark in the days I had spares.)
* Finding old postcards someone else has used as a bookmark. (I've never found the £10 yet.)
* Finding the dog/baby/hamster has chewed the last couple of pages and being left in suspense.
* Losing it on a train and not really caring.
* Leaving it in a cafe " " " "
* Lending it to a friend who forgets to give it back causing a life-long unspoken grudge.
* Lending it to a friend who claims to have given it back causing a life-long feud.
* Being able to go into a secondhand bookshop and ask for 'the book with a red cover I used to love when I was a child.'
* Having the shopkeeper find the book with a red cover I used to love as a child.
* Having a warmer living room because one wall is lined with books.
* Being able to read in one of those impossibly cold places where no technology works. (Or is it just that kettles won't boil at high altitudes... I'm reaching a bit here..')
* Flinging it across the room because it is impossible to understand.
* Scribbling notes in the margin.
* Writing silly gift inscriptions to annoy future Amazon sellers.
* Writing shopping lists or the first chapter of my next novel on the endpapers.
etc. etc.

In an article about e-books this futuristic thought was raised:

'It is perfectly conceivable that in the future we could have something that looks like a book, feels like a book, reads like a book and with separate paper-thin pages like a book, but which uses e-ink instead of the normal kind.'

It sounds like the vegetarian option that's made to look like the meat option! What's the point?

Specialising.

It's so much easier to sell books I like. There was just an animated exchange with a customer over the merits of different crime writers. I should probably open a specialist crime shop. I could sell handcuffs and truncheons and cop costumes and leather gear and electric chairs and... OK OK reign back here... but I could call it 'The Boot, the Bat and the Bastinada.'

Titles again.

...and it's Monday again.

The grandson is back therefore a week of driving to the riding stables lies ahead. Not an unpleasant prosepct and I doubt I'll lose much trade in so doing - she says rather bitterly. It's also his birthday Wednesday and he will be moving into double figures so that means a celebration dinner on Wednesday evening. There are two chocolate cakes upstairs, one waiting for dispatch to London becase - and how strange is this - his Aunt Sophie's partner Nick has his birthday on the same day. Not so strange really talking to other families; these birthday clusters often happen. It looks as if Costa's next son will be born on or very close to his own birthday.

As this blog (and my life?) is getting so boring I am think it is time to either fictionalise it or bring it to a close. When I hear stories from people like Andrew I realise there are some who SHOULD be writing about their lives because they are relevant to others. he says he has trouble with the Russian internet connections but his son is putting articles he has written into blog form. I'll look forward to it.

A quiet Saturday with reasonably good sales and two visits from friends which passed the morning pleasantly. The first, Andrew, is taking time out from his work in a village for orphaned children in Russia. Andrew has always chosen hard situations for himself, bringing back enjoyable travellers' tales of crazy bureaucracy and muddle from places like Greece, Croatia and Bosnia. He has been in Russia for a year now and seems to find it rewarding as well as demanding. It's by way of being a pilot scheme not unlike the Pestalozzi children's villages. The orphans, often quite disturbed, are taken in by foster parents who give them a home environment whilst themselves having the support of the community in caring for the child. Andrew, as far as I can uderstand it, does most of the joinery, building and maintenance for them. He has experience in teaching but doesn't speak Russian well enough yet to be able to help in that way.

Catchy titles.

Asthma has caused a glitch in my book fair programme and kept me home. Rats.
On the other hand it has given me some interestingly odd dreams. In the latest I was thinking up book titles: "Saddam Lives! How a chuckle gave him away" was probably the strangest.

Foot in mouth again.

Wet and chilly and empty of customers I have filled my morning doing what I KNOW I will regret - writing letters to the local paper. The devil makes work for idle hands. The first letter was in support of the West End Post Office (where I post my parcels daily) since the East End PO is now definately going to close and in the outcry the WE PO proprietor is getting upset about a comment or two made by thoughtless individuals, one of them a councillor. There was a skit that I remember from back in the day: A dour TV presenter speaking the Queen's English (as it was spoken then) translates the words of a Glaswegian(?) as he talks: 'E'er'a'peear'o'toon coonsillers' into: 'There are a couple of intellectuals.'

Now I understand why everyone laughed so hard.

