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

Fifteen

Van Gogh: Vase With Fifteen Sunflowers

Maybe it's about it being near the start of a new year, but there seem to be quite a few 'blog birthdays' around this time and Sun Dried Sparrows has one too.  It's fifteen today!  Who'd have thought it could last so long? On reminiscing, I get a sweet feeling thinking about how my fellow bloggers and I have some very special things in common - that we all went through that decisive moment when we pressed 'publish' on our very first post and that we're still here. We share those experiences of setting up our blogs from nothing, introducing ourselves to an unknown audience, wondering about what, if anything, might evolve from it.  I imagine there will be some who were already comfortable with social media exposure but I wasn't one of them, so it really was oddly nerve-racking, quite exciting and very much an excursion into unfamiliar territory.  

What was it that prompted that first venture into blogging for you, if you do?  For me it was mainly a need to express a side of myself that wasn't getting quite enough of an airing elsewhere.  I wanted to natter about music and art, random interests and reflections on life, and to make it adult (desperately needing to offset the child-friendly side I present in my work...)  Having always loved writing I fancied flexing a few muscles in that department and, well, to just have some stimulus outside of the day-to-day which was purely my own, all with the added reassurance of relative anonymity and undeterred by my natural shyness.   I hoped too, though of course couldn't be sure, that there might be some supportive readers and that I in turn could be one to others whose blogs I admired and enjoyed.  Connection, yes.

And look where it's led.  I'm so lucky to have found, quite organically, a warm, safe and easygoing corner of the internet, happily away from the mainstream, where new friendships have been formed and sustained.  I can now vouch too from having met quite a few that those people are just as warm, safe, easygoing and happily away from the mainstream in real life, and I've no doubt either that those I haven't met are too. 

As with most things, this blog has changed quite a bit over the years and at times I wonder if I've anything new left to say or to do with it, but sometimes something turns up out of the blue. Even when it's a little neglected, I don't want to let it go.  It's here when I want and need it, and so are you.  Thank you, x

PS ~ Trying harder to post something at least once a month this year if possible...so far, so good!

Wire: The Fifteenth

Sunshine

It's ok to talk about the weather!  I don't mind a bit.  So grateful to see the sun in its baby blue sky decorated with just a few whiter-than-white clouds with curly, luminescent upper edges.  Just back from a walk down to the Co-op and everyone looks uplifted.  The passing "hello"s with strangers have a new lightness to them, the brief chitchat with more familiar folk centres around the morning's brightness.  The sun, the sun, our old friend, awol for weeks... or is it months...? is here again and everyone is talking about the weather.  Predictable, yes, but who cares? - it's a place where we can all meet, never mind any other differences, a place of universal communion.  Sunshine, I love you!  Please stay awhile!

And here's one of my favourite songs on the subject...

The Gun: Sunshine

I hope it's sunny where you are too.

Dive right in

It's such a famous bar. We'd read about it, heard about it - and now we were here, on the streets of New York, umming and ahhing as to where to get a drink and shelter from the rain, when we remembered it.  

It was a dull, late morning and the lights of the store fronts were reflected in the sidewalk, a shiny grey mirror of blurry reds and yellows at our feet, as we made our way through straggles of strangers with their collars turned up, hoping we were heading in the right direction.  And then we spotted it, right there on the corner: 'Nosedive'.  That's it - that's the one!  The cocktail bar, the place which had only ever been a name to us and now we were right outside the real thing.  A couple of steps led us up through a small glass door and into the open lounge area, large but not too large to be daunting, dotted with small circular tables, the bar all along one side.  I was struck by the décor - everything a steely kind of blue, the ceiling, the walls, and the little oval signs at various points displaying the name, black on blue in a slim typeface, modest-looking somehow, like it had no need to shout or show off, its fame already a given.  Pendant lights hung low, lots of them at different lengths, the combination of the subdued illumination and blue colour scheme giving the place an almost underwater feel.

A young barmaid came over to us with menus as we seated ourselves on high stools around a table at one side.  I had no idea what to order but I fancied something coffee-ish, and my friend suggested a few - although I don't remember now what they were called.

And that was it, I was in New York with my two friends, ordering a cocktail on a tin-grey rainy brunchtime, in that bar which everyone has heard about, just as everyone knows of Macy's, or CBGBs, or Cafe Wha? Nosedive.  Isn't it amazing what you can come up with and how vividly real it can all seem - I actually had to check the name out when I got up this morning, just to make sure it really was only the dream I had last night.

On the buses (or not)

I'm so glad I wore my big scarf pulled up to my ears, my beret pulled down to them, the Danish wool coat which makes me feel like I'm being hugged by a sheep and gloves lined with snuggly cashmere. The car needed to go in for a service and MOT on Monday and we woke up to snow on the ground and minus temps.  "I'll come with you, just in case..." I suggested to Mr SDS who was going to drive it there but catch the bus back from the garage in a quiet village 6 miles from us. "You know, if there was an issue getting home, at least you won't have to deal with it alone". We put on our layers for a chilly expedition.

