Hooray for podcasts et cetera . . .

   I have a dirty secret to confess. I listen to BBC Radio 4 that bastion of middle-brow England. It gets worse: I listen to The Archers. But this morning I was really happy because Roger McGough is back with a new series of listeners' requests for Poetry Please. I also listened to Melvyn Bragg and guests discussing Thomas Aquinus on In Our Time. 

   For a dose of nostalgia I browse BBC 7 and find some of the programmes I heard when I was young: Beyond Our Ken, Round the Horne, The Clitheroe Kid, The Goon Show, Journey into Space, The Navy Lark,  ITMA (It's That Man Again, Jimmy Handley) and a few more I don't recall at the moment.

    Oh frabjous joy, calloo callay, I found the code that makes indents display. And now I've made a nonsense of that (almost) couplet by editing previous posts . . .

From the Bookcase: Alasdair Gray 2

I like short stories.

Mug shot. Thank you, Kathy.

    I think I noted somewhere that I need to grow my beard back; I don't like shaving really. I had a good night's sleep for once. I awoke once lying on my back, something I rarely do. I dreamed dreams: a small house like a semi-detached. I'm sitting with friends in overstuffed 1930s easy chairs, settees and armchairs. Paul McCartney comes into the room; gives me a twelve string guitar to tune. The strings are surprisingly slack but in tune. Out side the back deck looks like one attached to a house we used to live in and someone is saying, "Oh, they filmed a scene for that movie in the back garden of a house in Great Falls."  I wander to another room where a tall young man is playing LPs on a transparent vertical player, recording them to CDs. I'm driving a pick-up truck too fast along a road I know has curves and bends ahead, I brake and the road becomes a dirt track through earthworks. Huge piles of dirt and heavy earth-moving machinery dodging between me and the piles of dirt. Just as suddenly I am walking in a field of young sweetcorn stepping across the rows.

From the bookcase 30

 

For those times I'm feeling really nostalgic for an England that no longer exists

A misnomer

    That is what I have made the title of this blog as it has evolved with no other idea than to write whatever comes to mind about me. The 101 things non-directed exercise is far more exacting. Maybe it is easier to write about a subject other than one's self. A rather self indulgent, narcissistic exercise is this.

    The misnomer that caused me to start this post is: used book. A book may become a little shelf worn; the dust jacket may become faded, torn, chipped or lost altogether. Some readers go to the trouble of removing the dust cover from a book they are reading to protect it from damage; whilst others of us use the end papers as bookmarks. The mis-named perfect binding of paperbacks quickly breaks especially in very dry climates. Paper yellows and becomes brittle. A hard bound book's spine will become cocked if read through without care to open the book and gently release the tightness of the binding when the book is new. Insects, silverfish and book-worms; fire, water and dust - and books are very dusty things - threaten a books longevity. Fifty years is generally reckoned to be the expected life span of a common garden trade book.

    A book that has a loose binding, is bumped, scratched and is showing other signs of wear; has pages marked with notes by previous owners; has been used to the point where the owner knows the book as well as the writer does and so discards it. Read, mark, learn, inwardly digest - and then give the book away.

    Many books are now printed on archive paper, or committed to another archive medium altogether. The books we read and value now, will they last? Fashions change; new scientific discoveries are made; thinkers think and write what they think or, as in Socrates case, others write. And so with a great leap I come to tell you why I think used book is a misnomer. We read books to learn, to amuse - to distract us sometimes. Does a writer write to teach, to simply say, "This is how I see the world", or to distract? There are probably as many reasons as there are writers. It's the words on the page that matter and to a reader, no matter how old the book, the story is new.



EDIT: Thursday 17 September 2009, of course I think British usage would more likely say,"second hand." But as I've said before I do  get a little confused sometimes . . .

From the bookcase: Alasdair Gray 1

My inscription on the flyleaf (book vandal!) tells me I bought this first edition on 4 December 1985. there is a pencilled price on the leaf too so I suspect I bought this used in the year of its publication by George Braziller in the USA. Alasdair's official web site and the blog and I found this link to The Guardian .

