Tag Archives: books

IT’S YOUR TIME

May 10, 2012 By in WORDS Tags: , , , , , 10 Comments

In the waiting room at Worcester Park station, the Worcester Park Station Volunteer Group have organised a “book swap library”.

Users of the station are invited to take a book, enjoy reading it and then replace it when finished. People with any old books they no longer need can leave them on the bookshelf for others to read.

The Worcester Park Station Volunteer Group have produced a sign to explain the concept. Look, they’ve used Calibri:

Here is the Worcester Park Station Book Swap Library:

Here is a sample of the top shelf selection of books:

From left to right:

  • The Doorstep Girls by Valerie Wood
  • How To Study by Harry Maddox
  • Always There by Pamela Evans
  • something by Edith Pargeter
  • The Au Pair And Nanny’s Guide to Working Abroad by Susan Griffith & Sharon Legg
  • Harden’s UK Restaurants 2004
  • Letting Go by Ann Richardson and Jane Ritchie
  • Before I Say something by Mary Higgins Clark
  • Lonestar Sanctuary by someone or other
  • something Tower by someone (site)
  • something by Beryl
  • something by Danielle Steel

Here is a sample of the second row of books:

From left to right:

  • The Gripes Of Wrath by Simon Carr
  • Season Of Passion by someone
  • Driving by the Department Of something
  • The Country Canal by Ronald something
  • There’s Always Tomorrow by Pam Weaver
  • I, Judas by Taylor Caldwell and Jess Stearn
  • After The Fire by Belva Plain
  • Methods Of Social Research by Stacey something
  • something And Administrative Law by someone Smith

As I passed through the station the other day, I noticed a small note taped to the bookcase:

When I saw this letter, I thought it was one of the loveliest things I’d seen in a long time. A group of volunteers had decided to set up a book swap in their local train station. They did this for the simple reason that they thought it was a nice thing to do. Someone else saw the book swap, and donated a book to the library – “It’s Your Time” by Joel Osteen. Then, a third party came along, saw the book on the shelf, took it home, read it and was so moved she wrote a letter and taped it to the bookcase.

It was a beautiful illustration of human co-operation I thought. I posted a photo of the letter to Twitter. “Lovely letter taped to the book swap shelf at Worcester Park station” I tweeted.

The response? People pointed out the spelling mistakes in the letter.

Monsters.

CHARLES UNWIN: PART TWO – CONTACT

January 25, 2010 By in WORDS Tags: , , , , 17 Comments

Back in November, I wrote about a private pilgrimage I made to a house in Camden. I went there after buying a book called Short Letter, Long Farewell by Peter Handke from a secondhand bookshop on Berwick Street. Inside the front cover, written in pencil, I saw the following:

I went to 9a Regent’s Park Terrace.

I wondered who Charles Unwin was. He had once owned this very same book I now owned. We had an odd kind of connection. Something which had once been in his house, in his hands, was now in my house, in my hands.

Just after Christmas, someone called Ian Rowbotham left a comment saying:

I know exactly who this person is. I don’t think I should write anymore for now, save to say he is a great reader and buyer of second hand books. I have been dragged into several antiquarian booksellers’ over the years, and been the grateful recipient of many an intriguing, if tatty, volume.

I emailed Ian and asked if he’d mind forwarding my details on to Charles Unwin. Very kindly, Ian agreed to speak to him and gave me Charles’ email address. I sent Charles an email, including a link to the original blog post and asking if he remembered buying the book originally. I received the following reply:

Dear James,

I bought the book from Smith’s, a large secondhand bookshop in Reading. So, I was almost certainly not the first owner. I imagine I bought it during the second half of 1980. I tended to write my address in books at the time, partly because I often left them behind on public transport never to see them again.

I have to confess that I never read the book. After having kept it for 20 years without even looking at the first sentence, I thought I was unlikely ever to read it, so I took it to a charity shop. I have no recollection of Siroco’s or Parikia – that card was probably inserted by a subsequent owner.

You are silent on whether you have read the book yourself – ideally, I think, it should have been owned by several people, none of whom got beyond Page 1.

I hope this is helpful. Good luck in your attempts, if any, to track down the other former owners.

