Hello Dolly

 Just this today - from an issue of Melody Maker, June 1970...

And it would have to have been orange, wouldn't it?

Young lady

 

Oh. 

I've reached that age.

I opened the door to the delivery driver, he was very youthful but had the air of a 'young fogey' about him. I like that term - think I first heard it on 'The Big Breakfast', if you remember that Channel Four show from years ago, where there was a regular slot featuring guests whose ages and interests were somewhat at odds with each other. Like, say, a 17-year old who was into George Formby, or a pre-adolescent in a bow tie who collected old clocks.  Anyway, Delivery Boy Man was bright-eyed and  gangly but his thick-rimmed glasses, unruly ginger beard and benign face gave the impression of being a little on the nerdy ticket, and his smiley, respectful demeanour as I greeted him were most endearing.

Then in a chirpy, old-fashioned Cockney bus driver sort of manner he said, as he handed over my parcel (remember, he was only about twenty):

"Here you are, young lady!"

Young lady!  Which, because I am clearly not a young lady and no amount of moisturising could ever give the impression that I am to one of such tender years, means only one thing: old lady.  I have to confess, my heart sank a bit.  I've reached the age when a person at least forty years my junior refers to me in this way precisely because he's thinking the opposite.*   Isn't that weird? But you know it's true! 

Mind you, reflecting on it later, I realised that it would have felt far, far worse, in fact I would be slowly dying inside, had he said, "Here you are, old lady!"  I should just be grateful for small mercies.  

 X Ray Spex: Age (if only it were all the rage...)

* Quick, important caveat: totally different if it's a friend, or someone of similar/senior age saying it, then as a tongue-in-cheek token of affection it's rather nice...

Fully booked

'Disgusted with life, she retired to the society of books' by Rosina Emmet Sherwood, 1888

Today is World Book Day and it would also have been my mum's 97th birthday had she still been alive.  Sadly she died a few weeks after her 70th but still, these two commemorations coincide nicely.   My mum adored books, worked in bookshops for years and even met a man who fell in love with her - although never got to be with her - in the antiquarian bookshop which he ran.   Thanks to her I grew up in a house full of reading matter of all kinds and trips to the library were a regular treat.  If I was off school, in bed with some lurgy or other, she'd bring me a little pile of picture books from there and later, lovely Puffin paperbacks - Moomintrolls and Borrowers to soothe an itchy throat or aching stomach.  

I still recall vividly from childhood the main bookshelves in the living room - about shoulder high to an adult - crammed full.  Non-fiction publications on all manner of topics: fossils, ballet, pondlife, Henry Moore; maps, the Oxford English Dictionary and Roget's Thesaurus, plus well-known works: 'Under Milk Wood',  'The L Shaped Room' and 'Moby Dick', for instance. You can tell what kind of a house it was!

Some of the novels held a special kind of intrigue. I gathered - not quite sure how, perhaps I'd overheard a whispered conversation? - that they were a bit rude.  I furtively flicked through their pages in the hope of stumbling across some titillating treasures.  'Fanny Hill' was one, and 'Women In Love' and 'Sons and Lovers' were there too - but I never did discover their saucy secrets then; I think it's simply because in my pre-adolescent innocence I really didn't know what I was looking for, or at.

Mmm, I remember this cover...

At one end of the uppermost shelf was a broad glass jar, perennially filled with toffees.  Sometimes just cellophane-wrapped plain caramels, sometimes the ones with a little strip of chocolate through their centres to give the exquisite pleasure of a melt-in-the-mouth cocoa reward for all that chewing.  I believed for years that reading and eating toffee always had to be experienced together; I'm sure my mum already did.

At sixteen I got a holiday job in the same little bookshop where she worked and where I had to unpack the new deliveries.  Ooh, the smell of fresh books!  The joy of revealing what was inside those boxes -  heavy tomes with shiny dustjackets and multiple copies of bestsellers-to-be, some not-so-goods too, but always interesting, and the anticipation - like a child's Christmas.

Anyway - although we should honour books every day, surely! - today's date has at least prompted this post and a few words in memory of my late mum, who instilled such a love of reading in me. I could say the same about toffee, but my teeth would never forgive me.

...What are you reading today? 

Broadcast: The Book Lovers