The second was very inadvisably written in counterpoint to a ninny who wrote a letter last week declaring global warming to be an intergovernmental conspiracy and Al Gore's film to 'have started the hysteria.' This is topical at the moment because there is a big lobby against wind farms encroaching on the Highland wilderness. I really should stay out of this sort of debate as I have no grasp of statistics but there I go putting my foot in my mouth anyway. No doubt I shall get my just deserts shoved right in after.

Today is very quiet, cool verging on chilly and raining intermittently. The High Street is almost empty and the shop bell hasn't rung many times. I live in world of my own on days like this when Chloe isn't in the room next door working on people and there are no family crises to worry about. There's a mostly enjoyable discussion on religion (again) on the Amazon seller's board to occupy my mind, along with thoughts of the coming weekend. Will I - won't I do these fairs? I expect I will but I always have to go through the dread.

Yesterday I took some bric-a-brac to a boot sale. The weather then was very nice and finding myself in a position facing the noon-day sun I basked and enjoyed the people. It may sound like a busman's holiday but it's so different. For one things I was outdoors. I watched the skies and wished I had taken my camera. Lots of cumulus and stratus up there sweeping across the blue. There is a good site with photos of cloud formations and lists of all their names.

The names are interesting but unnecessary really, like the names of birds or flowers. I suppose it's sometimes important to be able to transmit an accurate verbal picture of a particular formation (or birds or flowers) to another person but it does away with the need to find the words to describe what we see, and that deprives us of an opportunity for savouring the bringing together of nouns and pronouns into an oral extravaganza all of our own. It takes bit of poetry out of our lives.

As free entertainment (in fact entertainment that might even result in financial gain) you can't really beat a boot sale. There's such a variety of goods for sale and such a variety of people selling the goods. It is a rich source of Dickensian characters like the line of weatherbeaten chaps who stood silently smoking roll-ups, watching me unpack my wares. 'You're like a lot of vultures' I remarked amiably and the vultures rose screeching, offended, then settled back until they saw all of my offerings laid out when they came in for the feed. I did most of my selling in the first ten minutes. I was frisked for guns and knives - not quite literally but the sharp-eyed chap doing the checking didn't look as if he was going to take any flippancy from me so I offered none.

On Saturday I...

... put aside the cash that comes in for my Sunday entertainment and food for the week. Often I have to choose between the two. This might be one of those weeks. That's not as dire as it sounds; I quite enjoy this form of self-discipline. I used to like those saving boxes that had compartments for different objectives: 'Holidays' 'Clothes' (Rent, Heating etc. etc. but those compartments weren't so much fun.) Money means so much more when it arrives in the hand and sits in the purse. I fell a bad victim to the plastic culture. So difficult to keep track of something insubstantial, theoretical.

On Saturday I play music - music licence be hanged. On Saturday I have a glass of wine about now (3.30pm.)

...and here's the other thing...

.....I wanted to say... to withinthewalledgarden The colours of the dyed wools are glorious! Am I right in thinking tansy is also known as ragwort? That is certainly poisonous to horses and cattle daft enough to eat it. I have served my time clearing it out of fields the ponies were about to graze.

I am getting this image of Gillian's kitchen as an alchemists' lair. Etchings of alchemists always have them in sinister dark places with stuffed crocodiles tied to the ceiling; live owls flitting in and out, and bats of course. Bats - well these have made more than a guest appearance on the blog - and now the chemicals... that's most of the requirements for a career in witchcraft and wizardry. I hope all the bottles are clearly labelled.

I was in a good mood until...

....I tried to leave comments on two blogs and didn't manage to pass the sentries at the gate. To add insult - one of the blogs was my OWN!!! Blah! Anyway, here is what I wanted to add:

I'm looking forward to Chillsides' exposition on Tracey E. Thought that might evince a response. And as for Croydon - I lived in Thornton Heath for a number of years. That was close enough. Croydon was my nearest shopping centre. I didn't enjoy it. On another site I read the comments of an ex-Croydonian after a return visit; she said she didn't realise how awful it was whilst she was living there. We don't do we? We create a bubble for ourselves. I had a circuit of shops in Thornton H where I could talk to the shopkeepers and I stuck to them obsessively. It's a survival thing. Chloe and Sandy texted from London after crossing from one mainline station to another during the rush hour. 'Sardines R us!' In oil I imagine - and some poor souls do that daily, in fact can't imagine the horrors of living in the boondocks of Forres.

