A Bookshop, and Stationary Store

On Sunday, I thought I'd go for a drive, my sister was visiting and I suggested heading vaguely northward.At the outset, I was thinking of taking the Great North Road (these days mostly known as the A1, or A1M), and heading for Thirsk, then meandering over the North York Moors toward the coast. Or maybe heading west toward Carlisle? No definite plan anyway. Then, once on the highway, a thought popped up. Bamburgh! At Bamburgh, in northumbria, there's a mighty castle raised up over the seacoast and countryside, it's everything you might imagine a castle to be. I've passed it en-route to Scotland, many a time, I've watched horses gallop on the beach below it, but I've never, until now, been inside.

North of Newcastle, I left the major route and headed for smaller roads, nearer the sea. I have a fascination for the sea. I love it. I think, maybe, way back, some of my ancestors were vikings, driving their boats onto the beaches of the north-eastern shores of britain. Planning, perhaps another tour of pillaging the monasteries of their treasure. A lot of those Vikings liked what they saw over here, cashed in their return ticket, bought a couple of cows, married  local girls, and lived happily ever after. 

Bookshop? yes, I'm getting there.

Up the coast from Newcastle, you pass castle after castle, castles are everywhere...

Warkworth, for instance,

Warkworth

The twin-arch bridge over the river Coquet has a mediaeval gatehouse at the southern end.

Over 600 years of service 

Alnwick Castle, (Pic via Wikipedia)

 

Dunstanburgh

In Alnwick, however, feeling that it might be time to stop and find a cafe, serendipitous happenstance, I looked out of my window and saw a sign saying Barter Books. So I hooked a quick left into the old Alnwick Station car-park. Barter Books. I first hear of it when the 'Keep Calm and Carry On' poster was being talked about on the radio, apparently it all started when the owners of Barter Books in Alnwick were unpacking a box of second hand books and found, in the bottom, a folded wartime poster. They had it framed and hung it in the bookstore, visitors loved it and wanted to buy it, so they had 'Keep Calm' posters reprinted, the rest is history. The poster was printed by the Ministry of Information, but never went into general circulation. After the war, all the posters were pulped. Or so it was thought. Two seemed to have survived. Then someone found fifteen originals in an old trunk in the attic. But the poster's popularity started with Barter Books. And I, looking for the history, had visited Barter's website, and found their shop to be the coolest bookshop I could imagine, built into an old station, a bibliophile's dream. Writers quotes festoon the place, a huge mural of famous writers adorns the wall, comfortable seats, tea/coffee/cookies with an honesty box, a station buffet serving up meals in the old waiting rooms, leather chesterfields..

Oh my.

Alnwick Station/Barter Books

The front room, bookshelves, tea, coffee, snacks, honesty box to pay.

Keep Calm and Drink Tea!

Writers Mural

 

Book-lover's heaven

A victorian railway station.

Dogs welcome

How many bookshops can you think of with little trains rushing along the tops of the shelves?

All ages welcome

 So Much to Read

Trains, books, Sylvia Plath and Ted Hughes quotes.

 Remembering the names of people of Alnwick Station.

 The old drinking fountain. With dog water bowls.
Thoughtful.

The Alnwick Tenantry Column

On Books.

 To Posterity

When books have all seized up like the books in graveyards
And reading and even speaking have been replaced
By other, less difficult, media, we wonder if you
Will find in flowers and fruit the same colour and taste
They held for us for whom they were framed in words,
And will your grass be green, your sky be blue,
Or will your birds be always wingless birds?

Louis MacNeice, Visitations (1957).


I'll post more, on another day. Need to go to bed now. Beautiful bookshop, visited yesterday.
Also castles and stuff.
Really really tired now, so will do it another day.

Getting High Whilst at Work

 
It was a beautiful summer morning, and I felt like getting high. There are many ways, and none of mine involve burning weeds. I'm more addicted to hydraulic fluids.

Over a period of time, my notebook had been filling with high-level jobs, to be done when the weather was good, and access was possible. Since Steve-the-Painter fell from a ladder, broke both wrists, jaw, skull fracture collar bone and six ribs, one of which went through his lung, we've been kinda officially discouraged from using ladders if any other means of access can be utilised. So I borrowed the Green Machine for the morning.

There are no controls in the basket, unlike in a cherry-picker. It relies on hand signals to a skilled driver below.

It can get to places you couldn't reach with a ladder.

And up close to measure movement cracks. Way back  in the late 1800s, somebody got the footings wrong on this building. The rest of it rises and falls with variations in the ground water in the shale beneath. This end stays still, because it sits directly on rock. So filling the cracks, as someone did about six years ago, with sand/cement mortar, is doomed to fail. Flexible polymer mastics might be better, but I have a plan...

There's a new window to put in here, and a redundant stainless-steel flue to take down.

Another flue to remove.

Roofs to inspect and photograph, pending some alterations.

High level cables to clip, a cctv camera to clean and realign, yard lights to have new tubes, slates to refix, a zillion jobs, or as many as I can achieve in five hours.

Oh.  Earthlings below.
"Beam me down, Scotty"

Hayters Gonna Hayte.

 

A Quiet Street

I live in a quiet street.

