Why This Is Hell

Collecting

Sat, 26 Mar 2011 23:37:31 GMT

As far as I can tell, I have now got all the Shakespeare titles in Arden 2 -- having recently found a Love's Labour's Lost and now a Pericles and assuming there is no separate edition of The Sonnets. If I want The Two Noble Kinsmen I need to turn to Arden 3 (or possibly 4).

I am tempted to turn to Revels Editions, and indeed found a cache on Thursday, but they were mostly £6 each. Since I am unlikely to ever actually read them, this seemed a little excessive. I did pick up a The Alchemist, which I studied at ... A Level and didn't have a copy of. I need a better list, to check which I have already and some pricing research, although the two pound rule may be invoked.

I think I am up to seven copies of The Thirty Nine Steps, each of them a distinct edition. Six to go. The hunt continues.

I note also I have have been saying, "This used to be a bookshop" a lot this week.

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Expotition: Tate Britain and Putney Bridge But No Thames Path

Sat, 12 Mar 2011 22:50:07 GMT

I noticed the Muybridge exhibition had a warning about nudity - in photos the size of a matchbook. Some things are clearly sensitive.

Today I'd planned to see the Watercolours exhibition at t'Tate and may be the Bridget Riley, plus a visit to Oxfam and Hurlingham Books in search of copies of The Thirty-Nine Steps. I figure, what with watercolours being all chocolate box and all, an early arrival would get me ahead of the crowds, and an 8.00am train would see me arriving as they opened. A 7.30 train would see me have time for a coffee. But that would require me getting up at 6.30, unlikely on a weekend and double so since I got to bed at 2am.

Hollow laugh. After four hours' sleep I was awake in plenty of time and caught that train.

Even at 10.10 the exhibition was too crowded, or perhaps it attracted the wrong kind of punter. The punter who not only gets in your way, but pushes in front of you and looks at you as if you've been in theirs. Who come damn close to putting their damn dirty ape fingers on the work. About half of the art was what I'd feared - biscuit tins and clotted cream - with the early stuff and late stuff being the best. As with the Moore, the war stuff stood out - and that was what got the great reviews which made me want to see the show. There was an interesting room on developing technique and technology, which came a little late, and Turner kept recurring to give it a boost. The impressive stuff was the Dadd (every blade of grass!) and the familiar Ravilious and Nash, and of course the Tudor miniatures are amazing. Howard Hodgkin, I need to follow up.

But much more striking was the Susan Hiller exhibition - which I had no idea I'd see and which was packageable with the Watercolours. If I'm being honest, I'd say see this first, because you might need the Watercolours to calm you down, because this is a show that came with no warning. (But Watercolours will get busy. It's nice art. Mostly.) I confess I'd never heard of her, but I've seen her From the Freud Museum at Tate Modern (and note she is American, though long resident in Britain). She specialises in ready made and deconstructive art - hundreds of postcards of storms at seaside resorts, the evidence in the boxes, looped films of teen telekinesis, pictures of ships at sea, paintings burnt, sliced and diced, unravelled or deliberately faded in the light. There's a slide show about recording spirit voices, a surreal living room with a documentary about Nebuchadnezzar and faces in the tv signals after close down, dangling speakers recounting close encounters and - most terrifying of all - a film about Punch and Judy worthy of Grotowski and mind blowing. I've been moved, uplifted and transformed by exhibitions before, but never so terrified.

I had to do a bit more of the Tate's art to calm myself - a new hanging of twentieth century art, waving at artists whose styles I recognise now, the latest version of Blake on physiognomy and phrenology. Then a walk to Oxfam, where I score a Love's Labour's Lost (I hope a missing Arden) and thence to a rather good bakery, then the District Line to ...

Parson's Green, rather than Putney Bridge. Planned engineering buggering around - which I'd not thought to check on. And stupidly I turned left out of the station - which should follow the line of the railway south, rather than right, which would have been quicker. But I found a Starbucks, and had a second coffee, which had been the plan on the other route, and eventually I was back on track. And then, as I counted up to 91, I had this awful feeling that the place had closed down.

Fortunately, I looked around the corner, and found the shop. I also realise I've been there before, or at least past it, when visiting someone in Putney. I'm not sure I found it open. Another Thirty-Nine Steps, one novelisation of Flash Gordon.

I decided to walk along the Thames rather than tracing the route I should have taken from Parson's Green - I decided, but failed, as the Thames Path is somewhat inland. I soon gave up and found my way back to New King's Road, and a very slow district line.

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Support Your Local Bookshop

Wed, 02 Mar 2011 00:29:08 GMT

This is interesting: Let's Have a Local Bookshop Year, in addition to the suggestion that you buy a book to give to someone rather than the giveaway which has meant publishers are producing books to give away for free (loss leaders?), which doesn't benefit booksellers or authors (and not publishers, for that matter).