That sort of life affects the way we behave. Sophie used to look people in the eye when she passed them in the street; after several years in London she strides briskly, looking straight ahead, avoiding all eye contact. Visitors from the deep south are a jarring element this time of year. They drive more aggressively; they seem to be made nervous by friendliness; would rather remain aloof, slightly supercilious, slightly mocking? They bring a tension with them that is palpable. It's the way they have learned to survive.

..and...er...

....I'm thinking of making a special trip down to see the exhibitions.... not just her of course but, well, I'll have to take a look at her stuff too ... check it out .... make sure it's b%ll%cks.. which I'm sure it IS but ... I might as well... you know... check!

Anti-Emin Rant

All those who admire Tracey Emin please look away now. I am about to rant!

She is to have a 20 years retrospective in Edinburgh and is reported to be ‘nervous.’ This is the loud-mouthed, self-absorbed, creator of ‘The Bed,’ who has turned her name into a brand image for bad taste, coming over all sensitive?

After bewailing the loss of her Tent in the fire and the general lack of public sympathy (nay, even public amusement) she said...

“ ..... I'm also upset about those people whose wedding got bombed last week [in Iraq], and people being dug out from under 400 ft of mud in the Dominican Republic.'

Well, gosh. How big hearted to feel their experiences were as hard as her loss eh?

Then there was this interlude:

‘Emin was commissioned, as part of a scheme throughout London titled Art in Sacred Spaces, to collaborate with children on an artwork at Ecclesbourne Primary School in Islington, North London. Pupils made the piece with her in Emin's style of sewing cut out letters onto a large piece of material. In 2004, the school enquired if Emin would sign the work so that the school could sell it as an original to raise funds. They planned to auction the piece for £35,000 for an arts unit[67], as it could not afford to display the large work. Emin and her gallery White Cube refused saying that it was not a piece of her art, therefore reducing its value and requested it be returned. But Emin quickly came to an agreement with the school, where she paid £4,000 to create a perspex display box for the patchwork quilt to be showcased.’

I bet the school would have preferred the art unit and it would have been more use to the children in the long run. Also - think of the pride those children involved would have felt!!

But she was born in Croydon and after such a poor start in life what can you expect?

First edition.

A young mother of two (she looked about 18yrs) just came in for a variety of books ranging from 'The Rats of Nimh' to Steinbeck 'Of Mice and Men' ( a penchant for small rodents?) through Pratchet, with an amble into Dan Brown. I was touched to hear her list of requests because if I had passed her in the street I would have put her down as a TV & DVD sort of person who wouldn't have a single book in the house at all. Which just goes to show what a judgemental person I am and probably a literary snob to boot. ('To boot??' Must look that up..) Still she did have her limits. She wanted a replacement copy for her 'Romeo and Juliet' because she had lent hers to a friend and never got it back, which was a shame as it had been a first edition.

I gulped a bit but said not a word.

Pinch'n a punch....

...the first of the month. White rabbits!

There's no-one to do it to today so cyber pinches to all my readers!

The 1st of August. It's pouring with rain and last night I was suddenly aware how the nights are drawing in. (I like that phrase 'drawing in.' It is at once cosy and inward turning.) There's always a moment in August when I feel autumn has arrived and today is that day this year. It's a lttle sad (I am a melancholic, romantic person) but also good to feel the changing of the seasons. With darker mornings I would expect to sleep later and might if the gull chicks (now the same size as their parents) didn't wake me with their wistfully 'where's-my-food?' cheepings. They now sound deeper, rather asthmatic, or like an adult bird with laryngitis; probably their voices are breaking. Do bird's voices break? I wonder how they know when it's time to fly? They don't seem to try out their wings other than to stretch them and scratch a bit. I have a shelf of bird books and could probably find the answers but I like to wonder, in both senses of the word: to ponder a question, and to regard with awe.

The other sign that autumn has arrived is the upswing in Amazon sales, largely for the sort of book one needs for college courses. The shop has done really well this week. Hooray!