From the bookcase 29

 

I no longer have any of John Gardner's novels on the bookshelves, but I do have some of his writings about writing and this collection of short stories published by Alfred Knopf in 1981 a year before the motorcycle crash which killed him.

Views on a neighbourhood walk . . .

Took a walk this morning. About time, too; too lazy to right write anything; anything worth reading; reading old books; books pictured for the blog; blog scheduled now that I finally discovered how to do that; that is all I have to say right now; now I shall post the rest of the pictures as I promised myself . . .

 

  

 

"quote - unquote"

To know is nothing at all; to imagine is everything. - Anatole France

My century plus one

A few years ago several people listed 101 things about themselves. The idea may be ready for a little revival.

I started worrying that I don't have much to say about myself at the moment. I wondered what relevance noting what I have done in the past has to do with who I am now. I was thinking categories: physical characteristics, likes, dislikes, recreations, vocations for example. I think I just need to make a list , one of many possible lists . . . this might take a few days.

1. I have acted in amateur community theatre productions.
2. I practise playing various musical instruments.
3. I have short legs and a long back in proportion to my height, otherwise known as a short arse.
4. I weigh 12st 12lbs or 180lbs. Don't ask me what that is in kilos.
5. I like to read - almost anything including cereal boxes.
   
6. I hate repeatedly starting sentences with the first person singular.
7. Blue is usually my favourite colour.
   
   

Book on the desk 28

I need to pay more attention to Keith 's little book, especially now he is no longer with us. The title echoes A.G. Macdonell's England, Their England; and England, My England a collection of stories by D.H. Lawrence first published in the United States in 1922. This is the second printing. The pages are yellowing. The book fits nicely into a pocket.

Getting maudlin

What on earth business does a self confessed introvert have talking about himself here in this in your face tell it like it is world . . . if you are familiar with Meyers-Briggs or Keirsey Temperament Sorter I last tested (2002) as INFP but I can't find the paperwork with the secondary characteristics.

I stuck my toe in the surf at the ocean's edge . . . but I'd rather be body surfing.

I started by telling little secrets on the pretext of finding out who I am by telling you who I think I am . . . and this is just one version of many.

The droplets of storytelling are like water torture . . . welcome the deluge. 

And then lapsing into silence . . . ellipses ad in finitum.

Am I the sum of what I can remember and the product of my dreams? talking mathematically . . . me, cubed, diced, and sauteed.

Does one ever graduate from the University of Life we all attend . . . otherwise known as Blogiverse.

Where is this leading? Up the garden path if I know me? And I don't, so maybe it's more like trailing off into the wilderness.

Now this has metamorphed into a browse through my book-garden and given me the impetous to re-read some of those forgotten books. If you are what you eat can you be what you read? This is full of empty calories . . . my, but the Guinness was good!

My goodness. My Guinness!

 

Cheers! Sláinte!

Breaking the 11th Scout Law

I don't know if there are still ten Scout laws; the eleventh was unwritten.

I keep browsing through the b-LOGOS-sphere. I spelled it with two Gs in a previous post . . . the sphere of a Mr A. Blogg. So many fresh and brand spanking new blogs.

I follow many anonymously. I made the mistake of commenting on a blog which was well written, was public and had a few public followers; I was quite surprised when the author tore me off a strip for lurking and promptly made the blog private. Live and learn.

That was then; this is now. I'm still very silent.

From the bookcase 26 27

The oldest recorded story in the world

On the bookshelf 25

 

I believe I did manage to read the book before seeing the film Kes. This is one book I know I've lent and had returned to me. The story is simple and effective; a dispassionate description of school and broken family life in a mining town where most boys are fated to follow their fathers down the mines when they leave school at age fifteen with no qualifications.The film was quite controversial at the time it was released(1970) but still received a U (Universal) British film board certification.

Silence

It is so refreshing to see clouds instead of a blank cerulean sky.

From the bookshelves 24

This is another book on the to be finished pile; another gem of forgotten literature from the early twentieth century.

Victor Segalen remained unpublished at his death in 1919 aged forty. René Leys was first published in 1922. This Overlook Press edition, translated by J.A. Underwood, appeared in 1988.

