Literature is littered with authors’ attempts to find the authentic voice of their childhoods.
I have discovered that finding that voice is a relatively simple process if your life follows the following path:
1 Retire
2 Move to a foreign country
3 Relax and enjoy the sun
4 Break a tooth
Suddenly the idea of a stranger (a foreign stranger) poking about in your mouth with pointed instruments of pain returns you instantly to quivering infancy. Even foreign doctors do not inspire such fear because they are not so, you might say, instantly intrusive – and most of the time you self medicate: you are the one to take the pills or drink the potions. But the dentist is there and at you in a trice. The only thing needed to make a dentist’s chair a perfect instrument of torture would be restraining straps for the wrists and feet!
But let not my mind dwell on such things (even though the appointment is but four hours away) and turn instead to the Problem of the Books.
The five new bookcases are looking very sleek and stylish: tall with white glass covered doors and six shelves inside. That makes thirty shelves of about 80 cm and there is an extra shelf on top of four of them. You can do the maths yourself but it means that I have fifty boxes of books which cannot be accommodated. Caroline has given me the number of a storage facility in Hospitalet which is on the same basis as the Big Yellow Storage facility in the UK, so I might be able to find something to act as a safe home for the rest of my essential books.
While trying to make decisions about what to keep and what to store I was reminded of the Tolstoy (?) story about ‘How Much Land does a Man Need?’ I read this in Standard Two in Gladstone Junior School in Cathays in Cardiff and I remember the story particularly because the book that I was given was new and I therefore was the first reader. I have never lost the delight in being the forcer of a book’s virginity – there is something altogether delightful in the feel and smell and sound of a new book; which is obvious to bibliophiles but those who regard books as dust attracting, ugly, dead blocks of irrelevance are oblivious to such rare pleasures.
Anyway, there was this precocious eight year old reading Tolstoy and the happy little narrative concerned a Russian pioneer who went to buy land and, for his money, he could have all the land that he was able to traverse in a day.
He started off and then as he walked around the land that was to be his he found things that were just too good to be ignored: a small lake, a little wood, a stream and suchlike, and he walked just a little further to include these juicy features in his new purchase. Alas! (this is a Tolstoy story so there has to be an ‘Alas!’) his greed meant that, as the sun began to go down he was still a long way from his starting point and, if he didn’t return to his starting point by sunset he would loose all the money that he had paid and get no land. So he started to hurry and ended up running desperately to return to claim what was his. He made it in time but, alas! (again) the effort had proved too much for him and he died as he arrived!
How much land does a man need? Enough for a grave!
As you can imagine the relevance of this story to life in 1950s suburban Cardiff was not lost on me and I eyed the local cemetery (next to the public library – surely a Tolstoyan juxtapositioning?) with wary circumspection on my way home.
One tends to take irony fairly literally at that age!
So, to paraphrase Tolstoy, how many books does a man need? Well, a bloody sight more than I can fit into the flat and not have the place looking like a library. The difficulties of choice have been exacerbated by the difficulties of accessibility. The boxes in the small bedroom fill the place so all the boxes had to be taken out (incidentally finding the computer, monitor and printer in the process) and as they are all sealed then guessing what they might contain.
Pickfords (bless!) had labelled the boxes with room/unit/shelf – so all I had to do was remember what I have placed where. This did not always work, especially as Pickfords got querulous towards the end of the packing and just labelled boxes with the simple, but effective designation of ‘books.’ This was not helpful; so I now have my books on obscure mystics but not some excellent anthologies of poetry.
Having deliberated and discarded I now have a thoroughly unsatisfactory selection of books where each volume seems to speak of a companion volume which is not there. This will not be resolved until Once (the Spanish daily lottery) does its stuff and makes the purchase of a suitable house (with sea views) a reality!
One lives in hope.
I have discovered that finding that voice is a relatively simple process if your life follows the following path:
1 Retire
2 Move to a foreign country
3 Relax and enjoy the sun
4 Break a tooth
Suddenly the idea of a stranger (a foreign stranger) poking about in your mouth with pointed instruments of pain returns you instantly to quivering infancy. Even foreign doctors do not inspire such fear because they are not so, you might say, instantly intrusive – and most of the time you self medicate: you are the one to take the pills or drink the potions. But the dentist is there and at you in a trice. The only thing needed to make a dentist’s chair a perfect instrument of torture would be restraining straps for the wrists and feet!
But let not my mind dwell on such things (even though the appointment is but four hours away) and turn instead to the Problem of the Books.
The five new bookcases are looking very sleek and stylish: tall with white glass covered doors and six shelves inside. That makes thirty shelves of about 80 cm and there is an extra shelf on top of four of them. You can do the maths yourself but it means that I have fifty boxes of books which cannot be accommodated. Caroline has given me the number of a storage facility in Hospitalet which is on the same basis as the Big Yellow Storage facility in the UK, so I might be able to find something to act as a safe home for the rest of my essential books.
While trying to make decisions about what to keep and what to store I was reminded of the Tolstoy (?) story about ‘How Much Land does a Man Need?’ I read this in Standard Two in Gladstone Junior School in Cathays in Cardiff and I remember the story particularly because the book that I was given was new and I therefore was the first reader. I have never lost the delight in being the forcer of a book’s virginity – there is something altogether delightful in the feel and smell and sound of a new book; which is obvious to bibliophiles but those who regard books as dust attracting, ugly, dead blocks of irrelevance are oblivious to such rare pleasures.
Anyway, there was this precocious eight year old reading Tolstoy and the happy little narrative concerned a Russian pioneer who went to buy land and, for his money, he could have all the land that he was able to traverse in a day.
He started off and then as he walked around the land that was to be his he found things that were just too good to be ignored: a small lake, a little wood, a stream and suchlike, and he walked just a little further to include these juicy features in his new purchase. Alas! (this is a Tolstoy story so there has to be an ‘Alas!’) his greed meant that, as the sun began to go down he was still a long way from his starting point and, if he didn’t return to his starting point by sunset he would loose all the money that he had paid and get no land. So he started to hurry and ended up running desperately to return to claim what was his. He made it in time but, alas! (again) the effort had proved too much for him and he died as he arrived!
How much land does a man need? Enough for a grave!
As you can imagine the relevance of this story to life in 1950s suburban Cardiff was not lost on me and I eyed the local cemetery (next to the public library – surely a Tolstoyan juxtapositioning?) with wary circumspection on my way home.
One tends to take irony fairly literally at that age!
So, to paraphrase Tolstoy, how many books does a man need? Well, a bloody sight more than I can fit into the flat and not have the place looking like a library. The difficulties of choice have been exacerbated by the difficulties of accessibility. The boxes in the small bedroom fill the place so all the boxes had to be taken out (incidentally finding the computer, monitor and printer in the process) and as they are all sealed then guessing what they might contain.
Pickfords (bless!) had labelled the boxes with room/unit/shelf – so all I had to do was remember what I have placed where. This did not always work, especially as Pickfords got querulous towards the end of the packing and just labelled boxes with the simple, but effective designation of ‘books.’ This was not helpful; so I now have my books on obscure mystics but not some excellent anthologies of poetry.
Having deliberated and discarded I now have a thoroughly unsatisfactory selection of books where each volume seems to speak of a companion volume which is not there. This will not be resolved until Once (the Spanish daily lottery) does its stuff and makes the purchase of a suitable house (with sea views) a reality!
One lives in hope.
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