Time-travelling wife?

After a fantastic week in Porthleven the time to return to reality came.

We left just before 0800 and consequently had a really good journey with no hold-ups or slow sections of the journey at all.

The journey from start to finiah works out at about 270 miles so is just a bit too far to travel without a break.So it came to pass that somewhere well past the halfway mark I was in need of an interval to keep me awake and in one piece. Somewhere on the A303, just past Brigadoon we pulled in to THE JOLLY DINER.

The place was stuck in a time-warp or had we stumbled onto the film set of “Last of the Summer Wine” or “Carry On Something or other…”?

Sometimes the time must pass very slowly as the staff or management had obviously spent hours or even days creating the multifarious notices scattered around ….

“Our toilets are for customer use only – please use toilets at the bottom of the steps – Thank You”

“Please do not put hands on glass – these are folding doors”

“Only food/drinks purchased on these premises may be consumed here anyone found not complying with our request will be asked to leave. Thank You.”

“Would you please keep your children under control while on these premises. thank You”

….and my absolute favourite which I will now share with you:

No comment!

Dirty Dog?

Don’t worry. Your beautifully clean bathroom will not need to suffer a bit.

Just head westwards down the foot of England to the Gables Filling Station, Trevenan on the A394, north of Helston, Cornwall.

As you can see from the sign inside the garage there is a choice of washes for your four-legged friend: short, medium or long.

I’d be interested to see how this works. How is it any different from standing your dog on a garden table and hosing him down?

I suppose that the water is heated, is it? Is the water in a carwash heated?  Does the shampoo come out automatically rather than you having to squirt some from a bottle onto your canine companion?

A Date with Dovegreyreader

As I was heading west for a week in Cornwall I alerted Dovegreyreader. Not a lot of people know this, but she is an unofficial guardian for the west country and monitors the movements of grockles and emmets. An immigration interview was duly arranged in the fair town of Fowey with an initial rendezvous “in the top car park” under the shade of the trees growing in the grounds of Fowey Hall, author Kenneth Grahame’s inspiration for Toad Hall in his children’s classic “Toad of Toad Hall.

On the corner of South Street, by the  Parish Church, Dovegreyreader waved to Ann Willmore of Bookends and then of course we ran inside and I was introduced to her. If you have never been to Fowey, but are a fan of Daphne du Maurier, may I suggest you pay Bookends and Ann a visit. Be sure to take your sleeping bag with you because the place is stuffed with books by and about DdM. Bookends is definitely fingers over eyes and “la la la, I’m not looking” territory for those with a serious book-buying habit.

With not a single book purchased and the need for sustenance we found ourselves ensconced in a cafe with a pot of Earl Grey Tea and carrot cake. I glanced momentarily away from my cake and saw something hovering above DGR’s head. No, it wasn’t a halo though I’m sure many of you will join me in thinking that it would be fitting for St DGR, patron saint of readers to sport such an accessory, but a dove on the “Noah’s Ark Dental Practice” sign on the building across the road from our teashop. How fitting and surely a sign that I was in hallowed company.

I have now had the pleasure of meeting Dovegreyreader on several occasions. Wouldn’t it be exciting if there was a membership card and you could collect a DGR point everytime you had a sighting of thhis delightful species? I’m not sure if I have 5 or 6 points now. Only 4 ( or is it 5) more and I reach 10. Will I be able to convert 10 ordinary points into one gold one? How many gold points do I need before I am allowed to take my sandwiches to work in a DGR lunchbox? Now I’m getting carried away and I must remember that I am a grownup or more or less an OAP because the driver of the Fowey Town Bus, who ferries clapped-out old crones back up to the “top car park”,  asked DGR and me if we had bus passes! Must dash as I need to pop out and buy a bottle of Grecian 2000 “because I’m worth it”.

How do I love thee? Let me count the ways.

How do I love thee? Let me count the ways.
I love thee to the depth and breadth and height

….and I love your covers!!!!

I love the movement, the vitality, the cleanliness…

and I’d love to feel you in my hands….

and see you on my shelves.

The Case in Question

So twenty-four hours after the bookcase came into the house and a lot of stripping and sanding, not to mention the sweeping up and wiping down, we now have a very useful small bookcase.

I was going to paint it but I decided that I like it as it is, with someof its battle scars showing.

A Case for books

Altogether we spent a grand total of £4 at the jumble sale. The books  (see yesterday’s blogpost for details) accounted for half that outlay. Another £1 was splurged on a bin bag of various bits and pieces and the final little gold coin was spent on a small bookcase that showed potential.

Left: A few minutes after a bit of an investigatory scrape                   Right: After about 4 hours with a hot air gun & a paint scraper

Oh yes, and I decided that the back of the bookcase was a later addition and should be removed.

