Why This Is Hell

I have a shelf of Doctor Who novelisations, pretty well all Target editions, presumably numbering somewhere in the region of a hundred, and stretching up to the end of Peter Davison's period, possibly including the odd Colin Baker. At one point it would have been complete, at least in the sense that I had all the novelisations available at that point. It became incomplete when they novelised virtually all the remaining Old Who stories (I'm guessing the Adams stories are the only ones left) and obviously there were Baker and McCoy adventures, plus the missing season. My records of which I have are not as accurate as they might be - I took a short cut when importing them into my database - and I think a couple have gone astray.

Every so often - as in on Thursday - I come across a bookshelf of novelisations, secondhand. A few times I've filled in gaps. It is an incomplete collection.

And that offends me.

On the other hand, I have virtually no interest in reading any more novelisations of Doctor Who, and certainly would not want to get into the Virgin adventures or New Who.

But, still. Offensive. Careless.

*
I notice Arden 3 has an edition of The Sonnets, unlike, as far as I can see, Arden 2.

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.

For reasons which escape me - I suspect to do with looking for horror DVDs - I went to Maidstone again. I'm not sure whether I was here earlier this year or last year (March this year, if photos are to be trusted), and I think the weather was rather mixed last time.

The expotition didn't start well - the trains looked to be delayed - and the new £13 excess on the NSE Travelcard meant the ticket was probably £5 more expensive. On the other hand, I got to travel before ten and I got there half an hour earlier than anticipated. There was a certain amount of drizzle, and I hoped it wouldn't get worse.

I quickly got my bearings and headed onto the main shopping drag, and quickly found CEX, where browsing turned up cheap copies of UFO, Blazing Saddles, Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow, Carrie, The Lookout, Texas Chainsaw Massacre: The Next Generation, Texas Chain Saw Massacre, Ils, The Evil Dead, Cabin Fever and AI: Artificial Intelligence. I was lucky in that I walked straight up to the till, but it was rather odd that the cashier waited until after I'd paid to tell me that I'd have to pay for a plastic bag for Children in Need. Fortunately I had a spare ten pence.

After that, the plan was charity shops and a Caffe Nerd - so I turned down a side street where there were four of them, and saw that the ironmonger shop Fork Handles and Os 4 Candles and Hose has closed down. Shame. Nothing exciting in any of the charity shops, so I cut down a side street and found Caffe Nerd without really trying. However, as this was opposite the shopping mall, Chequers, I thoguth I'd go in there and find something to eat. T.J. Hughes had a cafe and a deal on Beef and Ale Pie, and that sounded perfect - except they'd run out by 1215. Grr.

More charity shops - a local hospice, a Cancer Research, a Barnardos and an Oxfam Bookshop - but nothing I really needed, although I picked up a copy of Coriolanus. And then to the coffee shop, to sit down with a paper. I'd planned to read a book - but I never got that done.

I had a spare forty-five minutes before I planned to leave, so I found the other Oxfam and wandred through Fremlin's Walk, a typically soulless anytown mall. I puttered around HMV, pondering whether to but a ouple of boxsets or not, but deciding in the end they worked out cheaper online, or I could buy them back at home.

I got back to the station in good time for the train - in fact I caught an earlier one. At Ashford the sunset was glorious, though hard ti capture on camera. And back in town, some cheese from the deli and 5-seed bread. Home in time for The News Quiz. If I do go back again, I really must check out the art gallery.


A quiet night in, as tomorrow will be hectic, and I need to decide which of three films to tape Don't Look Now, which I've seen, Patrick, a seventies horror, and The Chidlren's Hour, a lesbian movie from the 1960s. Decisions, decisions.

Between some Kenny Loving (or at least some Kenny Lunching)* and the viewing of a naked Clanger at the exhibition, I popped into various charity shops (all safe) and the library - where I had an accident. Not, fortunately, a catastrophe, merely an accident. The library was selling its 1960s editions of Henry VI I-III and Henry VIII, which, as I rightly judged, I did not have in Arden editions. I suspect we are up to Arden 3 or 4 by now - and from memory the later Ardens were stripping out some of the aparatus for a cleaner reading text and more on performance history. These will do me.

In the unlikely event of needing textual scholarship that is thirty years younger, I can turn to my Norton/Oxford edition and its toilet paper pages. To my surprise, I only have 17, including The Poems (I lent a dear friend The Tempest in 1988. I will not see that again). I don't, it appears, have Richard III, so I don't have all the histories, and I have consistently failed to buy Hamlet. The gaps are mostly comedies and problem plays, some of which I have in Penguin editions. That puts me halfway, and it might be a good set to collect under the £2 rule.


* A vain attempt to appear interesting by means of a private joke.