Monday, September 14, 2009
Night books
Fragments from a bookish dream the other night. I was in the building which used to be known as GOGGS - Government Offices Great George Street - and had acquired charge of a whole lot of old books. One of the shelves on which they were held had a old paper label stuck to it, a long thin thing, old enough that the paper was brown and on the point of falling apart. Carefully remove the label and trundle off to the GOGGS' library with it - an open plan library with lots of brown bookcases around the walls and lots of old fashioned librarians sitting at desks in the middle. Not a computer or internet cafe in sight. Perhaps a bit like the library which used to be in the Cambridge Guildhall when I was little. The librarian's eyes light up at the old label and he says that he certainly does want the books. So I go back to my den and start to fashion a sort of sledge with which to move the books. Sheet of chipboard or some such, maybe 6 feet by 2 feet. Fix a block of wood at one end as a stop and a couple of bits of 2 by 2 as handles at the other. Load the thing up and start trundling around the building. Lots of dark stairwells to navigate with the sledge. Then break to a new scene where I am making a rather more sophisticated contraption to move another lot. And that is about all I can remember, rarely having the energy to commit these things to non-volatile memory properly on waking.
Turning into Howell Hill from the Ewell by-pass today slightly perplexed by the amount of rubbish in the cycling part of the road. Lots of bits of what looked like road stone. Stuff that one notices when on a bike. Also a queue of cars. The cause turned out to be one of those large municipal vacuum cleaners which trundle slowly up and down the road, more or less blocking one carriageway. Now once I had overtaken the vacuum cleaner, the cycling part of the road was clear again. From which one can only deduce that the vacuum cleaner operative had put the vacuum cleaner on in reverse.
But consolation prizes at Cheam. The baker had decided to do currant buns today, and furthermore he had not overcooked them. He does not seem to do currant buns very often and I have had about as much success working out his algorithm of choice as I have had with the Blogger search algorithm - despite trying to start conversations about the former with the lady who sells me the things. And the butcher had an entire calves liver from which to carve my requirements. A thing about eighteen inches long, looking quite a quarter of a very large rugby ball, cut once lengthwise and once cross wise. The flat end presumably butting up against the abdominal wall, the diaphragm or some other organ. The whole covered in a thin transparent skin. Sliced thin, then done to a turn by the BH, that is to say slightly pink. Served with rape seed oil fried onions, cauliflower and boiled potatoes. These last tasting rather well. Tang of the soil about them. Maybe taste the differance, rather than basics - these last having been well slagged off by some survey in 'The Times' last week. The same survey which found that the equivalent basic range from Waitrose was better than anything else - premium range or not. Which, to my mind, rather throws doubt on the survey generally. Its is quite possible that the basic range from a posh shop should be better than the basic range from a formerly posh shop (I can remember when Mr S. was posh and his shop assistants were all men wearing big white aprons). But it seems much less likely that the basic range from a posh shop should be better than the premium range from the same posh shop.
But I was pleased to see that organic ranges fared badly. Cost more and tasted worse. Confirmed my prejudices about organic food being a load of old tosh. Survey clearly spot on to that extent.
# posted by Jim @ 6:28 AM 
