Old Books

Kites,Crows,Owls and Oxfam

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Well if it isn’t lambs it is birds as they might say in Deepest Sussex – if we knew anyone who was actually originated from Deepest Sussex.

We have a pair of kites living round here – no longer as rare as they were – but still a delight to watch soaring and sweeping around the back field.

They are not, in case you are not familiar with kites, small birds. Indeed the dog can look quite anxious and prey-like in certain lights.

But it is interesting to watch the corvids/crows/ravens mob them.

I should be more accurate on what type of corvids they are being a big fan of the book by Mark Cocker called ‘Crow Country.’

Amongst other fascinating stuff about corvids, It tells of the difference between crows and other corvids and explains that saying ‘if your see some ravens they are crows and if you see one crow it is a raven’ – or perhaps it is the other way round …..no, actually crows are sociable.

Anyway, these big kites are circling around looking for prey and out of the woods come the corvids and mob them – swooping around and chasing them off so the ‘poor’ kites heads off for the Downs.

The corvids are half the size of the kites but are quite determined and the kites seem either to be saying, ‘Bloody hell, is it harassment or what?’ or ‘Darling, shall we swoop up to the Downs and circle lazily round there and leave these rather plebeian types to their own thing?’

Whilst on the subject of predators, there is, what I think, is an owl box on one of our trees.

When I say ‘our’, I just mean trees we think of as ours in that they are on our horizon and are the two trees on the top of this blog – of course in fact, they are our landowner’s.

I am sure he knows what he is doing, and maybe the owls like a clear view of the catchment as it were – certainly it is not disguised or protected in any way and, as we say when one of us is washing up, ‘ don’t you think darling, it spoils the look of the tree?’

Remind me to tell you one day of the expensive bird box we put up which had been assiduously ignored by our birds who have then built their nests – insultingly – in the foliage alongside it.

Anyway, the Oxfam bookshop was open on Good Friday only from 10 till 3 so it was short shifts all round -and Joan was on the till in the morning, and I was on in the afternoon.

I had found a lovely book dating from 1941 which was sketches of children and although it was only worth about £3, I thought it was lovely enough to try it at £9.99.

Now Joan and I have a habit of me setting her a book-selling challenge on her shift. A big old bible ( but we had sold those before Easter), a Complete History of Fishing etc etc.

Essentially books I can’t find a place for anywhere else – I leave them on the counter and challenge Joan to sell them.

She looked at the book and although not usually a bibliophile, she was enchanted. That made me up the price to £12.99, and set her the challenge to sell it whilst I was out doing some errands.

In our cabinet – for expensive books (and vinyl as we now call records), was a set of three books called The Birds of Sussex.

(Should there ever be an avid reader of this blog with a good memory, they might recall than I found two of the the three volumes, which of course means they are worth a lot less, and then discovered the third volume under a pile of other stuff.)

Anyway, these books with gorgeous illustrations and I do mean gorgeous, had been in the cabinet for months and months. I was occasionally thinking of culling them and buying them to take home as they are so gorgeous – did I mention before how lovely they were ?

Anyway, (again) I got back from my errands, to find Joan in a high humour.

She had sold the book of children’s sketches – and sold The Birds of Sussex for a princely £100.

Because we were having a short day, I suggested we did not need to cash up once at lunchtime and then again at the end of the day as we usually do, but instead we could carry on through.

‘Oh not on your life,’ said Joan. ‘I am going to get the reading for this shift. You, Lucy, can eat my dust.’

And indeed I did.

I had a nice short shift with good weather and a holiday mood making customers smiley and generous, but no Sussex Birds for me.

Drought and Uncertainty

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Usually I am complaining in a rather martyred way about the amount of books I am clearing every shift at Oxfam, making it quite clear that there is a never ending flood of books that only I am holding back from swamping the shop.

Well, dear reader, it is course not just me by a long chalk – and what is more, at this moment, the flood has turned into a drought.

So, out the back of the shop where we pile the sacks for recycling it is usually just this side of chaos – this week was clear, blank, empty – even, hoovered!

I am not sure what to do with myself if truth be told. Usually whilst sorting books I am complaining ( in a rather martyred way) that I could get on with all sorts of other things to make our shop even more successful if only I didn’t have to empty another ten boxes of books.

But, I have sold the latest collection of erotica to the second-hand bookshop – Oxfam frowns on the idea of selling sex in the shops.

I have put the hobbies and crafts into order – now embroidery books are next to knitting, well away from DIY in a retro/pre-feminist move – and all the books you would ever, ever need to learn how to paint or draw are sitting with each other.

Religion has been sorted into world religions ( in groups, starting with Buddhism and moving alphabetically onwards) with all and sundry other stuff about crystals and angels and spaceship visitations attached on the end of the shelf.

(One day someone is going to buy the massive tome on Dreams and Their Interpretations. I think it may have been around in the shop, one way or another, longer than I have.

Occasionally, I find someone has moved it to the Academic section and, although it protests, I insist on moving it back to Esoteric.)

I have re-ordered the Old & Interesting into blocks of colour – all the blue books, the green books etc etc.

And every time you change the shelves – update, juggle, fiddle, change the front-facing books, you always get more interest in them.

There were two books – dating from the 1960s – about hunting in junk shops.

They have been out on the shelves for months and I was just about the cull them – short as we are of books, standards need to be maintained, or at least upheld more or less  and anyway, they didn’t find my colour-coding plan – when a customer fell upon them with delight. At £1 each she had a bargain and another two books were rescued from the recycling fate.

Someone came in looking for an ‘interesting’ golf book for her son. (Now to my mind there are very few interesting golf books – and all of those were written by P G Wodehouse.)

But such is the drought, that we had none – we who are usually knee deep in golf and cricket books – had none.

After a bit of thought, I persuaded her that a much better idea was the lovely (and it was lovely) hip-flask with St Andrew’s etched on it. Luckily, that was £7.99 of hip flask rather than the usual £2.49 of ‘how to improve your swing’ book.

Upstairs, my stock of book collections is also looking thin.

We still have the box on heraldry and chivalry – based on a generous donation of heraldry books supplemented with anything I can find with a knight on the front.

But we need a centrepiece for the window to go with it, and no one I asked had a suit of armour within their reach….

We have a plan to do a window on the birds and the bees ( no, not a way to sneak in sex) using a few of the lovely bee palaces my fellow volunteer sells. (www.beepalace.com)

But we are short on bee books. Bird books, even lovely ones, are two a penny but there is a shortage, not just of bees, but bee books.

We might have to broaden it out to pollinators and include butterfly books, bat books -hummingbird books at a pinch. But birds and pollinators does not have the same ring to it.

Our manager reckons it is uncertainty about the EU referendum which is causing this drought of donations.

I’m sure in the corridors of power, they are talking about the influence of uncertainty in the referendum, but I bet they are not taking the Oxfam bookshop in Petersfield into account.

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.

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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.