Books………. and my kinky affliction :o)

Hi Y’all,
I was stood at the back door waiting for the kettle to boil for yet another cuppa, (not that that has any bearing on it) and got to thinking of my books, and not in the least the ridiculous amount I’ve spent on them this month alone …….. the last two months actually. Just had the visa bill this morning. It was not a cheery sight. (sigh)Anyway, these books……….. I have an embarrassing amount of them here at Fortress Wheelrest, and all the more embarrassing because there are more sitting there unread than I care to admit to, so I’d appreciate your keeping that to yourself in respect of my revealing such a confession to you. :oI

This month the book buying frenzy is all around collecting around me, a plethora of inspiring writing books. I rationalise The Madness by telling myself I’m about to make something of a breakthrough as a Much Acclaimed Author in November, when I do the NaNoWriMo thing. I’ve mentioned it here several times, but in case you haven’t read through the blog, or don’t intend to, ………… nanowrimo is a ‘competition’ where everyone registered to the website (http://www.nanowrimo.org/) attempts to write a first draft of a novel, screenplay, whatever, and completes a minimum of 50,000 words in the month of November every year.

No money, or any other prizes to be won, just the satisfaction of being a NaNoWriMo Winner if you succeed. So, ……loads of inspirational, and how-too books are descending through the letterbox at irregular intervals to feed this enthusiasm in the long run-up I’m taking to November. I shall then be raising the drawbridge here at Fortress Wheelrest, and repelling all boarders with a bleary-eyed “Bugger-Off-I’m-Busy”, Fair Maidens being the only ones granted an audience, which shouldn’t take up much of my precious writing time, given the dearth of them clawing at the door these days. :o) (sigh)

So this writing focus I’m swept away with right now, is responsible for my purchasing just about any book on writing worthy of note and praise. Believe me, that’s no idle boast either. Splintering off from that, are the temptation of several books found whilst browsing away, some of which are books of short stories; something else I intend to get ‘into’, compose, and maybe even sell, who knows.

Short-story competitions would be good to enter too, but as usual taking the first steps are the hardest of obstacles to climb over. Those first steps being the first to progress beyond writing the odd thing for myself, and the long emails I send to a few close friends, and the online chicks I dare to try and find a match with. Boy, have I ever cast a few hundred thousand written words onto the hot sandy wasteland that is Trying To Impress A Woman. Still, that’s the nature of the beast I guess. :o)

Achieving a ‘winner’ status in November’s Nanowrimo will be a huge leap forward towards that end of progression.

I absolutely love my books, I love searching for them in shops, and more usually, online at the Alter of Amazon. God bless them. The trouble with the online method of reducing ones disposable income, is just how easy it is to buy the books, aided by the bottomless variety and availability of so many.

It’s a sickness of possession. It’s as much in the pleasure of being surrounded by them, as that of reading them, and the world conjured from their absorbed words or the wisdom contained within. They are full of people’s stories, fact or fiction. Lives imagined or real revealed. The things that someone has taken perhaps a lifetime to learn can be bought for just a few quid, and so cheap at the price (He desperately convinced himself!). It is cheap too………. I’ve bought practical books over the years for many hobbies and interests, full to the brim with advice found out the hard way. A lifetime’s expertise laid bare for the reader to absorb and learn from. Sometimes years of costly experimenting, learning the hard way from many failures, and these days no materials are cheap to make such failures not worthy of note. All in a book, costing at the very most, say fifteen quid a book, and usually a lot less.

Second-hand books, I adore as much as new, and not just for the cheaper cost. I revere them for their sense of having already had a life in another’s hands. I adore their smell, the yellowing of their pages, occasionally a written dedication inside the cover of having been given with love, and sometimes all that has been left inside, a hint at least of what went before.