Regards,

Charles Unwin

And so it seems my imagined biography of the book was almost completely wrong. Charles Unwin wasn’t the first person to own it, he never went to Parikia. Charles never even read the book. There are still some unanswered questions though. Which charity shop did Charles take the book to, roughly twenty years after he originally bought it? Was it an Imperial Cancer Research shop? And how did Ian Rowbotham find my blog anyway?

I like Charles’ idea of a book owned by lots of different people, but never read by any of them, although I feel slightly guilty because not only have I read the book, I’ve actually read it two and a half times.

I read it originally back when I first bought it; in a slightly confused, feverish state. Then, in November I started reading it again and when I was about halfway through, I noticed the inscription on the inside front cover. I decided to go to 9a Regent’s Park Terrace. Having decided to do this, I went back to the beginning of the book and wanted to see if there was some way of tying the plot together with this idea of mine. But in the end, I hardly mentioned the content of the book itself.

I recently read 84 Charing Cross Road by Helene Hanff. I thought what she says here is lovely:

I wish you hadn’t been so over-courteous about putting the inscription on a card instead of on the flyleaf. It’s the bookseller coming out in you all, you were afraid you’d decrease its value. You would have increased it for the present owner. (And possibly for the future owner. I love inscriptions on flyleaves and notes in margins, I like the comradely sense of turning pages someone else turned, and reading passages some one long gone has called my attention to.)

And although Charles Unwin never actually turned the pages or called my attention to any particular passages, his inscription (however functional it may be) increased the value of this book, for me at least.

It’s a good book, Charles. I can lend you a copy if you want.

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APOCALYPSE

December 17, 2009 By in WORDS Tags: , , , , , , , , , , Leave a comment

The last three posts on here have all been Christmas related. There’s a reason for that; it’s nearly Christmas. But, to be honest, I haven’t really spent all that much time thinking about Christmas yet, even though it is alarmingly close. Instead, I’ve been thinking about the end of the world.

This wasn’t a deliberate anti-Christmas reaction. It just sort of happened accidentally. The last two books I’ve read have both been about what to do in the event of an apocalypse.

The first of these books was Enemy Of Chaos which I’d bought a couple of months ago, after seeing Lelia at Interesting2009 and then reading this interview she did with Greg. When I read that interview, I got interested in the idea of Choose Your Own Adventure books (or rather, got interested in them again – I’d been a big fan as a child) and had some vague idea of doing something similar but based absolutely in the real world, and where all your choices are really mundane and have very little impact on the outcome (then I found out about Life’s Lottery and thought the idea had already been done. However, having just finished – at least I think I’ve finished – reading Life’s Lottery, the idea isn’t quite the same, the choices you make do have an impact. But then I discovered this and gave up on the idea).

In Enemy Of Chaos, depending on which path you choose, you are confronted with a number of different visions of the apocalypse (nuclear, zombie, world flooded with wax by stillness obsessed Madame Tussauds) and as it is a Choose Your Own Adventure, you have to decide what to do. How to survive. How to save the world. You.

Instructions For The Apocalypse takes the opposite approach. Rather than leaving you to make your own decisions, the book features a list of instructions Gareth Gray has prepared for his daughter to help her in the event of the “dissolution” (a series of political and environmental disasters which he predicts will take place shortly). These instructions are dotted in and amongst a transcript of a tape recording Gray also left for his daughter.

I found out about this book when one of the authors emailed me and asked if I wanted him to send me a copy. I like free stuff, so I said yes. It’s a collaboration between Rod Sweet (words) and Tim Williams (pictures) and features a series of found photographs treated in various ways.

2. Choose a location that is hidden and easy to defend. Your best defence will be obscurity. Avoid places where passersby are likely to come upon you by chance, or where you can be watched from a main thoroughfare. Consider natural obstacles like water and mountains.

13. You’re going to need people who know how to make shoes. You’re going to need people who know how to make rope. You’re going to need people who know how to kill quickly and quietly. And you will have to train them.

28. Be prepared for a variety of adverse environmental conditions. Radioactive contamination. Temperature fluctuations. Learn how to purify water in a radioactive situation.

31. Cutting. Sawing. Joining. Welding. Sharpening. Pots.
How are you going to mend pots?

The instructions highlight the main problem I have with the idea of life after the apocalypse. It sounds like a lot of work.

