Tiny Treasures

 Among the children's books at a sale I found a tiny little volume with board covers. I had never seen one so small. It's called 'The 'Midget' London, and was published by Wells Gardner, Darton & Co. Of London in 1901. It contains forty-four photographs of London and gives a concise and thoughtful history of each of the buildings, monuments and parks mentioned. The script is very easy to read too for so tiny a book.

When I brought this book home I googled it and found to my surprise that there is a whole world of little books out there; from small to tiny, and all sizes in between, paperback and hardback, fiction and non-fiction. Just key in 'miniature books' into the search box on E-Bay and you will see that pages and pages of these little books appear. Some are very affordable, and others are hundreds of Euro in price, for reasons of age, condition or rarity or sometimes all three. If there is anybody reading this who has an addictive personality, rein yourself in, because it would be very easy to get hooked on these books.

One point I would mention here is that in the category of miniature books you will often find doll's house books, but in the main these are just covers with the titles and authors inscribed on them, and very few pages inside, if any. In other words, these are usually not real books at all, just fronts like those which used to be bought for some big house libraries for show purposes: imitation books. As with everything, there are exceptions, but check before you buy.

Small books you have quite likely come across yourself already are the Collins Gem series, very colourful, sturdy, little volumes with laminated covers, all non-fiction in subjects such as yoga, gems, butterflies, birds and so on. The drawings and/or photographs in these books are very attractive and the print very easy on the eye. I have found that some of the covers crease easily, but other than that, I think they are grand little books, handy to carry in a pocket and easy to read anywhere. These are among the larger miniature books that you will see.

There is a series called Mini Classics, aimed at children, and they are likewise very colourful and the print is clear and easily read by the age group at which they are aimed. They are very soundly bound, with dust jackets, and no doubt they will become collectors' items as they age. Two I own are: “Beauty and the Beast” Retold by Stephanie Laslett, illustrated by Alison Winfield, and “Little Red Riding Hood”, also retold by Stephanie Laslett but illustrated by Martin Aitchison. The publishers are Shooting Star Press, Inc., New York, but I can't find a date on either book.

Running Press publish a series of these miniature books. They come in all subjects, non-fiction again. They are very little bigger than “The 'Midget' London”, that is, very small indeed. My two favourites are:

“Home - A Little Book of Comfort” published in 1996, which consists of poetry and prose excerpts by various writers all around the theme of home. There are the most lovely little illustrations in colour, by Barbara Strawser, whom I looked up online and found is a very popular artist in the U.S.; the covers and inside papers are also her work. It is a refreshing, cheerful little book, with a ribbon bookmark and usually a little key on the end of this as a piquant finishing touch This is missing on mine, and the ribbon is a little threadbare, but I love it anyway. To anyone who has ever loved a home, or maybe is only just hoping to have a home of their own, this must appeal; it would make a lovely housewarming present too.

The other one I really like is called “Native American Wisdom” published by Running Press, Philadelphia and London, 1993, and with photographs by Edward S. Curtis. In the introduction we are told that Curtis published a “twenty-volume masterwork: The North American Indian.....This book presents some of Curtis's most striking photographs. Accompanying them are statements of cultural values, beliefs and attitudes from a number of Native Americans who lived and experienced traditional tribal life in the years between the Civil War and 1930, the year Curtis finished The North American Indian. Their words preserve the wisdom, and the photographs give individual faces to history. “

These Running Press miniatures are truly lovely little treasures, complete with hard covers and dust jackets.

Not all of these mini books are non-fiction: Del Prado publishers of Madrid produce hundreds of fiction classics from around the world in miniature. I bought a volume of tales of Tchekov in this series myself, but ended up giving it to someone who loved it. Once again, the text is clear and easy to read. There are no illustrations for reasons of lack of space, obviously, but they are very well bound. However, I think they would have benefited from a ribbon marker, unless it is just mine that had none, because it is easy to lose your place in a book this size, as the pages are so tight that they close quickly if you do not hold them open.

There really are little jewels among miniature books. Most of them would be way beyond my price range. On E-Bay I bought “Browning – Thoughts – selected by Louey Chisholm” published by TC and EC Jack of London & Edinburgh. 'Ivory Booklets' is written inside, but I can't find a date, but it's definitely at least a hundred years old. Mine did have a red ribbon bookmark which has become detached, and there is a lot of foxing on the pages. It was very cheap on E-Bay, so I suppose I can't complain, and I do love a lot of the writings of the poet Robert Browning that I have read, which wouldn't be a huge amount. I suppose most of you will have come across:

             “Grow old along with me!

                  The best is yet to be,

The last of life, for which the first was made:
               Our times are in His hand
              Who saith “A whole I planned,
           Youth shows but half; trust God: see
                 all nor be afraid!”

                                             Rabbi Ben Ezra  

Little excerpts of prose or poetry such as this are very nice to carry in your pocket or bag for an idle moment. Once again, the print in this pocketsized book is clear and very legible, probably one of the more important details to be taken into account in the production

of these little volumes.

Now that you know about them, see what you can find for yourself, and happy hunting!

A brighter world

It's still January, although not too dark and gloomy this year, at least on the east coast of Ireland.  However, although buds on trees and shrubs look close to bursting forth, and primroses, snowdrops, crocuses and even daffodils are already blooming, it's not really spring yet, because it's just too dark. I went through my books to see which ones offer the most in terms of things to do while waiting for the bright days.

The first is “Herbal Remedies – A practical beginner's guide to making effective remedies in the kitchen.” It's by Christopher Hedley and Non Shaw, this edition published by Parragon UK 2001, and I bought it in a small shop attached to our local Tesco. It has a lot of interesting information on all types of herbs, and recipes using these, and the photographs are very attractive.

Here is a recipe for Juniper Soaks:

“Juniper is anti-rheumatic, which means that it promotes the excretion of uric acid and toxins. Baths, handbaths and footbaths of juniper sometimes bring about spectacular results in rheumatism and arthritis.

Add 1 tablespoon of reduced juniper decoction to 4.5 litres/8 pints/5 quarts of water, or use fresh juniper berry tea diluted in 600 ml/1 pint/2 1/2 cups of water. Soak for 15 – 20 minutes. Repeat daily.”

I prefer the idea of soaks (and this is the first time I've come across this expression)  to taking anything internally unless I am familiar with it. Sure it's worth a try, anyway.
Presumably you find out in the book how to make the decoction, or maybe you buy it, I don't know, but it sounds good. There are many other recipes here, for skin creams, oils, hand creams. It could turn into a hobby, or at least you'll feel refreshed for spring if you give some of these ideas a go.