From the blurb: Victor Segalen poured into this book all the anguish of a man held captive by his limitations and his obsessive hunger for forbidden secrets.

I'm finding that I have trouble recollecting the story of the books I read, or started to read, as an adult. So much for making strong impressions; quite a few books remain unfinished as I may start reading several books at once, become engrossed in one in particular and have to reread the ones that I stop reading and leave too long.

From the bookshelves 23

Not quite done with Mervyn. This is a first edition published by Peter Owen, London in 1972.

Try saying Footfruit several times in a row!

And here is another favourite word, tsk tsk Latinate again: propinquity

Labor Day week-end

    Kathy has spent the last week visiting with her parents and sister at Burro Mountain Homestead near Silver City, NM. I joined them after church Sunday morning. The rain followed me and going over the pass between Nutrioso and Alpine the road was covered with what seemed to be slushy snow but was more likely to have been fine hail and lots of it.

    A large group of cyclists were enjoying the finer weather and open road between Alpine, AZ and Luna, NM. I felt quite unfit watching all these people cycle up these long mountain passes and remembered the days when I did a lot of cycling in England . . .

    The only notable wildlife I saw this trip was a group of javelina or peccaries. The week-end before I glimpsed big horn sheep on the side of the highway. The road passes through the Apache and Gila National forests. Aldo Leopold spent the early part of his career with the National Forest Service in this part of the country. A mountain man also associated with this area is Ben Lilly

    I didn't have any encounters with bears or mountain lions this trip, but they are out there . . . lured perhaps by the presence of humans who aren't too careful with their trash sometimes, or by the many mule deer which frequent the area. Such close proximity of wildlife in their own environment and human activity is not always in the best interest of either.

Kathy, Mom, Dad, Karen, Frank, Steve and Chris gather for supper at the club house on Labor Day.

A wet day yesterday at last

An overcoat? In August?

Kelvedon village fête at St Mary's Road 14 August 1957.

My only recollection of that day is that it was the first time I heard my recorded voice.
The vehicle, an Austin I believe, was green.

Out of the book-case: History Lite 21,22

How about a couple of books to make you chuckle if not burst out ROTFL? Mr. Mills nods reverently to Sellar and Yeatman in the title he chooses for his romp through the history of that great British invention (after cricket): the Railway, especially the London and North Western Railway unless you are a G.W.R. devotee.

From the introduction to 4'8½" And All That : "What is the Englishman able to do which lesser breeds find impossible, apart from watching cricket matches? Why, of course, he can laugh at himself! though I must warn anyone outside the pale that it is not permitted for him to laugh at us."

I learned this word from 4'8½" And All That: Voussoir and from 1066 And All That I learned what AEGROT means. And here's another Oxford word to show off: hebdomadal, which is not at all as common as the Old English fortnight but it comes around twice as often.

From the bookshelves 20

    Change-ringing and the art of ringing church bells full circle is something peculiar to England. The beginnings of The Exercise, as it is sometimes affectionately known, were first documented and advanced by Fabian Stedman in the seventeenth century. Ernest Morris researched and wrote the comprehensive The History and Art of Change Ringing first published in 1931. A more modern history has now been published in three volumes under the editorship of J Sanderson. Many ringers today don't leave home without a copy of Jasper Snowdon's Diagrams in their pockets. The art of change ringing has expanded beyond the Standard Methods. The Central Council of Church Bell Ringers (CCCBR) is an excellent place to begin researching the art as it is practiced today.

    My learning to ring was slow and sure: weekly practice until I could handle a bell and ring 120 changes then I was able to become a member of the Essex Association of Change Ringers and was allowed to ring for Sunday services. Like all the arts it is better practiced than talked about.

Waking dream images

    I needed to get somewhere. I'd looked at a map and the best way to get to this place was by train. To get to the train station I had to find my way through a complicated system of roadways. I was walking through deserted buildings plastered with posters depicting the faces of revolutionary leaders. I was with crowds of people boarding trains at the train station. One way to the trains was through a dark tunnel. I had no money; and then I had a pocket full of the wrong kind of change. I was sat at a pic-nic table taking pictures of the friends around me. the last image was of a beautiful mountain scene with a cascading river and two people on horseback riding towards me. A man and his son. I tried to take a photograph but all that the camera focused on was the boy on the horse.