I was going to say I don't have a local bookshop, now that Albion has closed to make way for a second branch of Subway. Albion was part of a chain,albeit a limited one. We had a branch of Methven, which was at least a smaller chain, and stayed open until about 8pm. Now, it's another quasi Italian restaurant, because this town doesn't have enough quasi-Italian restaurants, aside from Little Italy, Pinnochio, Strada, Ask, Zizzis, Pizza Express and Pizza Hut. Now we have a Waterstones and a Wottakers which back on to each other - Sussex Stationers closed last week.

Of course, there's shop on campus, where I get a 10% discount.

We're told that the way in which local bookshops get squeeze ahead is on service. In seven years I ordered three books from them. I'm assuming one of these arrived without any trouble. The other one I ordered that day turned up on a shelf in the shop, and they had no trace of my order. The third one they'd never heard of, and had difficulties in finding online to order the day before publication. The book? Michael Moore's Dude, Where's My Country? Or possible Stupid White Men.

Guess which book was number one on Amazon when I asked them to scroll up through the list?

I would much rather shop local. And shop small. But sometimes, some people don't want to sell.

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White vs Black, Chapel vs Heath

Fri, 25 Feb 2011 16:54:11 GMT

A day trip to London - a painless trip to the Whitechapel Art Gallery; train to Victoria then District to Aldgate East rather than the five changes suggested on Travel Direct. (Why did I not remember that Aldgate East is adjacent to the gallery? I wonder if I've always used the wrong exit despite explicit signage?)

Less painless down to Blackheath - via a mistaken use of self-service checkout at Major Supermarket, whose own brand credit cards work everywhere in the world bar Major Supermarket, and whose divi scheme works neither when I want points but pay by cash nor want points but pay by the same card. There's nothing on the card to scan. I pressed the same button as instructed several times.

Walk from there to Whitechapel station and the Overground - which seems actually somewhat underground to me. Two observations, the announcement that a train will stop at all destinations to West Croydon is misleading if there's nothing on the platform to tell you which these are (and New Cross clearly is one of them, but I wouldn't necessarily know that; I cannot remember how New Cross and New Gate relate to each other) and simultaneous announcements on adjacent platforms make both inaudible. I got there.

Last time I went - I believe the day of the Clarkes - I failed to check for opening times on their website and so didn't know (by looking at the contact page on their website) they closed on Wednesday. This being a Thursday, they'd be open, right?

Wrong.

Closed for half term.

I've now checked their website, but there's nothing telling me that.

Oddly enough, the place just appeared on House Gift, with one of the designers spotting something in their window. It wasn't clear that this was filmed on a Wednesday, but the place was shut. Is the Bookshop on the Heath ever open?

I realised I could get back via Gillingham rather than going back into Victoria, but it was an epic journey and I suspect it shaves off only a couple of minutes.

Today... slept in, bad encounter with door to door electricity rep, and seem to have been answering emails. Have I time to read drafts? I suspect not. Not today, anyway.

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Spot the Secondhand Bookshop

Sun, 06 Feb 2011 19:00:51 GMT

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My New Favourite?

Sat, 29 Jan 2011 23:19:09 GMT

I've been to some odd secondhand bookshops in my time, but this might be a new favourite. There's a pile of Nortons - some of which I have - and some Bradleys - I have not - so a return visit may be engaged upon. Though too late for them to be of use. I settled for Sea of Sargasso in hope I have not although it turns out not to be 1970s, so I was misled, Troilus and Cressida, ditto, ~~appears not to be one I have~~ I have already, All The Devils Are Dead to thrust at people and an edition of the Ingoldsby Legends. Because. More I could have. But I had dragon breath in there.

And I saw a Thanet Gannet.

I need at the very least a bus ride there for a nearby photo op, although the light was perfect on Saturday.

No, the bookshop wasn't in a quarry, actually. It nearly was.

You'd just never know.

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A Tale of One City

Thu, 10 Sep 2009 23:55:21 GMT

Today I decided to hang spring cleaning and, after waiting for postie and the parcel that didn't come (want my Universal Horrors now) I decided to head out to Rochester and the alleged largest secondhand bookshop in Britain (which Barter Books would dispute). The start wasn't good - apparent the station are experimenting with limiting the opening hours of the ticket office, and someone has ripped out the ticket machine (which doesn't sell you the cheapest available ticket anyway) and there are all these posters threatening to rip out your gonads if you board a train without a ticket.

Then the train was late - but just by three minutes.

( Now what I want is, Facts. . . Facts alone are wanted in life. )

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