Books

The Pop-Up Festivities Bookstore

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I may have mentioned before that I was volunteered by my best beloved to run the bookstall for the village festivities. Here I want to say that a) the ‘bookstall’ is a function room at the Legion hall, b) I spend, as you know, a lot of time sorting books at Oxfam so to come home and do it again for the village…..c) my best beloved who avowed his unstinting support, has been very busy on rehearsing for the (bloody) Pirates of Penzance.

So, having got the whinges out of the way, I am actually rather excited about tomorrow.

Thanks to very nice friends with a large dry barn, we had somewhere to put the books to get sorted. ( I am not sure anyone would have wanted to buy the 2002 edition of Who’s Who so along with quite a few others, it got sent to the recycling.)

My bee palace new friend was a star and spent many a (happy?) hour putting books into categories, and his wife was a font of all wisdom – having done it before.

I bribed and tarted around various local supermarket staff to get the requisite number of banana boxes in which to display the books and all was well.

Then we took them all – with helping hands – to a village hall to await their move to the Legion. (I am tempted to go on a riff about how surprised the French Foreign Legion in deepest Algeria, or somewhere, would be if they got the two boxes of old cricket books and the complete set of Penny Vincenzi hard back novels, but I won’t.)

At this point I had thought there would be a phalanx of young men to move them onwards. But it looked otherwise. And worried that a few middle-aged people would have to carry endless boxes of books around the corner and up the lane, I got worried.

So, in the pub on Friday, I asked any likely person ( as in under the age of 75) if they were free the following morning and could they? Would they? Etc etc.

And do you know what, we had those books moved in an hour. Hannah, who I had never met before, turned up with her dad’s wheel truck and, with Harry, the son of someone we know from the pub, moved a mountain of books. …..

I was expecting to be there all day so imagine my surprise when we were all done by noon.

And, I would like to say at this point, there were 91 banana boxes of books.

Then I made Sarah, the font of all wisdom, stay behind and help me count the boxes (for the record) and, and this is where I have to confess, to make a display of red-covered fiction books along the front of the stage.

In my defence, it makes it all look rather good.

Tomorrow we shall see whether all this adds up to a good sale.

Edith

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Amongst a donation last week was a book which is called ‘The Place Names of Warwickshire’. The spine has that printed on it and ‘English Place Names Society XIII’ and the crest for Cambridge Press.

I put it to one side as it seemed arcane enough to be worth checking out and – as my frequent reader will know – arcane often equals value one way or another.

A couple of days later it was in a small pile of books I needed to check out and so I opened it to get the publications date etc etc.

Imagine my surprise when I found there was no printed book but the hand-written life story of Edith Chadwick Holmes. At least I think that is what her name is, as the handwriting is hard to decipher.

The first entry is January 6th 1941 and she says she is writing it ‘Just because I have nine grandchildren who like most children just xxx for true stories and are ever curious to hear past histories & habits of their grown up relatives. I am daring enough to write about myself on this, my seventieth birthday, it seems a big age written down & quite startling (?) Now then, the big question is, shall I think backwards into the past or start right from the beginning. I suppose it is right and proper to start once upon a time a baby girl was born on the Epiphany 1871.’

And the last entry is January 30th 1956 which starts, ‘Here I am now age 85 & am wondering if it is worthwhile adding to this account of my simple life, but I hate to leave anything unfinished. It is too wet and cold for gardening so xxx where I left off.’

The final words in the book are ‘and then on to my dear Chad’s death in 1921.’

In the back of the book there is a sort of fixed envelope which would I think, should, if the book had been really printed, have had a map for the place names of Warwickshire.

In it I found some small pages of a notebook written by Edith and starting to tell of her sailing to Durban.

There are also some notes in a different hand, titled Mother’s Story and starting ‘Dad died 27th March 1921’ and I presume is more of the story, retold to Edith’s son or daughter.

If I had the time, I would work my way through the book and notes and transcribe them but I think that is a job for someone researching the family history.

So, I have been looking to find some trace of Edith Chadwick Holmes and I started with the Mormon site – free and very good in the past.

But nothing.