I love to posses them, love the smell of them, new or old. Perverse though it may seem, or even actually be, I often hold a newly acquired ‘old’ book up to my nose, and fan the edges of the pages past my thumb, breathing in it’s unique smell. God knows what bugs I fan into my lungs, but so far it seems to be ok. Still breathing. smelling a book is sometimes like breathing in its history. The amalgamation of all it’s ever been, where it’s lived, and the fingers and hands that have held it. Smoker’s books are the only ones that don’t small so nice, but even they are good, because of such an obvious clue to it’s history.

Some books I turn over in my hands, looking for its personal imperfections from the use it’s had, and wonder at who held it, read it; wonder what their lives held. Some have a crumb of cake or bread inside, a hair maybe, and even occasionally a bookmark left trapped between the pages. Traces such as these aren’t often found, of course, especially a bookmark, and especially the rarest of clues to ponder; that of the bookmark with handwritten notes on, or in it.

There’s a website, a bookseller’s I think, devoted to all the bookmarks he or she had found……. pictures of them all too. A little bit fascinating, although not enough for me to exactly turn into a hobby myself. :o) I googled ‘found bookmarks’ to see if I could find the site, but to no avail.

As you do, I browsed a few links that came up ……….. Here’s a site article with links of stuff found inside library books, including forty $1,000 dollar bills. Imagine THAT??? :o) http://www.abebooks.com/docs/Community/Featured/found-in-books.shtml

Here’s one with instructions for making a ‘paged’ bookmark to make notes as you read, for you ‘crafty’ types :o) ….. Good idea, but I don’t know that I could be bothered ……… especially since I’m a rough, tough Old Greaser! :o)
http://www.diyplanner.com/node/5189

I often use a half, or quarter folded sheet of A4 as a bookmark to write notes on. Works as well, takes seconds to fold and use, but nothing like as aesthetic as something so carefully made. Usually I use the wire-bound ‘reporters notebook’ I keep by me when I’m reading.

Books, do you love them as much?

What do you like about them, ……. and are you as weird as me to love their smell?

(PLEASE say you are!) :oI
K.x :o)

Elf and Safety………… mainly

Managed to waste today……….. mostly reading and playing around on the ‘net. Played about with this blog a bit, and tried to remove, re-size, and reinstate yesterdays blog pics of Lomax,………. but when I tried to delete them as per instructions, it deleted the whole of yesterdays bleddy blog.

Bleddy lovely that was, I can tell you!

How I laughed!!!!! :oI

Luckily I write this mostly in Word, save it on the ‘puter, and then and copy/paste it over to the blog, so it was recoverable, but took bleddy ages to do. That would be because I tried to delete one of the newly re-sized, and reinstated pics……… and deleted the whole soddin’ thing again then.

Oh, joy was abundantly about me.

Got the Mother sorted in the end.

Bought another couple of books browsing Amazon……….. bleddy deadly how easy it is to buy stuff online, ……….especially when you’re weak. :oI One called ‘Blink’, which is about how we actually need very little time to make surprisingly accurate decisions and judgements. The other………… ummn……… bugger…….. forgotten…… oh yes……… a WWII flying novel called ‘That Summer’ for .01p (Yup, one penny) plus postage of £2.75, so cheaper than a magazine.

I spend waaaay too much on books, and Mo’sickle, Astronomy and Science magazines, with the occasional metal detecting and kit car/retro car magazines too.

Still, I live the life of a hermit, don’t drink, don’t smoke, so what the hell, eh? ;o)

Sunny again this afternoon, but not as nice as yesterday, although still good enough to tempt me to sit outside with a book, a cuppa and Lomax playing around me. It was a bit nippy in the breeze though. Started a book called ‘Up The Creek’, by Tony James, which is about the his sailing life, and “A lifetime trying to be a sailor” It’s obvious that he succeeded, even though the statement infers a failure to achieve that ambition. :o)

I didn’t get far with it, what with Lomax demanding we have a fight, make up, and then have another fight. His focus today was mainly chewing brambles that are lying around. I sometimes swear he’s as gormless as they come!