His and Hers Books

Our local scout group has a jumble sale twice a year, once in March and once in October. As there is only the church standing between our house and the scout hut we have no reason to stay away. Unlike the supermarket the scout jumble always has the same layout. Bric-a brac on the right, men’s “special” clothes to on rails to the left and women’s to the right. Tables in the middle have the usual heaps of clothes divided into men, women and children. And… in one of the side rooms… there are the books.

We didn’t go to the sale till almost the end , so our two bags of books came to the princley sum of £2. The other half did slightly better than me, as you can see because his two Ian Rankins have crept onto my pile. Not a bad haul is it?

I’ve read this book ….. will I enjoy ….Inspector Singh Investigates: A Bali Conspiracy Most Foul

How do you choose which books to read? I know what the answer should be. Cast a glance around at loaded shelves, pick out those that bear the TBR label and read. But it doesn’t work like that, does it? We need to be tempted and lured into reading a book.

Sometimes the cover does the trick or in my case it works the other way around. I can’t really choose to read a book if I don’t like the cover. It’s one of the reasons that I don’t usually read the same books that my other half  dips into. His reading matter would fit into the bookcase called “Airport Books”. You know the ones  I mean, don’t you? They have a tendency to be foiled, embossed and probably sporting a silhouette  if one can be squeezed onto the cover.

A title can be tantalising. A word, a quotation, or words that sound like a quotation, can be as successful as dangling a fishhook in a stream. OK, I know nothing about fishing so I’d better stop that analogy before I even pack my ..um.. what do you call that fishing basket thingy?  So, this lapsed reader was doing her usual wandering around the web instead of ironing, polishing bathroom mirrors, re-upholstering the doormat or even reading a book, and came across references to a book called, “Inspector Singh Investigates: A Bali Conspiracy Most Foul” by Shamini Flint. Immediately I recalled a book that I read many years ago after stumbling across it when I wasn’t looking for anything to read.

So what do I do now? Do I go on a book hunt and look for the H R F Keating book that pleased me so many years ago or do I succomb to buying just one more book?

Buy books here – listbooks.co.uk a great website

Maybe I haven’t been desperate enough before but I can’t imagine why  haven’t heard about this website.  It’s called LIST BOOKS and that’s just what it does. The amazing thing is that there is NO CHARGE for listing the books that you want to sell. It was set up by Lee Penney who couldn’t find somewhere to sell his books without having to hand over a hefty commission to the listing website. Normally that would make a website/service extremely clunky and you would probably have to do a lot of work to get your item to appear in a list for sale. The opposite seems true of Lee Penney’s bookselling website. Just type in the ISBN of the book that you want to sell and “hey presto” all the details will appear as if by magic. As well as the basic information, there is a field for DESCRIPTION. This should be used to describe the book, the subject matter or blurb and will be added to any copy that is listed by anyone so should NOT be used to discuss the condition of the book because there is a separate NOTES field for that.

I intend to go on a safari around my house and list books that should be passed onto others. In an ideal world I would generously hand these on to others but in the current economic climate I have to find ways of propping up family finances. This endeavour by an individual may just be a small step to help me on my way.

VCP

This post should be considered a VCP (virtual care package) to UBC (University of British Columbia). TLM (The Loom Monkey, alias our middle child, is currently studying in Vancouver, Canada. Hints were made that he had been neglected. He spoke about a fellow student who had received a care package containing curly wurlies and battenburg cake.

The current economic situation has infiltrated into the household and after much thought we made the decision that postage to Canada of vital substances or the online ordering of a commercial student care package was not essential. Consequently we have decided to share, only virtually, our baking session of yesterday. On Friday a vast quantity of bananas was purchased in Kingston market for the sum of £1. A bunch was given to a woman in the same marketplace who expressed an interest but didn’t want a whole bucket-load. Quite a few were also consumed over the last few days by me, seven were mashed up to be included in these loaves of banana bread and three remain. The butter, eggs, flour, baking powder and salt were already in the house and the oven was shared with potatoes baking for Sunday supper.

So apologies, dear son, for not sending some real tuck in your direction but belts are being tightened madly and the head must rule the heart. If you are lucky there may be at least one loaf still lurking in the freezer when you return to Blighty in May, but no guarantees can be given.

There hasn’t been much baking in this house for quite a while. Our trusty cast iron scales became not so trusty and didn’t weight true. Yesterday the resident engineer tackled the problem by deciding to attach a coin to the lighter half of the scales. A 10p coin was exactly the right weight but due to the current economic climate it was decided not to waste good money and an old pre-euro foreign coin was found as a replacement.

So what’s next on the menu? Flapjacks maybe.

I Believe ….

i n

b o o k  s   !!!!

An old Dominican church in Maastricht has been converted into a bookshop.

Pop over here and read all about it.