 

 

From the bookshelves 19

The Snow Goose is one of those poignant books that causes me to get a little weepy when I read it. Poignant because Paul Gallico describes salt marshes and creeks of the Essex coast. When the BBC adapted the story for television some of the location filming was done around Heybridge near Maldon.

Short story or novella? It's barely sixty pages. This is a Borzoi Book, the colophon of Alfred Knopf, which is part of the fifteenth printing of a reset edition of 1963. It was first published in 1941, just a year after the rescue of the B.E.F. from Dunkirk.

Paul Gallico liked cats and wrote a tale about Jennie, a cat that went to sea amongst other adventures.

Smoky the Cowhorse by Wills James was the first book that made me tear up when I first read it as a twelve years old. So, there's another topic to explore: books that make one cry.

Metamorphosis

    No, I'm not turning into an insect . . . I didn't want to miss a day. I'm still finding my way. I reviewed this blog from the beginning and note how it is changing direction. I'm not sure if that is through the influence of other posts I've read or just the way I am. What I had intended was a rather introverted look at all the parts of my life. I could look at it chronologically. Various ideas I've had is to choose a vivid memory of each year of my life and relate that to what was going on in the world. I know some early memories have been suggested to me by my sister or by photographs. I have one somewhere of me sitting on top of a chicken coop that used to be at the top of the garden when we first moved to Kelvedon from Oxford in about 1952. I remember the dungarees I was wearing were green. I remember brown corduroy leggings I wore when dad took me for rides on his bike. I sat on a seat fixed to the cross-bar. I put my hands under his to keep them warm.

    I told the story of my visit to England. I travelled a little bit here, up to Colorado and New Mexico in May. Then I started taking pictures of some of the books which surround me here in this little room. I don't write about what is in the books. I spend a lot of time reading; but much of the reading is like chewing gum, I'm not really concentrating on what I'm reading. As you might tell from the books they are very much reading copies and I tend to read quite a bit of fiction.

Found

    They were hiding behind other books. And yes I do have editions of the Lord of the Rings trilogy there are so many of those in various clothing, even a Folio Society edition . . . And a correction on the sizes: The Hobbit and Tree and Leaf are Crown octavo; and Smith of Wootton Major is Small Foolscap octavo . . . not that anyone is the least bit interested in old book sizes, are you?


    And just as a bonus for the musically inclined: Donald Swann set many of the songs in the books to music. The foreword by Mr. Swann begins: I was playing over the songs in this book to Dick Plotz, the President of the Tolkien Society of America, and he said, "It must be hard to write new tunes for these poems when there are already existing ones." I was nonplussed by this for a moment, and there was a short silence. "Where?" I said. "In Middle-earth," he replied.

From the bookshelves 13, 14

    George Allen and Unwin Ltd published J. R. R. Tolkien in the United Kingdom. Pauline Diana Baynes, the well known book illustrator died in August last year. Farmer Giles of Ham: the Rise and Wonderful Adventures of Farmer Giles, Lord of Tame, Count of Worminghall and King of the Little Kingdom published 1949; this is an eighth impression copy from 1971. The Adventures of Tom Bombadil was first published in 1961; this is a sixth impression copy from 1972. Finding these sent me looking for Smith of Wootton Major, I know I have a small 12mo edition somewhere, and Tree and Leaf, an essay.

Pinch and a punch for

the first of the month.

    This is becoming Arizona's driest monsoon season on record. The day temperatures have been hovering in the low 90°s F (30°+C) here in the mountains; goodness knows what the temperatures are like in the low desert and I don't really want to know because I'm not going there any time soon. Horrible wild fires ravaging the San Gabriel mountains in California. Any hope of Jimena cooling and damping us down? Maybe I need to look at a newspaper or watch a news programme on TV. Duh.