Off Topic Other Stuff (anything you want to share)

It could be this one.....heh, heh,heh.....must of looked good with all sails billowing in the wind....and cannon balls stored below deck.....

 

One of my pleasures that I miss during this lock down is mulling around secondhand book shops.

I am drawn to older books....generally 7 x 5 or 6 x 4 inches in size sometimes even smaller.

It's more interesting when the fly cover has been written on....a book given as an award....confirmation or a study text book.

Some are well over a 100 years old.

Two books are...Notes on British History....covering...1485-1660 and 1660- 1783....the owners name is written inside....T A Rochester, 38 Holme Avenue,Walkerville, Newcastle.
They have written in their own notes with a fountain pen in very small exquisite writing...page after page....plus dozens of loose leaf pages of extra notes as well.....studying for a degree I would think.....the extras are more interesting than the book which is dated 1920.....you wonder how the studies went and what that person did with their life afterwards... male or female ?

The books, given as gifts or awards have the name of the giver and receiver in.....one giver was the Bishop of Knaresborough...1933....these books range from 1898 to 1933 and they all are dated by the giver which gives authenticity to the age of the book not just when the book was first published.

My favourite book is from 1916 an American book of poems by Edgar (Eddie) Albert Guest.
I found this a delightful book to read and he was well known in the States....I looked him up on the net and found out lots about him and also more of his poetry....I'll leave you with one of his poems.

LIFE.
Life is a gift to be used every day,
Not to be smothered and hidden away,
It isn't a thing to be stored in the chest,
Where you gather your keepsakes and treasure your best,
It isn't a joy to be sipped now and then,
And promptly put back in a dark place again.

Life is a gift that the humblest may boast of,
And one that the humblest may well make the most of,
Get out and live it each hour of the day,
Wear it and use it as much as you may,
Don't keep it in niches and corners and grooves,
You'll find that in service its beauty improves.

Charity shops are best...they're not book experts so bargains for as little as 2 or 3 pounds can be found, even at times signed by the author to a friend or as a gift.
Secondhand Bookshops are on the ball and they can cost you.
My favourite Secondhand Bookshop in in Broadstairs Kent...it's in an old shop on many floors and corridors with books piled high and all over the floor as well....just waiting to be checked....you can do well in there if the owner isn't around and someone young is on the till. There is old electric wiring throughout the shop and a fire there would light up the whole of Broadstairs and cost a small fortune in lost valuable books.

 

Oddly, and somewhat worryingly, I find that fascinating............. who were those people, why did they buy the books?

We were browsing through the Tavistock pannier market a while back and I went through a tray of vintage postcards arranged by the district to which they related. I came across one of the Victorian building opposite our house, which is Grade 2 listed and designed by the same architect who did the Plymouth Guildhall. On the back was a note from a lady who'd staying nearby nursing a sick relative. It was addressed to a farm near Lanjeth in Cornwall. That's about mile away from a house where my grandfather lived while he was teaching at St Stephen-in Brannel. What are the chances? I can't find any record of the family or the farm unfortunately.

 

Yes that is just it....my mind starts thinking about when that note was added.....Titanic wasn't even built or WW1 hadn't happened or in the case of the poet Guest his book was published half way through the war.....about the time the USA stopped hiding from the fact and got involved eventually.

That Broadstairs Bookshop could of been there when Charles Dickens frequented the area....Bleak House is only half a mile away.

 

So Boris does today's news briefing....and only one subject for journalists to lock on to of course....and personally they were total crap and really didn't give Boris much hassle.

 

Boris thinks this will go away. It won't because the people, not newspapers. will remember it. He is already suffering a drop in the ratings and no doubt this will drop him even further. The Tories will be sharpening their knives as we speak and Boris had better watch his back. Boris cannot buffoon himself or us out of this situation so it's about time he realised it and his party realised he just isn't the Churchill he thinks he is. Brexit and lie you sort of can get away with it. Lie about this current one and it will bite your arse.

 

He's off the hook as regards Brexit. All the economic damage that will result from it will now be attributed to the virus. If you are looking for a conspiracy theory, saying that's deliberate is more believable than 5G being the cause!

 

Did you listen to the Mr Cummings press conference this afternoon? I have never in the field of human bullshit heard more bullshit than was spouted there. It ranks about on a par with Mr Clinton not having sex with that woman.

 

Only problem I thought was that some of those journalists were on a vendetta and were not playing from a level playing field.....he kept his cool and some of them didn't.