Her parents were Frank and Jane Sophia Fagg of Canterbury, but I cannot find them either.

I presume her beloved Chad was a nickname based on Chadwick Holmes, but I am not sure.

I am not sure either,from glancing though the book,  that Edith’s life was extraordinary but I love the sound of her voice and would like very much to have someone cherish it.

But who, and where, and how? Again, I am not sure I will do the work and it maybe that Edith sits on a shelf in Oxfam until someone picks her up and has the interest and determination to tell her story.

I will have another go at looking for her in the records – not just now though because I have to make supper.

(Just in case you are interested, I am told that sometimes publishers would print and bind a book with blank pages and send to the prospective author and ask him (usually) to fill in the pages. It was an inducement to get the book done. And the book was written and it was published.)

Beepalaces and book sorting

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As a diligent reader, you may have remembered that I have been volunteered to run the bookstall at the village festivities in May.

This coincided with the fact that we can no longer send our culled books onto another shop – it has closed.

I am going to forgo the brackets – because I over used them in the last blog – but I will explain.

In order to keep the shelves in an Oxfam bookshop looking fresh and interesting, we cull those that have been around for a while.

Should anyone want to understand this system in detail, let me know and I can provide you with the details…..

Anyway, because we currently have no other shop to send our books to, we have to put them in sacks for re-cycling.

And this came to my attention just as I was volunteered to run the aforementioned bookstall. It doesn’t take Sherlock to work out how this might work.

Yes, indeed, the culled books are currently stacked high in our garage, waiting to be sold to an unsuspecting public in Deepest Sussex and, hopefully, Oxfam and the village will get a 50/50 split on the proceeds.

Stalwarts who have been involved in the bookstall before me, have come to my aid and said they would help, and saying that I might need all the help I could get, and today, a newish friend turned up to sort out what was in the garage.

The sun shined on us and we hefted books and put them in various categories and chatted about this and that.

A successful London businessman, he has ‘retired’ down here and got involved in the most fascinating small business.

He helps a company which is making beepalaces.

Now, I put aside all thoughts of books and their interest when I first heard about beepalaces.

Did you know that most bees do not live in hives? Nor me.

Did you know that there are about 250 types of solitary bee in the UK who don’t make honey or have much of a sting? Nor me

Did you know that an acre of apple orchard needs only 250 solitary bees to pollinate it compared to up to 20,000 honey bees? Nor me.

As I sit here writing this, the sun is setting and very nice it looks too, and by chance, one of those very nice chances, a bee is gently wandering around outside the window looking for something useful to do. I now suspect it is not going home to a hive of thousands of others, but to a solitary bed.

Not least in thanks for the book hefting, and because it is so interesting, we will be buying a solitary beepalace for our garden.

I have to say that our purchases of bird boxes have gone completely unremarked by our bird, but we live in hope.

I also have to say, we have noticed that we don’t have that many bees in the garden but thought it was because bees are in crisis.

Looking at the beepalace website, I think we might have to grow a whole load of new things. Perhaps my newish friend will advise.

http://www.beepalace.com

Decorators

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We had the decorators in Oxfam last week and I could (easily) bore you with how as the only childless volunteer, I went in on Mother’s Day (with the best beloved) to help the ever-patient Oxfam manager get all the books off all the shelves.

I could further (very extensively) bore you with getting them back on the shelves (a much longer and back-breaking business) with a rally of other volunteers on Thursday. (Sorry for all the brackets, but don’t you think ‘rally’ is a good collective noun for volunteers?)

Suffice it to say, that we re-opened on Friday with pretty much all in place, a new table display, a window display and all in all ship-shape and Bristol fashion.

But although the door into the shop had been painted, the door to the upstairs and the one to the back where the books are ‘dumped’ were not, and distinctly shabby they look.

On Monday I was snuffling around the shop (seeing as it is a time for brackets, I will mention this is my third cold in as many months and not welcome) when I saw a man outside looking very intently at the windows and signage.

He came in and introduced himself as the Oxfam building inspector come to check that the ‘works’ had been done.

I said how pleased we were with the newly painted walls and although no customer had walked into the shop saying “ Blimey, what a great re-decoration,” we felt the place looked fresher.