Bright enough to have me at his beck and call, though. :o) We were up at 06:30 again this morning! :o)

This book has had me laughing out loud a couple of times so far though, so it looks like it’ll be as good as the reviews. For instance, he tells a tale of when he was about nine, I think, living next to a sawmill, and playing in and around it whilst it was working. lethal place……… no guards on the machinery, and him and his friends free to run around it pretty well as they pleased.

One day a worker came in to his father, saying he’d cut his finger off in the damn great big saw that they used, and could he please be so kind as to take him to the hospital. Tony’s dad asked him if he had the finger, and he didn’t, so they went in to look for it. Another workmate in there saw them looking, and told them it wasn’t there.

How did he know, they asked……….

“Well”, he said, “It’s not there ‘cos I gave it to the ferret.”

I laughed out loud at that.

Brilliant! :o)

Not so much at the poor bloke’s misfortune, as at the straightforward illustration of an era of relative individual freedom, now long gone and tragically never to be seen again. An era when life was openly accepted to be a risk, and you took the consequences of your actions, without automatically looking for someone to blame.

(And, yes, I do know it was far from perfect in those days, thanks!)

Those were the days…….. tough, yes, but so were the people, and a time not dominated by the Elf and Safety weenies, who would’ve had a blue fit.

If you’re one of them, and are tut-tutting at me, ………you can just bugger off!

I nearly said you could Go Fuck Yerself, but these days you’re just as likely to be a woman and I’m something of an Officer and a Gentleman.

So, just plain bugger off, and do us all a favour.

(Ooooh, he’s so butch, so masterful……….. and such an angry young man!) :o)

Elf and Safety is noticeable by its obvious absence around here at Fortress Wheelrest, and personal injury is something of a quiet pastime of mine. Actually, it’s not all that quiet in the event, although, in saying that, if there’s a helluva lot of swearing and fuss going on, …….. stuff getting kicked around, and generally flying outta the workshop, ………….take no notice. I’m only attention seeking, so be assured the injury is likely to be fairly minor.

It’s when there’s a helluva bang, crash wallop, and/or it goes all silent and deathly quiet, that you might want to call the ambulance. It might be wise to turn off the workshop ‘lectricks……….. just in case I’m still welded to the bared wiring. :o)

This is a typical high standard of lackadaisical nonchalance with an angle grinder.
Well, how the bleddy hell else can you see up close and get such accuracy?
The local eye clinic is hugely appreciative of my selfless availability for young nurses to gaze into my eye(s) and practice their probing skills on me. :o)

Here (above) I’m carefully and skillfully employing years of technical mastery in delicately ‘machining’ a motorcycle component.
Ok, ok, …………performing an unnatural act on it with a bloody great masonry drill!!!! :oI

First aid is of a reassuringly Manly nature. No first aid box in evidence, and that’s because bandages and tourniquets are hastily improvised from oily rags, persistently bleeding wounds rubbed with sawdust kept ‘specially for the purpose, and sealed up with masking tape………. or red electrical insulation tape if I’m feeling extravagant. Naturally, after cleansing the affected digit or limb with petrol of course,………. as you would expect of a Trained Nurse. :o)

Here’s some pics at various stages on treatment/healing, of a nice little session my fingers had with the bandsaw. Lovely sharp bade it was. I never uttered a sound, just wrapped them up in a rag to stop the floor getting all messed up, and put the tools away, and locked up the workshop. Bleddy things took weeks to heal up properly, but I was out in the workshop again the next day. Halfway through some woodturning, see? :o)

The dotted line shows where the saw split my fingers ………. sliced them for about half an inch up the middle lengthways. All flapping about in the breeze, they were. :o)

They got infected. Didn’t have no petrol handy to cleanse the wound, see…….. I was in the woodworking workshop at the time. :o)

The nails were hanging on by the skin of very little as the days went by. I forget if they made it of not. Left me with a bit of numbness it has.

I put in for disability benefit, but they wouldn’t wear it.

Typical innit? You work all your life…………….. :o)))))

Nite nite, K.x :o)
P.S.
By the way………. these kisses are for you gurls mind. I wouldn’t want any of you chaps out there to be confused y’know.) :o)
K.x :o))))