Originally posted by BrilloPad
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How are you? How are your ribs?
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Safe now I'm in Shaw and herself is in Manchester!
How are you? How are your ribs?
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Greetings denizens
Well, that's another birthday gone
It was good enough fun though - I caught up with some friends, and generally had a good time
I was a bit disappointed with the quality of the second-hand bookshops in London - of course they have to pay a lot for their shelf space, but this seems to mean that they sell nothing but extortionately-priced first editions, do that and fill the rest of their shelves with populist junk to keep the cashflow steady, or just sell in a specialist field - nothing like the rich pickings of medium-priced medium-interest stuff I'm used to feeding on
Still, it didn't turn out too badly. For the record, the harvest was:
- Sigh for a Merlin by Alex Henshaw, being the memoirs of the Chief Test Pilot for the Spitfire throughout WWII;
- The Water Gipsies by A P Herbert; although I've read his excellent works Uncommon Law and Holy Deadlock, this was one of his that I'd never got around to before; and it led on to a run, for next I found:
- [I]A.P.H.[I] <- CUK resolutely refuses to accept those italic tags, which are in upper-case in the editor, being the autobiography of A P Herbert ('My first cry, the doctor says, was "I told you so"'); and a few moments later (these were all on separate shelves in one of those shops that doesn't bother organising things too much) I found:
- What a Word! by A P Herbert, being the collated results of a campaign he carried out in the columns of Punch against horrid usages of language; by opening the book at random, I find the sentence "The Irish Free State had held out the olive branch but nothing of a concrete nature had come out of it."
- Sound Barrier by Neville Duke and Edward Lanchberry, being a pretty thorough examination of the history of supersonic flight up to 1953 (the book's year of publication), replete with diagrams;
- Remember Laughter: A Life of James Thurber. If you don't know who James Thurber was, you have lived a very poor life. Even our own beloved Carling Wotsit referred to "Chasing the Aurora" as "a Walter Mitty character" the other day; I suspect that she may not actually know that Walter Mitty was a character invented by James Thurber (in his short story The Secret Life of Walter Mitty), but it shows that Thurber left a mark on the zeitgeist that persists to this day. His cartoons were wonderful too
And that's the lot. Something for me to do with my new reading glasses, I suppose
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Glad you had a good one.
Only another 364 days until the next one!
Btw, I'm interested in the history of supersonic flight book!Comment
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Morning all
Where are we going? And what’s with this hand basket?Comment
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Glad to hear you had a good-unOriginally posted by NickFitz View PostWell, that's another birthday gone
It was good enough fun though - I caught up with some friends, and generally had a good time
Where are we going? And what’s with this hand basket?Comment
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Hello?Where are we going? And what’s with this hand basket?Comment
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Morning all
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Where are we going? And what’s with this hand basket?Comment
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Morning all...
In a reaction to the energy jobsworth, I now have every light & pc switched on in both labs...
Childish, moi?Comment
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Oh.
And two laser printers.
Plus an electric fan to keep me cool.
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