I said that it really didn’t matter that the skirting boards had not been painted, as not many customers were likely to notice those.

But, I said, the doors do look really shabby and let the side down rather. I said (rather disingenuously) that I didn’t know whether the fault lay with the decorators. (I had asked the man still there on Thursday and he had said they were told not to paint the doors.)

I would like to say the man didn’t feel browbeaten, but he did concede defeat and rang the contractors to say, paint the doors, do it when the shop is shut, and do it soon.

Thank you.

(Not much to the outside world but to the small universe that is the Oxfam shop in Petersfield, that means a lot and by the way, despite being only open for two days last week, we took more than £1,000.)

(End of brackets.)

Customer Satisfaction II

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I once found a big old bible in a donation to the Oxfam bookshop where I work.

Actually it was more than a bible, it had other bits but I am no bible expert.

Anyway, it was old, and on the few blank pages it had Peter Gundry married to Sarah Sager in 1765 and then a listing of all the children, their deaths and a family history onwards listing births, marriages and deaths.

It was not worth much as it was – no one these days wants to buy old family bibles unless they have a connection.

So, I decided to try and track down the family because I wanted it to go to a good home and be appreciated.

I just googled their names and lo and behold, they came up in a site which, though it does not advertise the fact, is run by the Mormons who apparently have some belief about ancestors and naming them means they get into heaven – maybe someone will correct me if that is wrong.

I found out where they were married, Calne in Wiltshire and then spent some weeks tracking down anyone who was researching their history.

Family history sites want you to sign up and pay and don’t give out information – all very well and proper, but not much use to me.

Then I was idling away and hour or so on this research whilst making supper (a risotto should you ask) when I came across an email attached to a search about Gundry’s.

So I contacted the woman whose email I could see, and yes, she was looking into Gundry’s, though another branch.

But she bought the bible and promised me that if she could locate the right branch of the family, she would pass it to them and if not, she would hand it over to some family history archive.

It was a good when I found her name, and the risotto was not bad either.

IMG_0494

Customer Satisfaction

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I think I may have mentioned that our Oxfam shop has gone from being in the doldrums and not doing very well at all, to being classed as ‘outstanding.’

(I may have to mention this once or twice again – we are very pleased with ourselves.)

Previously we had an area manager who had, shall we say, very definite views on how things should be done and was very definite about the absolute need to do them that way.

Then we had her replacement who said more along the lines of ‘ don’t know if that idea will work, but give it a go and see.’

Now our sales are up by 17% etc etc.

Anyone with a management development background or just a smidgen of common sense will know that this is not rocket science and a dictatorial management style is only of any use in very limited circumstances.

Should any Army officers be reading, I am sure they could fill us in on when that style is not only advisable but necessary – but an Oxfam bookshop is rarely going to fall into any of his/her categories.

But I didn’t mean to go into a long essay about management styles, I wanted to mention some of the satisfaction you get when you work in the shop.

I was upstairs the other day and the intercom phone buzzed and a colleague said there was a man in the shop looking for any books on Nordic history.

Not something we get a lot of. However, I found a book written in Danish on Nordic gold hordes which I had put to one side because the pictures were lovely and I thought we might be able to sell it in a display on art books.

I went downstairs and found a young man looking like as horny-handed son of toil who looked at the book doubtfully – as well he might.

“ Mmm,” he said, “not quite what I was looking for.”

I asked him to tell me what he wanted in some more detail and then we would take his number and if I can across anything more useful, I would call him.

“Runes,” he said. He told me he was carving runes and wanted some images to copy and use as research.

So, I went back upstairs to look on the shelves where we put ‘esoteric’ – a term which covers anything from ghost stories and angels-spoke-to-me books to Australian ley lines. (Actually had he wanted any of those books, we had copies.)

The trouble was that a landslide of donated books needing gift aiding were in the way, so several hundreweight of books had to be shifted to get to the shelf and no, there was nothing on runes.

I went to head back downstairs when the colleague who had helped me shift the books said, “Wait!”

And of course, dear reader, there it was – a small book with detailed drawings and picture of runes.