Another book in the same line, “It's So Natural”, by Alan Hayes, was published by Gill & Macmillan Ltd., Dublin, in 1998. I bought it in the Eco-Shop, Greystones, sadly gone now, It also is full of natural remedies and hints. Here is one very useful one for cleaning ovens:

“There is no need to resort to harmful chemicals or throw your arms up in despair next time the oven needs cleaning.A paste of bicarbonate of soda and water will not only effectively do the job, but is guaranteed not to harm you or the environment.
Mix sufficient bicarbonate of soda and water to form a stiff paste and spread it over the inside of the oven, then heat for 10 minutes. When the oven has cooled brush the bicarbonate of soda off – it will removed all traces of burnt fat and grease. To loosen foods that have been baked on, place 4 tablespoons of bicarbonate of soda in the bottom of an enamel, oven proof glass or ceramic baking dish and add just enough water to cover the bottom of the dish. Heat the oven for 10 minutes, switch off, and leave the dish of bicarbonate of soda in overnight.”

The recipes in this book for the garden, pets, beauty, ointments and household cleaning are really useful, and none of the ingredients are expensive, so they are at least worth a try.. All are quite simple. If you rub soap over a bathroom mirror, for instance, and then polish it with newspaper, the mirror won't steam up. The trouble is, I saw that hint, but cannot find it again. There is no index, probably because the hints are given throughout the book in alphabetical order, but I don't know in what category I found it. When I look under Mirrors, I am directed to Windows, but no, it's not there. That is a little frustrating.

“Yeah! I Made It Myself – DIY Fashion for the not very domestic goddess" –-is written by Eithne Farry and published in 2006 by Weidenfeld & Nicholson of London, and it's my daughter's book.
t's a very simple sewing and knitting crafts book, showing you how to make all kinds of things, dresses, skirts, belts, scarves, accessories, and bags, all kinds of bags, without patterns. The colourful drawings and photographs are very inspiring and the whole theme of the book is creativity. Chapter 4, which is about making skirts, is entitled: “How to make a few skirts to run for the bus in and one that you can't”
Here is one of the many bags the author shows how to make:

Now for more sewing: “The Illustrated Hassle-Free Make Your Own Clothes Book” by Sharon Rosenberg and Joan Wiener, published by Straight Arrow Books of San Francisco in 1971, and its sequel, “Son Of Hassle-Free Sewing” by the same authors, and published by the same company in 1972 are two amazing books. So amazing that the first two we owned disappeared, the second one literally from under our noses in the house, and were replaced by a kind relative. It would be interesting to draw up a list of books under the heading: Books Most Likely To Be Pilfered, and these two would feature prominently. They show you how to make up your own brown-paper patterns from clothes which already exist – some clothes are even made without any pattern. There are clothes for men, women, children, babies; there are toys, belts, pillows, instructions on embroidery., baby carriers, clown suits. They give easy-to-follow steps for all of these; they show you how to use your favourite clothes as patterns to reproduce them, so when the originals are worn out, you can have them again, in any amount of colours or materials. None of these instructions would be half so valuable without the back stories and chitchat of the authors. They are what make these books really special.

“365 Ways To Change The World – How to Make a Better World Every Day” is a book full of ideas, with a different thing to do assigned to each date on the calendar. Written by Michael Norton and published by Harper Perennial in 2006, I'm not sure what to make of this book myself. It is full of causes to take up, a kind of modern 'What to Do' book – very much within the green agenda – everything from beekeeping to going on holidays or living in houses made from discarded tyres and earth, from trying out a wheelchair to see what life is like for the physically disabled in our society to going to a restaurant where the owner and waiters are all blind and you eat in the dark; there is something for everyone here, including myself; on March 11^th the suggestion is “Sell books online”.

This is one of the books I actually bought new. It's not the sort of book you can read straight through, but I would say there will be at least one idea for everybody, and if not, sure it's fun to read anyway, and isn't that what a book is supposed to be!

The more things change....

I have heard it said on more than one occasion that the 'best' English is spoken in Ireland. Where this idea came from is lost in the mists of time, but many people who grew up with it believe it Furthermore, the tale continues, Queen Anne's English was the English spoken in Dublin and is reputed to be the finest English of all, and I remember hearing this as a child, said by those who believed that they spoke this mythical tongue. I could find nothing about it when I googled it, but I wonder if it has anything to do with the fact that Queen Anne was the last of the Stuarts, and Irish people on the southern side of the border, being Catholics in the main, favoured the Stuarts.


What made me think of all this was a very interesting book I came across at the recycling centre. It is a paperback called "English As It Is Spoken In Ireland" by P. W. Joyce, published in 1991 by Wolfhound Press, Dublin. Both front and back covers are in poor condition, with half of the back cover missing. However, its external deficiencies are more than made up for by the fascination of its contents. This publication is a facsimile of the very first edition, dated 1910, which was published by Longmans, Green, & Co. London and M.H. Gill & Son, Ltd. of Dublin. It deals with the origins of  English as spoken in Ireland, and there are pages and pages of expressions such as: "eating the calf in the cow's belly" which means "spending your money before you get it", - going by this, think about credit cards today and realise how much they would have been frowned on in Ireland more than a century ago.

There is an explanation for a saying which is still heard in Ireland at times: 'wouldn't know a B from a bull's foot' (I always thought it was a 'bee', by the way.) Joyce explains "The catching point here is partly alliteration, and partly that a bull's foot has some resemblance to a B.' I never knew that and I'd be surprised if you did either. Now, here's an interesting one, he" 'could kiss a goat between the horns.' " well, that meant he was "a man with a very thin face". In the "Vocabulary and Index" section of the book, I see " Gossip; a sponsor in Baptism" . There is no further explanation, unfortunately.

Here is an item of news I found a couple of days ago in the Irish Daily Mail: a bookseller in Letterkenny, Co. Donegal, John Brennan, who works with David Faughnan at his Universal Bookshop, recently came across a 1st Edition of the Irish Constitution dated 1937 and signed by Eamon de Valera. It really just goes to show that you never know what you will find in a load of old books. We ourselves once came across a quite valuable book which had been taken out on loan from a university library in Dublin in the 1940s and never returned. When we returned it to them they were delighted to have it back,  as it was a rare second edition and they actually didn't have another copy. So whenever you go to a sale or to the recycling centre, it's worth being on the alert for such finds. You may lay a ghost to rest as well as perform a public service.

I found the next two books at sales: the first, which came from a local library sale, .is a novel by John M. Feehan,  "My Village My World" , published by Mercier Press of Cork and Dublin in 1992. John Feehan wrote other books, according to the information on the back cover of this work, but I think this is his only novel, and it appears to be largely autobiographical. The foreword is written by the famous J.B. Keane, who says he knew him for thirty years, and that:

"This is a book that never palls or drags. It is boisterous and ribald and I am tempted to say that it is by far the funniest book I have ever read. It is also an accurate and revealing history of rural Ireland half a century ago and more.. John M. Feehan writes beautifully throughout.  I love this book."