I guess I just don’t have much of a survival instinct. I’m not willing to struggle and fight. If I found myself in a slasher movie, I’d hope to be picked off fairly early rather than end up as the final girl. It just seems too much hassle. Surely the only appealing thing about the end of the world is that you don’t have to go to work any more. If you have to bloody barricade yourself in a supermarket and fight off hordes of zombies, or battle against selfish bastards convinced every other survivor is a threat, or learn how to grow your own crops and raise cattle, it suddenly doesn’t seem so appealing.

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CHARLES UNWIN

November 7, 2009 By in PICTURES, WORDS Tags: , , , , , , , , , , 20 Comments

Either late last year, or early this year (I can’t remember which, I know it was cold), I wasn’t feeling well. I left work early, but couldn’t quite face getting the tube, so wandered around in a bit of a daze (thinking about it now, it must have been early this year; if it had been late last year, there would have been Christmas decorations everywhere).

I found myself in the newly opened Book Exchange on Berwick Street. Being newly opened, they hadn’t finished putting all the stock out, and the shop was half empty (ever restless, as soon as the shop was fully stocked, they moved everything downstairs. They sell clothes upstairs now).

I bought this book for 50p:

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Inside the book, someone (I assume Charles Unwin) has written this:

I’m not sure what the “902″ refers to. The “40p Wk1″ is in reference to the price which someone, probably the person who owned the book immediately before me, paid for it in an Imperial Cancer Research shop. I know it had previously been sold in an Imperial Cancer Research shop because I found this receipt in the book:

15-10-01. Good lord. Whoever had bought it previously had done so more than seven years earlier. Who was that person? Charles Unwin? I doubt it. The book must have passed through several hands since this edition was originally published in 1978.

The habit of writing your name and address in the inside cover of a book is one which has apparently died out (I base this on nothing more than anecdotal evidence; when I’ve noticed these inscriptions in other books, they always seem to be a bit older. Newer books remain anonymous). My guess is that Charles Unwin must have been the original owner of the book (would someone buy phen375, a book secondhand mark it in that way?). He probably bought it in 1978 or maybe 1979. I hope he liked the book. But who was he? Googling the phrase “Charles Unwin” (in quotes) brings up 15,000 results. Which one is he?

There’s an actor called Charles Unwin, but he was only born in 1973. It can’t be him. Could he be the Charles Unwin who the Queen was so graciously pleased to appoint as an Officer of Her Diplomatic Service on the 6th Febrary 1979? Is he the Charles Unwin who would later go on to write this? Maybe he is the Charles Unwin who is friends with a man who calls himself Papalaz. A “very clever guy and a great reader“, maybe Handke’s odd little book would have appealed to him. I suppose I’ll never know.

I wonder what 9a Regent’s Park Terrace is like. This is where it is:

It’s an architectural practice now. This is their website.

This is what 9a Regent’s Park Terrace looks like on Google Streetview. In this picture, it’s obstructed by a tree:

This is what 9a Regent’s Park Terrace looks like if you stand outside and take a photo:

I’m not entirely sure why I went there. I suspect it’s actually a slightly creepy thing to do. But once I had the idea of going, I knew I had no choice. I don’t know what I expected to find, and the whole thing was a bit of an anti-climax. It was cold and windy. I didn’t stay there very long. I felt awkward and went and had an overpriced pint of Red Stripe in the Spread Eagle around the corner.

Maybe part of the reason for my decision to make this pilgrimage was that, actually, it didn’t involve much effort on my part. I only had to get the tube to Camden. I didn’t have to fly anywhere. This was also inside the book:

This Wikipedia page suggests this card is also from 2001; the interim period during Greece’s move to “a closed ten-digit numbering scheme”. I’m a bit surprised that a company like Siroco’s (a holiday apartment complex) didn’t have a website even as recently as 2001. They have one now though. Parikia looks a lot nicer than Camden. Maybe I made the wrong choice.

Papalaz moved from London to Crete at some stage. Maybe I could take a tour of the Greek Islands and pop in to see him. He runs a farm. Maybe that’s what Charles Unwin did. Maybe he met up with his friend in the Greek islands. Maybe Papalaz realised he still had that book he’d borrowed from Charles a few years ago, and gave it back. But, then what? Reunited with the book, Unwin stayed a few nights at Siroco’s, read it one last time, and then donated it to his local charity shop? That doesn’t make sense. Of course it doesn’t make sense. I’m trying to squeeze the biographical details of two different Charles Unwins together for no real reason.