 

I listened to what was said not how it was said which is what you are meant to do. Can't say I blame some of the Journos for being arsy. Lets face it Cummings normally is. His demeanour was one of "pity me" rather than one of contrition. First he was ill then his wife was ill then his son was ill. What is a bloke supposed to do. Obviously get in a car and drive half the length of the country for around 5 hours without stopping (yep of course he didn't with a 4 year old in the car). He only stood in the garden and shouted to his family but never visited them despite the child care he so urgently sought. Then he gets back in his car for and eyesight test to see if he could drive home again. Strangely his 4 year old needed a piss on a 30 mile journey when he didn't on a 260 mile one. But it was life and death and what any father would do..................... Trouble is they had told millions not to do any of that and they had pretty much complied with the instruction. No mention of being able to make a judgement on travel in the event of an emergency. Well no mention until now anyway.

I'll repeat my first post on this. It ranks on a par with that Mr Clinton not having sex with that woman. A blatant pile of crap trying to play to an audiences softer side where a child is concerned. They made the rules and he broke them. That is a sackable offence in anyone's eyes. Anyone remember the Sub Captain being removed from his ship for having a lockdown BBQ for his crew when nobody had mixed with anyone outside the ship for months? I don't think the public at large will swallow this bullshit and neither should they. If Boris doesn't sack him then both of them should go together.

 

There's a fatal flaw in what he said. He drives a Land Rover. It has a system which tracks the vehicle's movements via the Internet. You have an app on your phone which gives you directions to it if you've forgotten where you parked it. You can start the air con before you get back to yhe car on a hot day,. Crucially, it lists every journey listing average speed, fuel consumption, where ans when you started and where and when you stopped.

Funny that didn't get mentioned.

 

Why didn't the wolf pack....oops sorry journalists realize that and bring it up in their interrogation/cross examination of Cummings.

 

What are you telling us notDistant....that you've also got a Range Rover.......all the cars I've ever had have... been upgraded from pedal-cars.

Austin A35 (4 yrs)...Austin Allegro (10 yrs)...VW Beetle 1600 (10 yrs)...VW Golf (4 yrs)...Triumph Acclaim (10 yrs)...Honda Civic (10 yrs)...Honda Jazz (4 yrs)...Citreon C3 ( 2yrs plus at the moment).

The Beetle was the biggest engine....none were new...two got written off by other drivers hitting them...two I gave away for nothing...Two scrapped because repairs would have been far more than the value.....and all of them shared with my wife.

 

No I don't have a Land Rover.

 

....Or a Range Rover...?........next door have got one....but it's only their second car.....

 

Yesterday afternoon, two police officers arrived in a marked car. I thought there might have been a burglary or something and the car was here for a couple of hours. Unusual.

Then the RN Bomb Disposal truck arrived...............

For a few nasty moments I thought we'd be spending the night on the floor of some church hall but eventually they emerged with a small object in a bag and drove off to sighs of relief. A WW2 incendiary bomb perhaps........... a door-stopper that had been mistaken for a shell casing?

 

It was probably a left over banger from November the 5th notdistant. They can't be too careful these days.

So the Cummings saga rumbles on and on. I listened to a discussion sort of thing on 5live this morning for a while. Some people are so gullible they believe anything they are told. Others who are so keen to tow the party line it's cringe worthy. Anyway the absolute overwhelming consensus was he was a guilty as sin and should have been sacked by Boris if he wouldn't go quietly. 71% in a poll said so. If 51% in a Referendum was a resounding victory and a mandate then what does Boris think that one is. Amazingly most of the Cabinet think the rules said he could do what he did and he didn't break any. Really??????????????????

 

Of course they don't believe it. Their fingers are firmly crossed behind their backs and their arms are behind their backs because they've been twisted there.

Johnson appears before the chairmen of the Commons Select Committees today I think. Could be a torrid session for him.

 

Since my birthday in March my wife and I have done lock down literally to the letter....maybe in that time a dozen walks around the local park....one trip down the surgery to pick up a blood test form and once to the Pharmacy to pick up a prescription.....my daughter and son have done everything else that would have been a risk factor for people of our age.

Okay we know Dominic has "legally" driven a horse and carriage through the letter of the law regarding lock down....and the whole world knows about it.

BUT the thing that sticks in my gullet is the people who pop into other houses and have people popping in to theirs...and spend a day packed on the beach shoulder to shoulder with literally hundreds/thousands of other people and completely ignoring police reminders of social distancing......even before the Cummings saga was known it was happening.

So today I'm working in my driveway filling up a skip with all the things I've kept because....'one day that will be useful syndrome'.....and of course it never happens.

So as I said I'm working in my drive way....breaking up quite a large bird table that I built years back....it got knock over around January in a storm and got badly damaged....and it was rotting in places...so it wasn't worth repairing.

So there I am.....and along comes the postman dressed in his regulation issued grey shorts....and he has a fantastic immaculate Mohican hair cut.....wow I said that must be hard keeping that like that during shut down.....no problem he says....me mate comes around every couple of days and sorts it out for me....he's a barber you know......................so I smile back and brush my hair out of my eyes and wish I never mentioned it.

It's all these little things that people do multiplied 10,000 times nation wide that could pop the R number so easily over One again.....rant over....