High praise indeed, and if you are lucky enough to get your hands on it, I think you will understand J.B. Keane's words in your own heart. In the epilogue to his work, John Feehan says

"I hope I never see myself bent over shuffling towards the grave. I would much prefer to walk briskly towards it with my head held high and the lilt of a song in my heart. The grave is in reality the gateway to the fullness of life - the dark passage after which comes the light of eternity, the answer to every question that has baffled me during the course of my life.......I confess to a certain morbid curiosity, but I have one great consolatiion. I will be judged by a God, and not by a human, who is unlikely to run me in for all eternity because I liked the sparkle of wine or the flash of a pair of pretty legs.........I have very little to show after a long life, but I also ask for very little - a few dogs, a few books, birds and nature and a few companions like Lahy. Surely He will grant me that."

Lahy is one of the characters who springs to life in this book, which I urge you to get for yourself if you can at all. John M Feehan died suddenly in 1991 just before it was published, and that last piece I quoted consisted of two scraps of paper found with the manuscript which were added by the publisher as "they seemed like a fitting epilogue."

The second book, Nell McCafferty's "In The Eyes Of The Law" is a collection of articles on her

days spent as a reporter for the Irish Times in the Irish courts system. They make powerful reading.

Many who find themselves in the same place today are no different from the characters which

people these reports. Nell breathed life into these people, not just those going before the courts, but

also those who worked there, including the gardaí, the court clerks and not least the judges, Among

these was Justice Herman Good, whose family, originally called Godansky, came into Ireland from

Russia in the 1800s. In the essays, he seemed to show at times some empathy for the unfortunates before him. Recently I have discovered intriguing facts about his life which suggest that

this empathy may well have been acquired 'on the ground'. He began working as a solicitor in the

poorest parts of Dublin City, joined the Irish army during World War II, the period known as ' The

Emergency'  in Ireland, and led a long and colourful life about which little is in the public domain at

present. A biography of this gentleman would be a riveting exercise, although some astute

detective work might be a necessity before embarking on it, as documentary information on himself

and his family after they came to Ireland is, for whatever reason, hard to come by.

In her introduction to "In The Eyes Of The Law" Nell says:

"In the ten years I spent in and around the courts, I learned that there is a clear distinction between law and justice. The parent who steals for food for the children is praised in parable and convicted in the court; the alcoholic who needs treatment is punished; the beggar who needs money is jailed; the person who goes to jail again and again, and is not rehabilitated, is sent back to the jail again and again and again. Because these people have suffered more than enough by appearing in court in the first place, I never used their real names and addresses. I have named the Justices who decided their fate. Hopefully, this collection of articles will put them in the dock for a change."

I suppose the only people in Nell's book who have changed are the beggars, as many though not all of these appear to be following a profession in mendicancy today, but the others, the addicts, the petty thieves,  the homeless and the completely broke all still feature daily in our newspapers. Incidentally, I remember my brother telling me that he had met Nell in a friend's house, and the first thing he saw of her were two very large boots plonked firmly on the friend's table pointing towards the door,in the manner of a cowboy from an old wild west film. Since I first read this book I have thought what a wonderful film it would make, with cameo roles for countless actors and more than enough human interest in it to justify the most inspired direction.

If you can find this book I promise you that you will never grow tired of it.  I do not recommend that you lend it easily either, for the borrower will think very hard of returning it.  That, in fact, could be said for all the books in today's blog.

Old but still good

At a car boot sale a lovely smiley man was selling boxes of old books.  I looked through one of them and said without thinking "You know, some of these could be quite valuable."
"I'll tell you what, love"  he said. "They were my old mum's. I'm not selling them for the money.  I want them to go to someone who really wants them".  Then he looked firmly at me. " A fiver a box, love.  A whole box or nothing."
There was every sort of reading matter in there; instructions for old washing machines and Hoovers, a pamphlet on how to service an ancient-looking boiler, an inky-looking advertisement for a sale-of-work in a country school in October 1965. Underneath was the book which had drawn my attention first, a lovely copy of "Rambles in Eirinn" by William Bulfin, published by M.H. Gill of Dublin in 1908, together with a set of history books, in not such good condition:  "History Of Ireland From The Earliest Times To The Present Day", by The Rev. E.A.D'Alton, LL.d. M.R.I.A. The publishers were the Gresham Publishing Company, London and the date in Roman numerals 1912. The six volumes were described as Half-Volumes 1,2,3,4,5,and 6, a term I have never come across before.  At one time they must have been very handsome, with their green cloth covers with green lettering on a gold base and gold illumination. One had a damaged spine, and they bore the resigned air of books which had lain in an attic for many years.  However, they had been well used and loved - there were
very lightly pencilled notes in many of the margins, and here and there a pressed autumnal leaf marked a page. Looking through them again today, if the first chapter of the very first volume, entitled "Various Names of Ireland" is anything to go by, these books  are  unputdownable, although if I manage to get even part of the way through the 284 pages of the initial one, I will be doing well, for I have come across so many books I want to read since I started this blog that I would need another ninety years of life to have any hope of doing so.

In the box also, quite incongruously, were two fairly modern paperback editions of James Bond books, "The Spy Who Loved Me" and "Live and Let Die".
I handed over the money, and in the course of a short conversation I discovered that his mother was dead two years, and he had only now started to sort out her things.  She had been almost ninety when she died.  I had to ask if she was a James Bond fan.  He laughed.
 - "She were a bit of a James Bond herself".  I was interested, but he turned away to talk to someone else and then went to root in his van.  I sensed the conversation was over.

Old books are so much about the people who owned them - where and why they bought them or who gave them to them, what they meant in their lives; fiction or non-fiction, books draw other stories in their wake as long as they exist.

In the first paragraphs of his book about his cycling tour around Ireland, Bulfin tells us -
"It was the last day of June, and the weather was perfect. The people along the road said it was "shocking warm" and "terrible hot, glory be to God", but after seventeen sweltering years at the sunny South I found it just charming.......it was a splendid dawn.  We seemed to have brought with us some of the sunshine of the South, for earth and sea and air were flooded with morning gold. It flamed in the soft clouds which dotted the sky.  It flushed the blue.  It lay on the hills.  It rippled on the water."  and so on, in warm words which mitigate a little the grey blue of the winter afternoon outside my window.  The book has many photographs of Irish locations, worthy of a visit for reasons of scenery or history or archaeology.  The photos particularly fascinate because of the changes in the depicted places since they were taken; the traffic in the Dublin and Cork of this book would not have offered the same threat to Bulfin that modern vehicles do to a cyclist.  How free it must have felt to travel the country's roads without fear of the monsters which now loom around every corner.

The front cover of Bulfin's work is quite undamaged, the title and author's name illuminated in gold and decorated likewise.  The smooth, cream-coloured pages bear some inconsequential marks but in general they are sound.

