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.