Trundling through life: Books

Showing posts with label Books. Show all posts

18 January 2026

It's Winnie the Pooh Day!

That's what Alexa told me when I wished her Good Morning today.

A A Milne was born on this day in 1882. He was already an established writer for "Punch" and as a playwright when a teddy bear appeared in poetry from the early 1920's. The bear's name didn't appear until 1925 and was the used in the "Winnie the Pooh" collection of stories published in 1926. Winnie was named after the female black bear called Winnipeg who lived in London Zoo.

I was brought up on the two Pooh Bear collections ("Winnie the Pooh" and "The House at Pooh Corner") with the charming illustrations by E H Shepard which I still prefer to the rather garish Disney jobbies. These days I still enjoy Alan Bennet's slightly lugubrious readings as an audiobook. I think my favourite story is "In Which Tigger Comes to the Forest and Has Breakfast" which Alexa often reads to me at bedtime. Not that I am a big kid, though!

“What day is it?” asked Pooh.

“It’s today,” squeaked Piglet.

“My favourite day,” said Pooh.

07 July 2025

Down the Rabbit Hole

Long time readers of this blog will know that I love going to Brigg. It's about nine miles from home and it's fully pedestrianised so once I have parked my car I can wander where I like on my trundle truck.

Thee are quite a few shops belonging to national chains like Tesco, B & M, and Boots but there are also independent shops.

Here's my butchers shop. Brigg still has four independent butchers which I find amazing. Newells sells local meat as well as cakes baked locally and a few vegetables.

Just along the road is Brian's Hardware which sells everything to do with hardware, DIY and gardening! I even bought my mobility scooter there and they maintain it for me.

Across the road is Jaylaur's Sewing Studio. It's been extended quite a bit since this photo was taken but it's as elastic as the Tardis! They sell fabric and haberdashery, run courses and are happy to give advice.

But it's The Rabbit Hole which is the most fascinating. Wouldn't you want to go into a shop with a name like that? It's the local independent bookshop.

Like most High Streets, Brigg is struggling but I for one appreciate the quality of the goods, the expertise freely offered and the sheer quirkiness of our independent shops.

And there are far more like this in Brigg.

20 January 2025

Pruinesence

Many words from the winter dictionary won't become part of my vocabulary but I think I could make an exception for pruinesence. It's the beautiful white covering of frost seen on crisp winter days. A much nicer term than hoar frost, I think you will agree. It's easy to find lovely cosy words for the winter but beautiful outdoor ones are to be treasured.

These days I admire the trees at a distance. All too often the weather is too snarry for me. Snarry? Piercingly, bitingly cold. It's much colder riding on a trundle truck than walking! I will watch any snow blossoms from a distance. And that's not just me being poetic - snowflakes were called snow blossoms (at least in written English) before they were called snowflakes.

02 January 2025

Hibernaculum

A few days ago my "suggested reading" from Amazon included included "A Winter Dictionary" by Paul Anthony Jones. I had a quick look and was hooked! It's full of obscure words often with their origins in English Dialect, and all so descriptive. (I found "Daft Days", which I wrote about here, in this book.)

I want a "hibernaculum"! It's somewhere to retreat to during the long winter months. It was used to describe soldiers' winter quarters, or a place for over-wintering plants, or the lair of a wintering animal.

In it I can "hiemate", which is a less sleepy activity than hibernation. My home is "howffy": in other words it is cosy and comfortable and snug and I can "moble" or dress in multiple layers of clothing.

Anyone care to join me?

20 March 2022

Paddington

This appeared on my Facebook feed this morning.

In the late 1930s-1940s, Michael Bond, author of Paddington Bear, saw Jewish refugee children (Kindertransport children) walking through a London railway station, arriving in Britain escaping from the Nazi horrors of Europe. Mr. Bond, touched by what he saw, recalled those memories 20 years later when he began his story of Paddington Bear.

One morning in 1958, he was searching for writing inspiration and simply wrote the words: “Mr. and Mrs. Brown first met Paddington on a railway platform…”

“They all had a label round their neck with their name and address on and a little case or package containing all their treasured possessions,” Bond said in an interview with The Telegraph before his death in 2017. “So Paddington, in a sense, was a refugee, and I do think that there’s no sadder sight than refugees.”