The technological and scientific advances we have seen today, unthinkable only a few years ago, make me speculate that there may well come a time when it will be possible to identify the people who once opened this book, maybe all books that survive. We have already overtaken James Bond and goodness knows where it will end.

 Such, I suppose, are the thoughts of many like myself who read their books and dream.

Book Beauty

The debate goes on, e-books versus actual books. Here is what I predict: before too long, fiction will be read mostly on e-readers, as well as some non-fiction categories such as sport and literary studies. Most non-fiction, including third-level science and engineering textbooks, where the graphics including diagrams and tables are of high importance, will continue to sell. However even textbooks will have to change. Far too much time and money are spent on the constant updating of this type of book, and the waste of paper is enormous when you consider that some editions require quite moderate changes to update them, and yet pointlessly a whole new edition is produced. Anyone who goes into a student bookshop after one of these edition changeovers will see personally the sheer waste, as shelves totter under enormous and now defunct volumes which the students have little hope of selling.

I would imagine that sense will eventually take over in this field, and people will start looking for their textbooks to be published in some looseleaf binding format, which would allow the easy insertion and extraction of pages as needed, so that they only need to buy the new material and they are up to date. Sometimes there are lecturers also who look for sections of older editions, to add to the confusion With the looseleaf format, the old pages can always be retained for such eventualities. Also how much easier to carry into college the few pages required for the day, than mountains of books which require the provision of lockers and run the constant risk of being stolen. Publishers might not be too happy about such a change, since they would lose the income from selling totally new editions every year or so, but the waste of paper and resources is so huge in this connection that eventually publishing practices for these books must alter, because of environmental pressure groups but particularly and hopefully with sane governance in the political area. If we have been taught one lesson in the last few years, it is about how we have wasted so much.

There are other books which will never be suitable for e-readers, not if one is to get full value from them in terms of artwork and illustrations, certainly, but also because some books are in themselves things of beauty which no e-book can ever be.

I came across a poignant little item at the recycling centre not so long ago. It was a children's book by Enid Blyton called, I think, the Island of Adventure and dated in the nineteen seventies. It had lost its cover at some stage, and someone had carefully cut out another one from a Kellogg's Cornflakes box, and had painstakingly stitched it on. Then inside the new cover, a child's name was written in large, staggering letters with blue crayon. I have often wondered about it, was it a loving parent or an older brother or sister who made the new cover? Who loved this fairly tattered book so much as to want a homemade cover for it? Could it even have been someone's only book? I brought it home because I just couldn't leave it to its fate, there in the trundling and shunting of the recycling centre with all the other perhaps once loved but now abandoned books. I passed it on to an extended family of ten children who swallow books like some youngsters do fizzy drinks, and I'm sure they took good care of it

What brought that book to mind again today was a craft suggestion in a lovely old book dated 1969, "Hundreds of Things A Girl Can Make", by Jennifer Lang, subtitled "A Hobby Book For Girls Of All Ages" and published by W. Foulsham & Co., Ltd. This book has page after page of craft suggestions.

On page 22 the author shows how to "smarten up your book-shelves" by using wallpaper remnants to cover your books:

If you value a book, you will rejoice in it even more if the paper is beautiful, and it is well bound using materials which are nice to look at and to touch. One day I came across a beautiful, totally undamaged and unmarked copy of Jane Austen's 'Pride and Prejudice' in a secondhand bookshop. The leaves are very fine, even flimsy in appearance, yet quite strong, and they are edged with goldleaf. It really is a very handsome volume, published by CRW Publishing Ltd., London. You can see all their Collector's Library classics on their website: http://www.collectors-library.com/
They are very reasonable in price, costing far less than coffee and sandwiches for two these days in any café. After I bought this book, I got several more for myself, the last being Thoreau's "Walden". These books are smaller than the average book, have sturdy hard covers, gold edged pages and ribbon bookmarks. They fit easily into a handbag or pocket and are great company when you have to queue anywhere or when travelling.

Almost every reader will have come across Observer books, published by Frederick Warne & Co. of London. They deal with all sorts of subjects, nature, wildlife, wild flowers, gardening, porcelain, you name it. I prefer the older ones, which were published from the nineteen thirties right up to the nineteen seventies, to the more modern editions, which are slightly taller and have a different appearance. The older ones have hard covers, with very decorative paper covers if these have survived. They are roughly the same size as the CRW Classics, so also very portable. First editions of these books, particularly of the earlier ones, as well as some hard-to-find editions, are worth quite a bit of money these days, so if you see any in car boot sales or secondhand shops, they are probably well worth the usually moderate asking price. I love especially the ones with hand-drawn or painted illustrations which turn them into little works of art. Collector's Library classics and old Observer books are definitely keepers.

Plant Sales - it really is a jungle out there....

I have three long shelves full of gardening books of all kinds.  Gardening has been a passion of mine since I was little.  I still remember the very first plant I ever bought.  It was a dark purple petunia with an unforgettable scent and it cost me fourpence.  There were about six for sale in a box outside the greengrocers, along with all the cabbages and turnips.  I don't think petunias have that scent any more.

Those were also the days when every spring saw our local Woolworth's putting on an enormous display of the most wonderfully coloured seed packets - ever since, seed packets have symbolised for me a time of excitement, of freshness, of being young.  Sadly Woolworth are gone, but spring and seeds go on.

One day in my local library I came upon Margery Fish, and my gardening life changed.  Before that, it was all about taming our large and overgrown garden and putting in it as many plants and cuttings as kind neighbours gave us.  There was also a sale in a very large shrub nursery nearby where every shrub imaginable could be had for 50p.  'Imaginable', that is the keyword, for after I found Margery Fish I found that there were in the gardening world plants about which I had never dreamed, rare plants, in other words, maybe quite ordinary plants to the novice eye, but to Margery and her friends, these plants with their variegated leaves, their double flowers, or their flower colour uncommon in that particular variety, these were the ones to be sought after above all others.  Granted Margery Fish also had time for the ordinary, but mainly when it was old in origin, or difficult, so it seemed to me.   Still, there is something fascinating about the way she writes about her garden.

The pursuit of unusual plants is not that difficult in this day of computer searches and nursery websites specialising in them, but in the nineteen eighties and nineties the main places to find them were the plant sales in large gardens open to the public, or the sales section of horticultural society shows.  At one of these shows my then two year old son took the cup for the Best in Show.  I really mean he took it, and I was so busy looking at labels and admiring displays, that it was not until I heard a chorus of genteel tuttings and delicately raised voices,  and the trotting of committee feet that I realised that he had somehow got the cup from its stand on the prize table and was staggering around with it .  Many's the time I heard those genteel tones again, but a little more raised  - "Excuse me,  I am buying that" - "Oh no, dear, I just put it down for a second" - "Well, I found it on the table"  - "Oh, I just put it down for a moment while I was looking for my purse, dear"  -  Too busy hunting myself to see who eventually won these bouts - I actually saw once a rather large lady knocked sideways by a much smaller one who grabbed the plant she was contemplating from under her nose literally.  At the back of the stalls and even under the tables one could see various very interesting and exotic-looking plants which were being 'kept', obviously for friends of the stallholders.

