Set Your Genius Free

I've been thinking about how best to organise our books, which ones to keep and which to pass on to people who will love them. This is because the interior landscape here is totally dominated by books and the human inhabitants have become somewhat resentful of having to move mountains to access seats and the TV; also the new dog has found that she can easily reach the very chewable volumes on the bottom shelf, and she can hide behind the chairs while making her selection.

Firstly, I need to decide which books I want to keep myself, and the ones the family would like to hold on to. There can be no negotiation over all the books to cater for the family's interests, history, wildlife, archaeology, languages, gardening, tractors and farm machinery, music, the list goes on...

Then we must keep the useful books, in the how-to category, on subjects as diverse as embroidery, playing hockey and how to read Egyptian hieroglyphics. Again, the tastes of a whole family have to be taken into account. Then there are the beautiful books, kept for the pleasure of admiring them as well as looking into them, such as my daughter's art books. Everyone will have a few favourite fiction books to retain too. For the rest, it will take courage to decide what to let go..

The first book I plucked from the shelves today is 'Space and Colour in Japanese Flower Arrangement' by Kasumi Teshigawara, with photographs by Miki Takagi, published by George Newnes Limited of London, 1965. The leaves and plants pose with rocks and other accessories, like elegant people in fashion magazines. On P.21 there is an arrangement staged gracefully with an apple. I can imagine how long that would last in my house before someone moved the apple, or heavens preserve us, even ate it.. The simplicity of the arrangements in this book is the attraction, unlike the massive flower arrangements displayed at garden shows. What worries me about flower arrangements in general is the plundering which must take place to display even one orchid with miscellaneous foliage. I notice in this book that the foliage is of the houseplant variety. I do not think my houseplants could spare any of their leaves to facilitate a flower arranger. I for the same reason applaud arrangements which make use of leaves and branches from the hedgerows, which have plenty of foliage to spare.

'Pebble People, Pets & Things, Quick and Easy Rock Craft Projects for All Ages', by Peter K. Vane, published by Butterick Publishing of New York in 1977, is a book I bought because some time previously I had found one of my favourite possessions at a car boot sale, a rock painted as a house, with a little garden, including what seems to be an apple tree, flowers, and even a dustbin at the wall. The English artist's name and address are on the bottom, together with a phone number which is quite obsolete. The idea that one can go to the beach or even into the garden, find a suitable rock and paint it as the imagination moves one, is an absolutely delightful prospect. You do it just as you like, there are no rules to follow, and the only limitations are those of one's creative instinct. Gouache paints are recommended by the author, but my own experiments have shown that acrylic can work well too. You have to varnish the rock after you've finished painting it in order to render it waterproof, or to preserve the design from scraping perhaps. There were two lovely little rock cats at the same sale, which I gave away as presents. You see how reasonably you can make a piece of art at almost no cost and with just a smidgeon of artistic genius, which you may well find you have in abundance if you just have a go.

Origami is something else to try, and once again, your material needs will be simple, that is, paper. For practice you could use any kind of paper, discarded notebooks, newspapers, anything. 'Creative Origami' is written by Toyoaki Kawai, translated by John Clark and published by Hoikusha Publishing Company in Osaka, Japan, in 1983. This is a little book worth owning for its beauty alone. There are lovely colour photographs of objects made, but the book mainly consists of very clear diagrams and minimal text. There are a lot of other origami books out there if you can't find this exact one.

It is amazing, when you think about it, how artistic one can be with the minimum of materials, as in the three crafts I've just mentioned: flower arranging, rock painting and Origami.

'The Book of Heroic Failures' by Stephen Pile, a Futura publication dated 1985, is a paperback from a library sale, which led to further humiliation for it, as whatever is written on the front paper is totally illegible because some library glue has attached the page firmly to the inside cover of the book, perhaps a final comment on at least my copy. It is, however, a very interesting book, telling of disasters on the part of failed inventors, muggers, blackmailers, even unsuccessful poets, all the losers of world society at least up to the date of the book's publication. I'm sure many more losers have sadly joined the procession at this stage.  However, this is a genuinely funny book, and there are not many of those.