 Actually, I live in a fairly crazy street, with shouting, loud music, car chases, sirens, and occasionally, gunfire, in what is considered by many to be the 'badlands' of my city. But for the last year or so, since my mother died, I've been living in her quiet little street, in a leafy, privileged suburb. It's only a mile and a half away in distance from my place, but a huge leap in tranquility. We, (her three sons and one daughter), are trying to sell the house, but so far, no luck. In the meantime, it's a far nicer place to live than mine. 

Except for tonight. At 11 p.m. it sounded as though a war had kicked off. A noisy party in the big old georgian house at the end of the road, and industrial invasion-strength fireworks booming, screaming, rattling windows. Flash-bang!

This went on for an hour, intermittently. The booming music was turned up, groups of yelling people staggered about, there was the sound of breaking glass. I went out when a group lingered a bit too long outside, and told them to..... um. 'Please go away', or a short pithy phrase ending in "off". A few other residents came out, some elderly, to see what was going on. And then.... the police. Six vans in our little street, more, apparently on the other entry to the big house.

 I don't know who called them, but very soon there was a continuous stream of people leaving.

Things went much quieter. A few people argued with police officers, and were offered a free ride in a big white van. One girl took off her shoes and threw them at a police-woman. They gave her some free plastic bracelets and she joined the group in the van.

Eventually, all the vans went. Up the road there was renewed noise and laughing, sound of car doors slamming, engines revving, and two cars emerged, hurtling down the street.  All of a sudden, there were blue lights, and two unmarked cars blocked them off. The laughter then came from the residents as the breathalysers came out. And a police officer searched the cars.  Another police van came to take the drivers away. And, according to the neighbour, there were blue lights flashing on the next street over.

I'm pleased by the thought that some of those noisy revellers will have an uncomfortable night in a police cell, but no doubt the party's hosts will remember their party as 'awesome'.

 

~I'm tempted to go out later, up the road, and anoint the bastard's Audi R8 with paint-stripper, as a mark of my appreciation.

The Morning After the Party -Manfred Mann, 1968.

The morning after the party,
I lay upon my bed
Starin' at the ceiling
And feelin' like I'm dead
 What a lovely way
What a lovely way to start a day

The girl last night that I fancied
Is still drunk on the floor
But in the mornin' light now
Don't look so good no more
What a lovely way
What a lovely way to start a day

Can't find my tie
Can't find my shoes
And there's a hole in the pocket where my money used to be
I've got the mornin' after the party blues
I've got to be clearin' up now
Before my folks return
But my poor head starts achin'
Every time I turn

What a lovely way
What a lovely way to start a day

Can't find my tie
Can't find my shoes
And there's a hole in the pocket where my money used to be
I've got the mornin' after the party blues
Should be clearin' up now
Before my folks return
But my poor head starts achin'
Every time I turn

What a lovely way
What a lovely way to start a day

I Slept Like a Log,

I slept like a log that had been fresh-felled on a rock mountainside, cut through at the foot, falling and crashing through other branches, limbs hacked, draglined through mud, over rocks, to the precipice, hurled, spinning, tumbling to the icy torrents below, rolled, spiked, chained, over rapids, crashing over rock and jams, oh yes, to the lakes, to the chained raft, the towboat, the sawmill, the screaming saws, the scent of resin, the tree's lifeblood, billowing clouds of sawdust, of high flung shavings, as hot steel teeth gnaw, oh gnaw, I'm chained, dragged, hooked toward that line, the spinning toothed debarkers, listen, that saw's howling, a short while ago I was a tree, rippling green in the breeze, filled with calm mountain zen....

And now mutilated, hooked, foot first toward the screaming nemesis.
Planked?
Oh god, please no, not Ikea!


And so, I wake, sweating, the alarm trills and that hook in my ankle ceases its relentless pull. It takes a few moments, for my wakened human brain to realise I'm not a tree.
There is no mountain.



Oh my dreams this week. So much toil, so much turmoil. Dread and foreboding.
In one, though, I got to eat doughnuts. Raspberry ones, hot raspberry.

Oh Juanita? I call your name.

Rolling and tumbling? Down the road I go.

And Now for Something Completely Different!

The first two videos play out continuing aspects of the same story, the third, I just put in because I like it and I think it's fun. Although it continues a theme, cinematographicall from video number 2, the storyline is unrelated.

Olympian

Why are some things olympic sports and others not? How about cabinetmaking... See, he's got a lovely dovetail joint there, but the North Koreans are already inlaying rosewood, and pearl around the lock, Oh no! Gunther's chisel has slipped, it's a nasty gouge, oh my, that will cost him an extra sheet of sandpaper... what? Oh, I see? this year of course, the sandpaper allowance has been reduced, and I think... Yes, the  judges are holding up a finger, he's used up all his chances, poor chap, but! Look! he's converting that chisel slip into a carved decoration on the lid, the north koreans are glancing over, nervous, and oh my, look, the camerounian, always an outsider, this lad's only fifteen, only took up a tenon-saw for the first time a couple of years ago, and he's already starting his first coat of varnish. Well, from here, we'll report further in a little while, but now our cameras are going over to the hundred-meter lawn-mowing finals...."