I never saw Margery Fish's books in any secondhand shop, nor in the recycling centre, and the library copies are no longer on the shelves, so I conclude that they were snatched up at one of the library sales.  A sister of mine, however, very kindly came across some while she was browsing the web and bought them for me, truly a kindness, although I, and most gardeners, have got over our 'thing' about the more unusual plants. There was good reason why these rarities were so.  Variegation in flora is more often than not a sign of virus or at least a general weakness of constitution, and such plants generally do not come true from seed, (although there are exceptions such as nasturtium 'Alaska'), and double flowers are usually of absolutely no use to pollinating insects because they do not produce pollen.  Both variegated and double-flowered plants have therefore to be propagated by cuttings, which eventually tires out the 'mother' plants and the whole line.  Nowadays the trend in gardening is towards helping bees and other pollinators propagate plant life naturally, thus ensuring the continuance of plants, insects, and ultimately ourselves.

"Cottage Garden Flowers", "An All The Year Garden" and "A Flower For Every Day" are all published by David & Charles, Newton Abbot, my copies in 1970, 1972 and 1973 respectively,  There are several others, but those three deal particularly with the rare and unusual flora.  They have lots of information about plants in general also, and Margery Fish's wonderfully conversational writing will ensure their survival even if many of the plants in them are going out of fashion, and are maybe not even very 'pc'.

"Cottage Garden Flowers" begins "Nowhere in the world is there anything quite like the English cottage garden.  In every village and hamlet in the land there were these little gardens, always gay and never garish, and so obviously loved."  In Ireland also.  And while in "An All The Year Garden" Margery is chatting away about daffodils,  I recall the farmer in the Midlands who had a quarrel with his wife and opened a field gate to allow his cattle to trample the swathes of daffodils in her new bulb garden.

"Adam The Gardener" was my father's favourite gardening book.  He followed it faithfully from "January - First Week - Sowing Sweet-Peas"  to  "December - Fourth Week - Pips and Stones".  The book is apparently composed of weekly columns published in the British 'Sunday Express' at some point in time, and the only clue to an author besides Adam is under the title inside "With an introduction and contributions by Max Davidson".  It is quite possible that there were several editions of different years' columns too, but this is the one my Dad used.   At the end of January I read with surprise that the fruit of the plant known as Oregon Grape, Mahonia aquifolium. can be used just like the blackcurrant to make "delicious jam, jelly or pies".  I've had that plant for years and I never knew the berries were edible.  If you follow Adam's calendar, there is a right time to do everything in the garden.  I wonder if global warming makes much difference to the schedule.  Hearing on the radio about strawberries in bloom now in January,  and globe artichokes also flowering at the moment, I wonder would Adam have been knocked off his stride even a little.  My father bought this book in the nineteen seventies so we may only speculate.

I found "Dr. Gesal's 3ft x 7ft vegetable garden" in the recycling centre.  The original price was 10p, reasonable enough for what is really just a pamphlet in size.  It was published by Ciba-Geigy (UK) Ltd. and researched and written by Peter J. Triffitt, and no date of publication is given.  It is the fact that a vegetable garden can be successfully made in such a small area that is so intriguing.  Dr. Gesal gives a little plan, and instructions on how to mark out and prepare your plot, and tells you exactly which vegetable should go where, talks about early crops and later ones, and how to avoid a glut.  The downside to the little book is that there is a lot of use of artificial fertilisers, weedkiller and insecticide, not too surprising considering that this book is probably around forty years old and produced by a chemical company.  Still, you can follow the advice and leave out the chemicals, and the fact that you can produce enough vegetables for your family from a 3ft x 7ft garden is good news.

If you are not interested in gardening, you can still sit outside and be productive.  "The Weather Wizard's Cloud Book", as it says itself is "A unique way to predict the weather accurately and easily by reading the clouds."  It's by Louis D. Rubin Sr. & Jim Duncan, "with the assistance of Hiram J. Herbert"  and this copy is published by Algonquin Books of Chapel Hill, N.C. in 1989.  It is in very good clean condition, but I actually cannot recall how I came by this book - probably in a secondhand book shop, because I know I did not find it in the recycling centre.There are lovely photos in black and white and in colour throughout the volume, which help to identify the different types of cloud and the weather they indicate.  It probably would turn one into a weather forecaster, I don't know myself because I haven't read it yet, although I love the idea of looking at the sky and knowing immediately what's going to happen, and whether I will need a raincoat or that we'll be fine for a picnic today.  Of one thing I am sure, the best free show on earth is in the sky, and it never stays the same, except that it is always beautiful.

Neither can I recall how I came across a little book called "Know yourself through your Handwriting".  It is a publication of The Reader's Digest Association, Inc. of  Pleasantville, New York, written by Jane Paterson, and it gives a succinct introduction to handwriting analysis.  This is a subject I have always thought I would find fascinating, if I were ever to get into it, and that seems to be exactly what Jane Paterson does, she shows without any beating about the bush how to analyse different samples of handwriting to get an insight into the character of the writer.  I know that there has been a lot of research into handwriting analysis, which is usually called graphology, and that forensic scientists  even use it to detect the perpetrators of crime because of the access it can give to their mindset. I recall reading newspaper crime reports about expert witnesses being called for their opinion on handwriting, and it is a sensible kind of study, as well as an interesting hobby that anyone can take up.  There are many many more books on it than this, but this one is a very good start. The first sample  Jane Paterson shows, Sample A,  is very neat and flowing and, as I would have thought,  gets a positive analysis as to the writer's character, but then so does the writer of sample B., whom on seeing his/her writing I would have thought to be a rather scatty, hasty person.  So obviously there is a lot more to this topic than meets the eye, or mine at least.

If you are looking for something new to do, there is bound to be a book about it,  and one day you will open the pages and fall in love with your new interest. 

I was going to buy a Kindle.....

I was going to buy myself an e-reader, a Kindle, for Christmas.  Every newspaper I came across in the months leading up to the holiday period seemed to be publishing articles about the different e-readers and from what I could see, Kindle was the best for me. The portability of all these devices appealed to me, and besides I was greatly tempted by the large amount of out-of-copyright books available on Project Gutenburg. Then, however, I started to blog about my book mountain, and I thought again.

The first reason is associated with a small amount of technophobia, I suppose you could say:  I don't like the idea of my reading being vulnerable to hackers or errors which might wipe out my book store.  Yes, I know it's unlikely, although just a week ago or so I read something about e-readers being hacked, though I can't recall where....still, the possibililty is not something happy, to my mind.  And the idea that my books would be backed up in some safe cyber place, well, that doesn't appeal either.  I want to be able to see them, for myself, at any time I need to, and what's more, I want to see them all together.  In other words, I want to own them as items, real living artefacts, with covers and pages and often illustrations.  Because you see, no electricity, no battery, they're not mine any more.  They're nothing.