The book cost the customer £2.49 but it gave us all a lot of satisfaction.

Celery and AA Milne

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I find it sometimes depressing how many donated-to-Oxfam books I throw away instead of taking them home to read.

But you can’t read all of them – and I could almost feel as if I have read all the Waverley novels by dint of the number I have touched and, I afraid, consigned to recycling.

Also, as I have said before, there are a lot of books that never should have been written – including the complete oeuvre of Jeremy Clarkson.

Anyway, I did, one day recently, pick out a small book by AA Milne. Although I knew he had written more than Pooh books, I had never read anything else by him nor really come across anything.

So, when I found it lying in amongst some dog-eared Jane Austen I bought it.

It is called ‘Not That It Matters’ and is a collection of essays about all sorts and not much.

(I would be tempted to say something about how these could have been great blogs if that wasn’t such a crass statement, so I won’t – but of course they could have.)

One is about eating celery and is called, ‘A Word for Autumn.’

This is how it starts:

‘ Last night the waiter out the celery on with the cheese, and I knew that summer was indeed dead. Other signs of autumn, there may be – the reddening leaf, the chill in the early-morning air, the misty evenings – but none of these come home to me so truly. There maybe cool mornings in July; in a year of drought the leaves may chance before their time; it is only with the first celery that summer is over………..

‘There is a crispness about celery that is of the essence of October. It is as fresh and clean as a rainy day after a spell of heat.’

I am so enamoured of AA Milne’s writing that I am tempted to type out the whole essay but I will desist. (After all supper calls.)

I like this essay – ad many of the others – because it says so much about the social mores of 1928 and the expected reader – of course you would be somewhere where your celery was given to you by a waiter.

Further on he writes about how outraged he is when a fellow diner – ‘Another diner came in and lunched too ‘ – who reached across and took the celery.

After some explanation of how he had been keeping the ‘sweetest and crispest shoots till the last, ‘ he turns to the fellow diner and celery-stealer – ‘He realized later what he had done and apologized, but what good is an apology in such circumstances?’ ( interesting that AA Milne or at least his publisher, used American spellings)

I also love it because it says so much about how to write well about nothing much – something I would love to be able to do.

And finally, I like this essay because it reminds me that celery was once seasonal.

Being a bit of a foodie in my spare time, and having lived sur le continent I like to think that I do seasonal stuff – asparagus in its time, lamb in spring but mutton in autumn etc.

But celery is always in my fridge, I love the stuff and had completely forgotten that in my childhood it came in autumn and was not around in summer.

So, I sit here in March looking out on a great sunset after a hail-storm and after I have heard the first larks on the Downs and am ashamed.

But I am going to make celery gratin tonight and eat it with relish.

Katharine Adams

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So, I was tracking down a book-binder in the hope that I had lit upon a book-binding treasure.

I contacted the Society of Bookbinders and asked them, and a very nice man called Mel emailed back to say he thought he recognised the signature, but would consult with a man who would know.

It turns out the lovely little book (see below) that I wanted to take home and stroke, was bound by Katharine Adams.

She was born in 1862 and her childhood friends included the daughters of William Morris and she moved in the Arts and Crafts movement circles.

Eventually she established the Eadburgh Bindery in Gloucestershire and employed two women assistants. (Apparently it was difficult for women to get into book-binding in those days because male book-binders were not keen to apprentice them.)

Not surprisingly then, she was largely self-taught and made her own tools to make her bindings which were usually intricate, with fine gold details.

She exhibited around the world and became president of the Women’s Guild of Art and she died in 1952 having completed about 300 bindings.

And we have one of them in the shop. It is not intricate and detailed, but it is lovely.

The man who identified her mark, might be interested in buying it but I can’t ask a potential seller to value it, so now I have to find out what it is worth and sell it.

According to the UNHCR, about nine million Syrians have fled their homes since the outbreak of civil war, taking refuge in neighbouring countries or within Syria itself. More than three million have fled to Syria’s immediate neighbours – Turkey, Lebanon, Jordan and Iraq and more than six million are internally displaced within Syria.