Here is just one extract: “The Most Unsuccessful Version of the Bible”
“The most exciting version of the Bible was printed in 1631 by Robert Barker and Martin Lucas, the King's printers at London. It contained several mistakes, but one was inspired – the word 'not' was omitted from the Seventh Commandment and enjoined its readers, on the highest authority, to commit adultery.
Fearing the popularity with which this might be received in remote country districts, King Charles 1 called all 1,000 copies back in and fined the printers £3,000.”

Dave Dutton & Graham Nown wrote a book called  'Odd Balls -   Astonishing tales of the great eccentrics.' It was illustrated by Bill Tidy and published by Arrow Books of London. It is a paperback from the recycling centre, somewhat the worse for wear. It always astonishes me, however, how many paperbacks actually come through their lives looking quite well, with spines and pages usually intact. Since I have a few eccentrics in my own family, I thought I would enjoy reading about more, perhaps to feel that we have company in the world. However, a great many of the stories in this book are about people I would personally consider more mad than eccentric, for instance, the gentleman who set fire to himself to cure his hiccups and who just before he breathed his last proclaimed with delight that he had cured them at last. Perhaps nowadays, with so many people going around high as kites, we need a new definition for eccentricity, although I suppose basically it is just a question of 'doing your own thing” and not worrying about what your neighbours think. When people including the so-called eccentric start to get hurt, perhaps then it becomes insanity. I also think you have to be somewhat well-off to indulge your eccentric instincts. Otherwise it will all just be put down to poverty and ignorance. A well-off person going around in rags is quite a different thing to one who dresses that way out of necessity. Likewise with the consumption of chips from a rubbish bin, something my offspring saw fairly recently in a nearby town. It was somewhat a relief to learn that the gentleman in question dined this way by preference rather than out of need. It would be unbearable to think the latter was the case, particularly given the economic climate at the moment.

Even if you have no garden, nor any inclination to use pots or tubs instead, you can still enjoy flowers if you walk in the country or along canal and river banks. Even a patch of rough ground in your area, perhaps with some of those Celtic Tiger half-built houses thereon, will have its own little population of flora which it would be fun to study, and if you bring along a book such as W. Keble Martin's 'The Concise British Flora In Colour'. which I found in a school sale, your pleasure will be greatly enhanced. This is published by Ebury Press and Michael Joseph in 1976. In this you will find most of the Irish wildflowers too. I know there are plants on the Burren in the West of Ireland which may not be in Britain or Scotland, but from experience, most of the Irish wild plants also can be found in the British books, although I would be happy to be contradicted if someone knows better.

There are very large and weighty books on wild flowers, but obviously you should go for one of the smaller type, often called pocket guides, although the pockets in many cases would have to be on a giant's jacket. Carrying this particular book probably will not be too great a burden, perhaps in a shoulder bag, though it is not what you could call 'light'. Here is where an e-reader might come in useful, if a book on wild flowers for identification purposes can be found in electronic format, but then you would need colour photographs or drawings too, and I'm not sure if e-readers have got that far yet. Identifying wild plants is fun because it is like a treasure hunt, and you have to be a bit of a detective. A plant that at first sight looks exactly like one you have found in your book, on closer inspection may prove to be different in some ways. There is a great sense of satisfaction though when you realise you really have identified your little wild plant. You could use your mobile phone camera to take its picture, and when you get home, print out the picture, perhaps on a little Zink Pogo printer. Zink comes from 'zero ink' and it means what it says, you only need to buy the paper, and the heat from the printer brings out the image; this little printer can be bought online really cheap together with the printing papers for it; the prints have sticky backs under peel-off paper and are ideal for notebooks or nature diaries. Or of course, you could get into the swing of drawing the wild plants by hand if all else fails. One way or the other, it would be a wonderful new pastime if you got interested in it.

For most of the activities talked about today, almost no money is needed, and these days that can only be a plus. This May bank holiday weekend may well be the perfect time to try your hand at one or more of them. There is so much out there to do and enjoy. And if Rosario's rain gods take a holiday too, so much the better.