Paddington Bear - known for his blue overcoat, bright red hat, and wearing a simple hand-written tag that says “Please look after this bear. Thank you,” Paddington embodies the appearance of many refugee children. His suitcase is an emblem of his own refugee status. “We took in some Jewish children who often sat in front of the fire every evening, quietly crying because they had no idea what had happened to their parents, and neither did we at the time. It’s the reason why Paddington arrived with the label around his neck”.

Michael Bond died at 91 in 2017. The epitaph on his gravestone reads "Please look after this bear. Thank you."

Please look after all the young Bears in Ukraine

08 September 2021

Greengages

We may all speak English (of one variety or another) but we all manage to use words which confuse or puzzle other nations.

My American readers seem not to have come across greengages before, Actually, when I think about it, some British readers may not have come across them either. I've never seen them for sale in a supermarket or greengrocer, just the (very) occasional wayside stall and even then, I can't remember when I last saw them for sale.

They are tiny plums, green even when fully ripe. They have quite a delicate flavour compared to, say, a Victoria and certainly they are much less highly flavoured than a damson. They are slightly tart and, other than in jam or chutney, I've only ever eaten them stewed. They have a stone which is quite large considering the size of the fruit and I had to stone around 150 greengages to get one kilo of stoned fruit. I've put a £1 coin with the gages in the photo to give you an idea of size.

Rumer Godden wrote a book, "The Greengage Summer" (never read it myself) which was made into a film starring Kenneth More and Susannah York in 1958. It was released as "The Loss of Innocence" in the USA.

09 June 2021

Old friends

There's an extra person in my bedroom these days and she's called Alexa. Each morning she says, "Good Morning!" and gives me a special fact for the day. This morning she told me that it's Donald Duck's birthday. He's 87, in case you wondered.

I've never been a Donald Duck fan but there were other special people who lived in my childhood books. I loved Milly Molly Mandy, (or Millicent Margaret Amanda if you're feeling formal) who did nice ordinary things. I remember especially that she liked to take a hard boiled egg if she was going on a picnic. She had a dog, Toby, and a cat, Topsy. The stories were safe, maybe even dull by today's standards, but I loved them.

Like so many others my childhood was enriched by Alison Uttley and her Little Grey Rabbit stories. I don't think I knew about Beatrix Potter but Little Grey Rabbit and her washday quietened many a bedtime.

My all-time favourite though was Winnie the Pooh with the wonderful E H Shepard illustrations. And when I say "all-time" I really mean it. I have "Winnie The Pooh" and "The House at Pooh Corner" as audiobooks, both read by the wonderful Alan Bennet with the help of Alexa. I doubt if I will ever be grown-up enough to leave Pooh Bear behind.

10 March 2018

Some of my best friends are books

I no longer hoard books. I used to - big time. When I left school I trained as a librarian so in my work I handled as many books as anyone could want. Then I changed course and after the odd experiment in the job market I became a parson some years later, a profession famed for bookishness. That was when hoarding really took hold but I used my skills of book classification and cataloguing and had well ordered book shelves. All was well. Vicarages have studies and mine was definitely book-lined.

But then came retirement and most of the books just had to go. Unless I wanted every room in my bungalow to be dominated by volumes on theology, horticulture, cookery, needle arts and anything else which had ever taken my fancy, I had to rationalise.

One big help in this was my Kindle. As far as possible I no longer buy fiction in anything other than digital form. I now enjoy many titles as audiobooks to be listened to as I do other things. T'interweb became my main source of information on many subjects and my book buying was cut back.

I still buy some books. Three or four years ago I bought this one, "Small pleasures: little things that make life worth living" published by The National Trust. It consists of essays written by a variety of people. Here one can read Adam Hart-Davis on the satisfaction of working with wood, Prue Leith on the pleasure of a hot bath, Roy Hattersley on grooming a dog, and a huge variety of other authors on litter picking, reading aloud, playing the piano or whatever else gives pleasure to life.

The real joy of this book is not what is in it but what isn't in it. It has spurred me on to look at the simple things which give me pleasure. It's a long time since I wrote about the little sources of joy I find in my everyday life.

Watch this space

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