But it's not just that.  There is one particular case where e-books cannot answer. You can't stumble on a treasure...when you go bookhunting online you already know at least to some degree what you are looking for, you have heard of it somewhere, through reviews or word of mouth or otherwise,  or you have found a list of books in a search, but you knew roughly what you were searching for.. Yet another minus is that, although you can look inside books that are for sale on Amazon and other sites, you can't look through the whole book, you have to take the pages chosen for you, for obvious reasons.

For me the bottom line is, with e-readers you cannot experience the joy of your eye being caught by a book, then feeling the pages, and particularly if the book is new, smelling the lovely tang of the paper. You don't get the excitement of opening the covers and seeing for the first time an unexpected world - with e-books the whole sensory experience of book acquisition is absent.. With a real book, however, you bring it home from your bookshop, or book sale or recycling centre with a feeling in your heart that no e-book on any e-reader can match.  You can put it on a table or chair near you, and look at it and gloat.  you can put your favourite bookmark in it, between its pages you can press a flower....No, for me, in comparison an e-book just can't hack it.

My first two books tonight are cookery books, one from a library sale and one from the recycling centre.  "Poor Cook" by Susan Campbell and Caroline Conran, published by First Sphere Books in my copy, dated 1972, was a library find. It gives recipes which are really topical now because of the recession.  The authors say in their introduction that eating cheaply means buying good cheap ingredients as opposed to inferior expensive ones - a bit obvious, I suppose, given the title of the book.  I tend to think that any home baking or cookery will always be cheaper than buying readymade dishes, or even more, than eating out, and I am sure I'm right.  The special thing about this book is its recipe for potato crisps, which form part of the subsidiary diet of so many households and which at around 70 or 80 cents for a single bag full of as much salt as crisps, definitely are not cheap. If you then count all the additives in them, you are certainly getting more than you bargained for.  When I first encountered potato crisps in England as a small child, they came in a greaseproof bag with salt in a little twist of paper sitting just inside the top when you opened it.  You salted it as you liked and there wasn't enough to overdo it.  Likewise in Spain, patatas fritas were sold similarly wrapped on the beach by cheerful salespeople, and the salt was separate in them too.  So the answer to all that salt and the additives and e-numbers is diy crisps.  The fat might kill you but you won't die of poisoning.

In "Harrods Book of Chocolates & Other Edible Gifts", published by Ebury Press London, 1986. and edited by Fiona MacIntyre and Barbara Croxford,  I found what seems to be an easy recipe for homemade butterscotch:






The next book from the recycling centre has no cover and the front papers are missing, but luckily there is a back cover, so I know the title is "Create Pendulum Magic and Miracles", by Richard Webster, and the publishers are Llewellyn Worldwide, St. Paul, Minnesota.  Unfortunately, no date because of the missing bits.  I'm not one of those new-age people, and if I were thinking of miracles, which I'm quite willing to believe in, I don't think I would be thinking of pendulums, but I can say one thing, I gave one to a son once as a present and he was able to forecast the winner of the European Cup (Greece -  2004)  before any of the finals had been played.

The contents list gives intriguing chapter names such as "How to find Lost Objects", "Self-Improvement with the Pendulum", "Real Magic with the Pendulum" and even "Advanced Magic with the Pendulum".  Sounds a little like a Hogwarths textbook... On page 57 I read, under the heading of Map Dowsing, "Fortunately, practicing map dowsing is an enjoyable exercise.  Obtain a map of the area you live in.  Start from your home and allow the pendulum to lead you to the home of a friend."   ???  Wouldn't that be cheating?  After all, you do, I suppose, know where you're going.  One experiment that can do no harm that I can see is to ask the pendulum where a friend is, then call him on his mobile (called cell phone in the book) to find out how accurate you were. That sounds fun.  If it works, even more fun,  though perhaps a bit superfluous in these days of said mobile phones.  I would skip the chapter entitled "The Pendulum and Your Health".  I just know I would find I had some serious disease if I used it for that.  Of course, if you are made of sterner stuff than I, go for it.

I love plants, of all kinds, and because I can have them to live with me indoors, I particularly love house plants.  "Fun with Growing Odd and Curious House Plants" by Virginie F. and George A. Elbert, was published by Crown Publishers, Inc., New York in 1975.  House plants were very much in vogue at that time, because of the rush back to people's roots and the earth,  led by the hippie movement.  I am familiar with many of the plants in the book because of the house plant forum on the Garden Web, but there is one extraordinary one I have not yet succeeded in finding since I read about it in this book. Here it is called Fire Fern, but it is not a fern, but Oxalis hedysaroides rubra, and if you know anything about oxalis plants in general, you know that they fold up their leaves at night.  Some even do it when disturbed, like Mimosa pudica, the Sensitive Plant, which shys away when touched and folds its leaves up so that its branches seem withered.  But apparently, this oxalis does more:

".........if you watch the plant on some days, especially when it is feeling frisky, which is usually during hot spells, you will see a motion in the individual leaflets.  Watch very closely and suddenly - you will believe that it is an optical illusion - a leaflet will move from the vertical to the horizontal and another, in a different part of the plant, from horizontal to vertical.  The rest of the leaf is not affected.  Soon you will notice that this quick movement is going on all over the plant at irregular intervals - some leaves going up and others down.  It's really something". 

Might be best not to see that when you've had one over the eight...

The authors go on to talk about a day they had to move a largish plant of this type around a lot, and in doing so, had disarranged the branches.

"After it had been placed in its final position it remained perfectly quiet for several minutes.  Then the entire plant suddenly shivered violently and all the branches and leaves changed back to their old positions from which they had been disarranged.  The motion stopped as quickly as it began."

This must be amazing to see.  Many plants of the maranta family move, like the prayer plant which closes its leaves upwards in the evening, not necessarily, I have found, in the dark, and sometimes I am told they can be seen doing it, and slow-motion cameras have been able to show it happening.  Still, to see it happening in real time right in front of your eyes, as with the oxalis, that must be a sight indeed.

There are pages and pages of interesting and intriguing plants in this volume.  Even one will add spice to your life.  A plant when it lives with you and is well looked after, fed, watered, and maybe even at times talked to, can become like a pet.  You may even find yourself buying it a fancy overpot for Christmas. When you get up in the morning you will know whether it is feeling happy or sad, and you will certainly know immediately when it is being attacked.  You may well find the one with which you want to share your home in this book.

Good luck with the hunt, whether for book or plant.