Besides, I like a bit of bus travel - the return trip on a red double-decker out here in the sticks would take us down shiny, pinkbrown lanes, past acres of flat frosted fields, under archways of twiggy trees, all to be spied through a handmade porthole in a condensated window, against that soundtrack of strangely comforting rumbles and rattles.  I checked it all out first - the Number 43 would be perfectly timed and, just in case we missed that one, a 43a should turn up 20 minutes later.  So we left the car with the garage and headed down to the bus stop.

We didn't miss the bus.  The bus - or buses - missed us. Over an hour went by and we were still waiting. An hour?! you say - but there's always that thing in your mind, isn't there - just wait a bit longer, it's bound to turn up soon, or it will just at the very moment you decide to walk away, so...just hang on in there.  Just ten minutes more, twenty maybe, it'll come.

Nothing.  Eventually we gave up and rang for a cab - around another half hour to wait for that, then.  We stayed by the roadside so we couldn't be missed. Actually we hung around next to the public loos to be precise (they're at a convenient turning point).  It was freezing cold, did I mention that?  It was freezing cold.  Nothing to do but observe the world. A well-to-do elderly man, complete in tweed jacket and cap, exited the Gents and inadvertently set off an alarm which clanged and flashed for ages, and of which nobody took any notice.  A red kite flew low across the street, scaring off the woodpigeons high up in a nearby tree. A woman in the Medieval house opposite wandered out in her slippers, leaving her front door wide open, while she posted a letter just down the road.  Slippered feet!  Outside, in this weather!  And she didn't wipe them on the doormat before she went back in.  Then we caught sight of Mr SDS's wanky boss from a few years ago, driving by slowly in the opposite direction.  "Quick, hide!"  We ducked behind the Ladies until it was safe.

We got home eventually and I'm so glad I wore my big scarf pulled up to my ears, my beret pulled down to them, the Danish wool coat which makes me feel like I'm being hugged by a sheep and gloves lined with snuggly cashmere... It was freezing cold.

The car failed its MOT, it has a major problem and it's going to cost over £1000 to fix it.  But what can you do? - We couldn't get another car for that amount and without one here, well - sadly it seems we just can't rely on the buses.

Snippets

I'm terrible, I love earwigging other people's conversations; it's not hard when I'm on my own on a train, for instance.  It can be quite captivating and distracting and, give or take a noisy tunnel or two, you often get the whole conversation and a feel for the dynamic between those involved.  On a journey a few months back I couldn't help but hear the discourse between two young men sitting opposite me, obviously colleagues, where they started off very lightly discussing the football match they were on their way to. This to me was terribly boring but then the dialogue took a detour to one of their girlfriends and the awful time she'd had healthwise - suddenly I was party to this intimacy, the dark and difficult stuff of countless hospital visits and the diagnosis of a brain tumour.  I'm glad to report that by the time they departed the carriage I'd gathered that she was doing very well and that the tumour was benign. But it really made me think.  Another I remember hearing was the woman who kept reading bits out of the paper to her partner - a fascinating piece on the origin of cornrows is one I recall - determined to pique his interest somehow (she did mine!), but he only ever replied with indifferent grunts.  And then there was an analysis of the year's Glastonbury footage, where one of the two teenage boys talking about it seemed determined to belittle and show up the other for his presumed lack of musical knowledge.  "Name me two songs by her, then" he demanded with a definite flicker of spite in his voice when his companion dared to say he rather liked Lana Del Rey.  Funny how these things still stick in my mind.

But there's also a strange appeal to those moments when you just catch a short excerpt, disconnected from context, when words drift by you fleetingly.  No beginning, no end, just a fragment of a middle.  Living by a road where people walk directly past the windows from time to time (not a main thoroughfare, but a route liked by dog-walkers and others just out for a stroll) I'll sometimes catch a stray sentence or two through an open fanlight.  I heard such a good one earlier this morning that it inspired me to think: why not jot some down?! For no reason other than that they have a brief, inexplicable charm - and I'm such a fan of the delightfully random, which is exactly what today's overheard conversation snippet is, verbatim:

"...and occasionally, like I say, we've had dinosaur legs."

What a lovely thing to wonder about! That's my 2026 notebook started, then.

Happy New Year

Blimey, it's nearly over - but before we bow out of 2025, here's confirmation of the answers everyone gave to the previous puzzle. Thanks so much for playing along!

The Monkees

Elektra record label

RCA record label

Iron Maiden

Yes, first album cover

Xray Spex

Marshall amps

The Jam

Oasis

The Beatles film, Help!

And here's wishing you a very happy 2026 x

Compliments of the season!

Or...

A puzzle on Christmas Eve?  Well, why not.... the challenge here, should you wish to accept, is to identify where the above characters were taken from; they're all very much music-related but in a variety of ways.   Where have you seen them in a different context before?  You have, I'm sure!  No rush, answers to be posted next Wednesday.  In the meantime and more importantly, sending warm Yuletide wishes to all - hope it's happy for you, whatever you do or don't do.

x