Here is a link to some of their stories http://data.unhcr.org/syrianrefugees/syria.php

IMG_1135 So, we need Katharine Adams to raise as much money as possible.

Oxfam Bumper Week Part II

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As I had the Old Book Expert in the shop with me – checking the value of the £700 book ( see previous blog if you are interested) – he said we could together go through the teetering pile of books that I could not value.

Of course, most were nowhere near as valuable or exciting as I had thought, but one was really interesting.

Another thing you may not know about books, is that sometimes it is the binding that matters – not the book.

There are very famous binders and they leave a very tiny mark on the book – so small you can easily miss it.

It is one of the many interesting things I have learned from the Old Book Expert and here was a lovely little book.

It was something you wanted to hold in your hand. It was soft and smooth and it had a binder’s mark.

The book, he said, was of no interest but that didn’t mean much. Often bookbinders will just take a book and bind it for the sake of having a nice bound book.

The mark looks like it is Arts and Crafts style and the date is right but is it the work of an amateur who has created something very nice indeed, or is it the work of someone well known in that period and worth a lot?

We don’t know.

So, I have contacted The Society of Bookbinders in the hope they can enlighten me but it seems they are not people who feel the need to read or reply to emails with any great speed. That, no doubt is because they practice a craft which is slow, carefully done, craftsmanship – and they don’t feel the need to respond to some woman from an Oxfam shop.

We will have to wait and one day I shall find out if this delightful, gorgeous little book is worth a lot or a little.

If it is a little, it will be bought by me and stroked of an evening.IMG_1127

Finally, of this bumper week of Oxfam excitement a signed copy.

I am not sure I really understand the interest in signed copies of books if they are not dedicated to you or someone really famous like Dickens, but they do sell so I have one of my many boxes dotted around the upstairs rooms of the shop assigned to signed copies.

I found The Gate of Angels by Penelope Fitzgerald which was signed. I am a huge Fitzgerald fan and she didn’t write a lot of books – but each one is a jewel as far as I am concerned.

So, for the first time, I was interested in a signed book even though I had never met her and she had certainly not signed it for me.

I was going to push the boat out and pay the £10 I thought it might be worth.

There is currently only one for sale on the internet – hardback and first edition – and it is nearly £700.

Now, before we all get too excited, it is from an American seller and they always inflate the prices and I think s/he may also have inflated the price because s/he has the only one for sale.

Even so, it won’t be coming home with me anytime soon.

So, if you know the bookbinder with the mark in the picture, please let me know and if you want to buy

The Gate of Angels for, let’s be generous, £500, do let me know.

You can’t judge a book by its cover

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Once I realised that heady amounts of freelance work were not going to come my way in Deepest Sussex, I decided to make myself useful.

I looked around and saw the Oxfam bookshop was looking for volunteers.

I had always liked the idea of working in a bookshop but I thought more in terms of a venerable shop, owned and run by a venerable white-haired man with wonky venerable floorboard and lots of rare volumes.

Oxfam, I thought, would be more John Grisham (who actually is a great writer) at one end of the shelf and Joanna Trollope at the other.

I know that sounds snobbish but, be honest, what do you think when you think ‘charity bookshop’?

Anyway, we were both wrong.

It is fascinating – a whole lot more complex and interesting than I had thought.

If you become my regular reader, you will hear more about the Oxfam bookshop but here is just a taster.

Somewhere in the not too distant geography, there must be a retirement home for clergymen ( and perhaps some women) and they die. This means that every now and then we get a large donation of religious books: A Prayer for Every Day for Young Folk; Where Jesus Lived – 100 Images of the Holy Land; Finding God in the Countryside……

About one in three of these collections has a copy of the Karma Sutra ( with illustrations.)

At first I was surprised, now I look for it.

On that note, I found a book the other week called ‘A Fanfare of Strumpets.” Isn’t that a brilliant book title?

Whilst we are on the subject, we have a collection ( gathered from various donations) of 19th and early 20th century (mild) erotica. We have been wondering whether we could contact the other Oxfam bookshops in the area and ask them to send us what they get – they cannot , obviously, sell them in their shop – so we can amass a collection and sell to a dealer.

Petersfield Porn Emporia………….