Books Which Keep On Giving

Apparently self-help book sales are at an all-time high in Ireland.  This is not surprising, given the current recession.  Well, the genre of the books is not surprising, although considering the cost of new books at the moment,  it is curious that so many can afford to buy them. .  However, the fact that people buy them does not mean that they succeed in changing their lives as a result.  If they did, if even a few did, there would not be such a market for all the many many others, would there?

However, it takes a different type of book to really help people to be happy. What is really needed are books which give something to the reader which endures long after the covers are closed,  ones that can be kept and loved, and that every time they are opened again, offer either the same feeling of inspiration or a newer well of ideas.. So-called self-help books on the other hand all seem very much the same -  written by the same sort of people. They all purport to solve problems, but let's face it, they can only try and solve the problems of people in general, and since each one of us is unique, how can these works solve difficulties which may be manifested quite differently in different people?  I have only come across one exception, but I do notice one thing - not alone are such books sold by the thousands, they also find their way to the recycling centres in like numbers.  They don't seem to be the kind of book one would want to keep.

.  I don't own the self-help book which I did find to be very good, but I can heartily recommend it to you if you are a sufferer from panic attacks, as I was many years ago.  It was called "Self-Help for Your Nerves"  by Dr. Claire Weekes, and I took it out from the library after seeing her on a TV show.  Her answer to panic attacks was very simple, but you may not understand it if you have never experienced one.  However, for those who have, what you do is, as soon as you feel that horrible sinking feeling, that sensation of being trapped, that racing heart, weak knees, total fear, that urge to run and hide anywhere - what you do is simply say to yourself "Let it happen, bring it on", and you don't try to run away, or hide, and you ignore the perspiration and the horror, and, guess what happens, the dreadful approaching wave which seems about to engulf and kill you suddenly becomes a quiet, ebbing tide, the crashing waves become calmed waters, and no matter how often it happens again, it never has the same power, and you deal with it in exactly the same way, and eventually, you realise that you don't have those attacks any more.  It is as simple as that!  I know because that is how it worked for me.

Here are some books I love which keep giving and giving:

"The MacDonald Encyclopedia of Bonsai" by Gianfranco Giorgi, with photographs by Enzo Arnone, was published in 1990 by Arnoldo Mondadori Editore S.p.A Milan, and was translated by John Gilbert. It is a smallish book in cardboard covers, and it tells you everything you could want to know about Bonsai trees, styles, how to pot them, their origins and above all what trees are the best or the most usually grown that way.  I  borrowed this book from my local library many times several years ago, and was delighted to find it again at one of their sales.  After I read it I collected my own little seedlings from all around the garden, as well as a couple of very neglected trees from a nearby nursery, potted them up, pruned them much as I would full-size shrubs and trees, while pretending I was about the size of Mary Norton's Borrowers, and I still have most of them now several years later.  One of my trees, a cotoneaster, is heading for thirty years old now, because the owner of the nursery told me it had been there since they had bought the place ten years previously and she thought it was probably quite old stock at that time.  When I took it home I realised why it had been avoided by buyers - it had a colony of scale well established on it.  How long they were there I couldn't guess. I managed to get rid of them by totally de-leafing the tree and cleaning it of its pests, then keeping a stern eye on it for months.  It has flowered every year since I bought it, but never has berries like the ones in my little book.  I guess it needs a partner somewhere in the vicinity to work this miracle.  Still, it is most precious, and almost like a pet, and I owe it and its companions to this little book.

Here is a book from another sale: "101 Incredible Experiments For The Shed Scientist, Fascinating Fun with Everyday Objects". It's by Rob Beattie, and was published by Ebury Press in 2006.  I haven't tried any of the experiments - my sheds are stacked to the ceilling with garden chairs, garden implements and most importantly, books - but the experiments do indeed seem incredible to someone of my vintage, at which you may only guess...experiments such as  The Balloon Hovercraft,  The Levitating Olive,  Extracting DNA From Food, Create A Cloud, Make A Water-Powered Fuel Cell, Build A Hovercraft, Collect Miniature Meteorites, Fireproofing......it is a totally fascinating book, and who knows, I may even try an experiment myself some day, but meanwhile, I own the book.Tee Hee...

Here is a rather tattered book from the recycling centre, called "A Meal in a Minute".  I have noticed that lots of cookery books end in the recycling - I can't help wondering, does someone throw them out when the meal goes horribly wrong?  Or do they want to hide successful recipes from others? Who knows!  But this book, by Annette Wolter, published in 1974 by Thomas Nelson, London, and translated from the German of Graefe und Unzer, Munich, by G. and H. Jacobi, has one clear virtue, it tells you how to produce meals in a very short time, and looking at the recipes, it seems that they might turn out to be quite edible too.  One puzzle is the title, because I cannot find a recipe in it that can be prepared in a minute...perhaps it's meant in a similar sense to  the shop assistant's  "be with you in a minute", we know that minute can stretch a bit - however, there are recipes which can be produced in five to ten minutes...such as various soups, bread rolls with scrambled eggs, toast and different accompaniments and of course sandwiches.  Here is one meal which takes 5 to ten minutes and which I haven't come across before:

                 Rapid Rarebits

4 teaspoons butter or margarine
4 slices toasting bread
250 g (9 oz) grated cheese
4 tablespoons light ale
2 teaspoons mild mustard
1 teaspoon Worcester sauce

Preheat oven to 260oc (450oF, gas mark 8) or grill to maximum temperature.
Heat butter or margarine in a frying pan and fry the 4 bread slices in it, but on one side only. Mix cheese with the beer, mustard and Worcester sauce and spread the resulting mixture on the 4 slices, which you grill for 5 minutes.

Mock Goulash Soup (recipe on page 23) is recommended to follow.  Oh, and I wouldn't drive for a while after having this for lunch...

There are many more meals which take only the same amount of time, followed by pages of 10 to 15 minute meals, and then the last category which offers meals which take no longer than 25 minutes to prepare.  Sure what would you be doing anyway!

"Drink Your Own Garden" by Judith Glover means just that.  Published in 1983 by Book Club Associates by arrangement with B.T. Batsford Ltd., London, it is beautifully illustrated in black and white drawings by Juliet Stanwell Smith.  It tells you how to make wine, mead, beers and other drinks - checking these other drinks out I find they include sangria, punch, ades such as cherryade, fruit syrups, cordials and barley water.  The wines include cranberry, elderberry, sloe and loganberry, apple, rhubarb, wine from vine prunings, beetroot wine, even lettuce wine, about which the author says "Not an outstanding wine, but a worthwhile way to use up a glut of lettuces."  There is a recipe for potato wine, with the warning that it should be made with care because it is one of the most potent of home-made wines - yes, I'm thinking poteen here, though of course that's a spirit and also a book with a recipe for that would no doubt be almost unobtainable for reasons of demand outstripping supply, as well as most likely banned.