What happened to the book between the time Charles Unwin wrote his name in pencil inside the front cover in the late seventies and the time it was sold in an Imperial Cancer Research shop in 2001 remains a mystery. At some point around then, it might have made a trip to a Greek island, it might not have. Either way, a few years later, it was sold in the Book Exchange on Berwick Street for 50p to a man who was feeling unwell.

UPDATE: After writing this blog post, I received an email – see Part Two for more…

PHOTOGRAPH

October 4, 2009 By in PICTURES, WORDS Tags: , , , , , , , , , 4 Comments

Whenever I go back to Ward HQ, which is fairly often to be honest (birthdays, bank holidays, anniversaries, Easter, Christmas and any other excuse Mumward can think of), I usually at some point sneak up to my old bedroom and spend a few minutes going through my bookshelves, slipping a few paperbacks into my bag to take home with me. It’s a slow process, but I am gradually transporting my entire library from Worcester Park to my flat, two or three books at a time.

Those quiet moments, upstairs on my own, form a peaceful respite away from the rest of my family. Standing there, reviewing all these books, it’s almost like I’m buying them again for the first time – my bedroom suddenly becoming an extension of the Notting Hill Book Exchange, or Any Amount Of Books on Charing Cross Road. This time round though, each book has a perculiar link – at one time, I found each of these books interesting. Something about each and every one of these books caught my eye; something made me pick it up, walk over to the counter and pay for it (I am, for the sake of romantic simplicity, overlooking those books I obtained for free – either as gifts, or through stealing). With some, it’s obvious why I bought a particular book; with others, it’s a complete mystery. Sometimes it was connected to a brief obession of mine, inexplicable once passed; sometimes it would be something longer lasting. I rediscover myself by rediscovering these books.

Possibily equally revealing is the question of why I should pick a particular book to take home with me now. Why do I feel the need to revisit that moment of my past rather than any other? Usually it’s a sign that a previous obsession has returned. Shortly after writing about my dream of a holiday from everything, I came home with a copy of Altered States and The Mind Benders. Last time I went back to Ward HQ, it was just after I heard that Keith Waterhouse had died.

This photo was inside the copy of Billy Liar I brought home that day. I guess I must have been using it as a bookmark last time I read it.

Yes – that is me driving.

I’d like to think that the fact that I’ve decided to adopt a left-hand drive position in my bright red car is a sign of my innate cosmopolitanism. In truth, it probably wasn’t due to my youthful Europhilia, but simply because, as a child, cars never played a particularly important role in my life. Dadward was always a reluctant (and not particularly good) driver. We would walk. If somewhere was too far to walk, someone else would drive. If no-one else would drive, we wouldn’t go.

As I look at the picture, I can’t help but feel that it doesn’t really look like I’m having fun. I’m taking it all very seriously. I’m not sure what I’m looking at, but it definitely isn’t whoever is taking the photo (I assume it’s my mum, I’m avoiding her eye as she crouches with her camera). I have no idea what those two yellow fins in the bottom of the picture are part of, but I suspect I’m jealous of whoever got to sit in it. I’m stuck in this shitty red car.

The fact I appear in the picture allows me to date it quite accurately. I must be about five years old there. I was born in April 1981. That means this photo was taken in the summer of 1986. 1986! Seven years into the Thatcher government. A year after Live Aid. It was the mid-eighties. But look at those people in the background – that’s not how the mid-eighties have been sold to me. This is supposed to be a time of teenagers in high-waisted trousers driving sports cars; primary colours or moody black and white; textured, volumised hair and mobile phones.

There’s only one person in that photo who appears to acknowledge which decade it is, and she is obscured by the man in the blue suit. Everyone else seems to think it’s the tail-end of the 1970s. I mean, just look at that guy in the burgandy shirt and grey shorts behind me. Who does he think he’s kidding? Surely he should be wearing a linen suit (with the sleeves rolled up) over a pastel T-shirt and a pair of espadrilles (without socks).

Have I been lied to?

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