A book which has given me much joy over the years is actually a work of fiction.  I cannot say that about many novels, perhaps a little more often about short stories, but I am very hard to please in so far as works of fiction in general are concerned.  I have found that novels which start very well and leave one longing for more frequently go downhill rapidly afterwards.  If I do manage to get through a novel, I am almost always disappointed with the ending, which in many cases seems to have been rushed (perhaps to meet a deadline) or the finish is in some way inappropriate - it just doesn't fit.  I include in this category most of the novels of Jane Austen, which were, after all, conceived initially as stories, not works of literature which it is sacrilege to criticise as I am doing.  The author seems determined to tie up all the ends, when, as everyone knows, life just does not happen like that...life poses more questions always than it answers...

This paragon of novels is "Of Human Bondage", by W. Somerset Maugham.  My edition is in the series Twentieth Century Classics, by J.G. Ferguson Publishing Company, Chicago, Illinois. and the date seems to be 1936, that is the only date I can find on it, but it is in amazing condition, with just a little foxing between the back pages and cover, so perhaps it will prove to be a more recent publication.  I have another modern paperback edition which I keep purely to lend, because after I have sung the praises of this book, I like to share the experience.

I am not going to tell you anything about the story, which is very long - 565 pages in this World Classics edition, but I have read it several times and intend to re-read it again shortly.  Believe me, it is the riveting story of a young man's journey from childhood to manhood, and the many vocations and personae he tries along the way, until life allows itself to be discovered by him....that is all I am going to tell you about it.  One thing I would say, do not be mislead by any film version into thinking that you know what this book is about...you will be very much mistaken.

With whatever you are reading, I wish you joy.  If there is no joy in it, look elsewhere.  You will be glad you did.

Some Tips for Living

I never studied politics formally, nor philosophy...so when I open a book on either of these subjects, I know very little about what I'm reading.  However, some of the passages I find in these books are really interesting, even if I'm unaware of their context...there isn't time in this world to read all these books, but reading a little in them is like overhearing an interesting conversation and trying to build meaning from it without knowing the things or people under discussion.

One of the books I'm talking of here is a book of essays by Thomas M. Kettle. When you consider that the book was published in 1909, more than a century ago, many of the views seem surprisingly topical. I picked up this volume of essays of his in the recycling centre; published in 1937 by Browne and Nolan Limited, it is entitled:
         
                    "The Day's Burden
        Studies, Literary & Political And Miscellaneous Essays"

Books of quotations seem to be for sale in enormous quantities, but after a couple of pages of reading them, I wonder do you feel somehow tired, as if you've had a surfeit of them?  I certainly do, Yet choosing quotations myself from various books is a different matter.  Personally I feel as if
I've discovered something new and meaningful.  I have decided of my own volition to like them, not because someone else thinks the words good or important or worth remembering.
Thomas Michael Kettle, according to Wikipedia, was a journalist, an MP for East Tyrone, a barrister, a writer, a poet, and along with many other poets and writers, he died in the First World War.  I suppose it's not surprising so many talented people died in that war, given that so many people
of all nations and types died in it.  Apparently there is a Memorial to him at St. Stephen's Green, Dublin.  I have been there a few times but I never knew that.
Here are a couple of quotes from his essays:
At the end of an essay entitled "Crossing The Irish Sea" he writes - "But the deck is beginning to experiment in postions other than the horizontal.  The grey, cold, sliding treachery of the sea comes out through the surface brightness.  One wonders if the sea that gives empires may not take them suddenly back. At all events, I am going to be sea-sick. It will be another argument for Home Rule".  What a writer!

Here is a quote from his essay on Otto Effertz:

"...since a horse consumes as much earth as would sustain three men, to keep a horse is to murder a family, to keep a stable is to maintain a sort of perpetual massacre.  Nor is it to be supposed that this sombre halo attaches only to articles of luxury.  Fishers must, indeed, be drowned in order that a rich woman may wear a rope of pearls, but fishers must also be drowned in order that a beggar may eat a herring.  The shop-girl, who wears imitation lace, and the duchess, who wears real lace, condemn some of their sisters to slavery and exploitation with the same ruthless certainty."

The only information I can find on the said Otto Effertz is that Kettle described him as a theoretical socialist (weren't they all when you think about it) and that he wrote a critique of Darwinism.  Imagine, they're still at that now...

I thought a book with the title "Follow Your Heart - Finding Purpose in Your Life and Work" sounded very positive and cheering for those who are feeling down after the Christmas break and who are looking forward to the progress of this new year with somewhat less enthusiasm than anyone who viewed the participants in the bacchanalia last Saturday night/Sunday morning might suppose. But as I turned page after page of bolstering quotations and spine-strengthening advice, I hesitated. Perhaps we have just seen too much of Oscar Wilde's assertion that the only ones to think more about money than the rich are the poor...everyone thinks about money, if you ask me.  That's why we're all in the jam we're in, or perhaps, out of the jam might be more apt..I liked first the story about the worker who hated the person he was working for and was told that he was not working for his boss, he was working for himself.  However, tell that to anyone who's late for work tomorrow morning or who just doesn't feel like going in at all.  Here's another quote, for instance - "when you fight life, life always wins.  If you want more peace of mind, stop labelling everything that happens
as "good" or "bad"." -   "So How Do I Get Peace Of Mind?"  the author ( Andrew Matthews who is also the illustrator) goes on to explain, well, the problem is with your attitude...now where have I heard that before...it's what bosses say, isn't it! The book was published by Seashell Publishers, Australia.  It's colourful, full of well-drawn cartoons, and somehow after going through it I felt more depressed than anything else.  Yes, I know it's my fault.  That's basically the thesis of the book too...

Here is a hint or two from "The Best of Helpful Hints", a book cherished by my mother-in-law and which came to me more by default than anything else, after her death.  She was an amazing lady who successfully concealed from society the births of two sons when she was a young unmarried woman, went to work in the US for various famous people including a Cardinal, the Mafia and the family of a President, and was reunited with both sons before her untimely death. She was clever and beautiful and didn't need any spine-strengthening. The book was compiled and edited by Mary Ellen Pinkham and Pearl Higginbotham and published by Mary Ellen Enterprises, Minneapolis, Minnesota, and this edition is 1978.

Here is a hint I liked:  "Calming the angry child
Whispering works wonders when a child is angry.  Simply whisper gentle words into his ear.  He will stop crying so he can hear what you're saying."

And here is one for your houseplants if they're looking a bit 'poorly', as the English say:

"Castor oil for sick plants
Your houseplants will come right out of their slump if you put a tablespoon of castor oil in the soil around the roots with a shot of water to wash it down."
Well,if they really are not feeling well, I suppose it can't do any harm.

The "Best of Helpful Hints" came accompanied by many photos of the rich and famous (and perhaps infamous) for whom she had worked.  I wonder how many of them benefitted from the advice in this book.
That's all for tonight, folks.  The wind is storming the windows and blowing a draught at the computer.  Stay safe, wherever you are.