If she sees one coming

Grandmothers! We were enjoying tea and Christmas cake (except for me. I had Stollen, on account of sensitivity to all that brandy I had been pouring over the cake since October), and as so often happens, the conversation strayed to Maths and other intellectual topics.

When that last happened a few days earlier, Son moved closer to his mother in order to escape the numbers and funny words discussion, in exchange for something suitably light for the two of us.

But at this point the Resident IT Consultant entertained his mother – the Grandmother – by showing her the new Brewer’s. She browsed for some minutes before pointing out they’d got Fermat’s Last Theorem wrong. She read it out, with the Resident IT Consultant and Dodo all nice and alert, and Son and me turning our eyes heavenwards.

As it happens, she was right. It is wrong.

We moved on to secondhand bibles, as you do. The Grandmother works in an Oxfam bookshop, and they get lots of Bibles in, and they sell like hotcakes. She displays all the various kinds of Bibles, and when she returns they have all sold and she has to start over again.

What a ‘shame.’

Something they also have lots of but which doesn’t sell the way of the Bible, is The Da Vinci Code. It might once have been an Oxfam bestseller, but if she sees one coming, she throws it out.

That’s the spirit!

After Fermat, they moved on to Faraday’s complete letters. Someone found a letter where it was mentioned that Mrs Giles would have been very happy to see him. Faraday, that is. The Grandmother was surprised to find the volume she was holding only covered a few years of Faraday’s life (there are six in total), and marvelled at quite how many letters got written back in the olden days.

I’m thinking the stamps didn’t cost 50 pence in the 19th century.

Rinsed off

I cleaned up the Solar System this week. It needed doing. I carried it to the bathroom and showered it very carefully. It’s almost as good as new.

Another lovely side effect of the witchy upheavals is that the Astronomy textbook has been found. The Resident IT Consultant had been accused of losing it. And worse, your witch had heard it insinuated that she’d given it to Oxfam. There’s many a bad thing I will do, but there are limits. Even for me.

Although the Solar System is only so big.

Granted

We’re having the weekend ‘off’. Sort of. So you will not get a real blog post out of me, because I’ve not behaved in a terribly bookwitchy way.

Once I staggered out of bed after Friday’s graduation excesses I did, however, have a very good literary Saturday. As I mentioned a few weeks ago Helen Grant moved to Scotland in June, and I’m afraid I took advantage of her weakened state by suggesting we might meet up now that I was temporarily in the same country.

Helen was sufficiently taken aback by this and didn’t even claim a prior appointment with her hairdresser to get out of it. So she and her lovely children Blackwolf and Shardspirit along with the energetic Mr G obeyed my witchy summons and made it to Corrieri’s for pizza, pasta and proper Italian ice cream.

It was very nice. I brought Daughter along and even the Resident IT Consultant got an airing, seeing as it was his hometown. The place was quietening down as we arrived, but we soon put a stop to that, and soon we could barely hear ourselves chat. So I’m unable to report too many indiscretions, I’m afraid.

The Grant pets (no, they didn’t come) have taken well to their new home, and once Helen has finished murdering her way around Flanders, she will consider killing off some of Perthshire. I’m looking forward to that.

Both Shardspirit and Blackwolf brought books to read (I suspect they sensed I might be boring, and how right they were) which I thoroughly approve of. Daughter had nothing better to do than fiddle with her mobile. The lovely Helen gave me a devil rubber duck, which I will treasure always. Unless that cheeky Daughter steals it off me.

After a nice meal the Grants dropped us off so dangerously close to Oxfam that the Resident IT Consultant went there and ‘had an accident’. Bookaholics! Honestly!

Oxfam?

I was very surprised to find that Susan Hill blogs, but it seems she does. The surprise arose from the fact that I was under the impression she doesn’t like our lot. I must have been mistaken.

What Susan doesn’t like is Oxfam. There have been a few blogs based on her feelings, so I’m just adding mine to the pile. I’m doing so because since marrying the Resident IT Consultant at the beginning of time, I have been sort of related to Oxfam, what with the Grandmother volunteering with them for decades. She’s still going strong, and is happy with the fact that her local Oxfam turned into one of these vile bookshops.

The Stirling Oxfam is a good bookshop, in a good position, and from what I gather they do sensible things with their books and their prices. I have no idea if they’ve forced anyone out of business, but they are where they have been for a long time, next to a bus stop, and customers come in and buy while waiting for the bus.

If I have time now that I’m up in Scotland, I will pop in and examine the situation. But it stands to reason that they won’t ask prices that are so high that people won’t buy. And having once given a friend bags and bags of books to sell for a charity he supported, and finding that they went for 10p each, was a shock. I had hoped ‘my’ books would do more good than that. But had I been buying them, I’d have been pleased to pay so little.

Shows what a turncoat I am.

But, I look in all the charity shops when I’m buying. Sometimes I will do a Susan Hill and not buy from Oxfam if the price is roughly the same as the new book would be on Amazon. I prefer the cheaper shops, obviously. My experience from doing the rounds of all of them before Christmas every year is that you can’t know what you’ll find in any given charity’s shop. It’s not as if readers of certain authors’ books only give to one particular charity.

Oxfam is in business to make money. Not for shareholders, but for the recipients of various projects. It makes sense that they charge as much as they can, and that they start up new shops in places where they think they will do well. I hope that doesn’t mean that other charities are forced out.

And as the Grandmother pointed out over breakfast, people complain that the books are expensive and then they happily fork out £2 for cards. Each. Often more than one card.

Tables

Right children! We’re doing ageism and sexism today, along with any other -isms I may have forgotten to mention. If I could, this would be where I put my foot somewhere in the vicinity of my mouth, but my legs don’t bend well.

Logarithms have long been a little hard for me to understand. Not how to use them, you know; just understanding what they are, is enough to bring me out in a rash. The Resident IT Consultant despaired from almost Day 1 over his bad choice of wife, but there you are.

So, as Daughter and I were in Scotland for the Edinburgh Book Festival, we stayed with Grandmother. On our one free day we relaxed by having Aunt Scarborough over for a cup of tea. We always love to see her. I was just a little taken aback by Grandmother’s conversation starter which went like this: ‘Scarborough, do you happen to have any logarithm tables? There was someone at Oxfam who was looking for one, and we didn’t have any, so I said I’d look at home. I don’t seem to have any left, so wondered if you do?’

Grandmother’s age is, as I’ve mentioned before, a nice round figure, and Aunt Scarborough is five years older. I don’t think of them as old, honestly! I just don’t expect logarithms to pop up among the cups of tea and the biscuits. I should be ashamed of myself. Girls can do anything, and we are all still girls on the inside. Anyway, no logarithm tables anywhere. Grandmother works in the Oxfam bookshop, and generally likes recycling things.

That will be why she swiftly moved on to slide rules. I know what they are. Could never quite use mine, because it seemed a little complicated. Daughter, on the other hand, didn’t know. So age can be useful occasionally. Grandmother brought out her two, and offered them to Daughter. We needed to know why she had more than one, and also got an explanation as to how she had worn another one out. It’s obvious, really. Grandmother used hers in the kitchen, to adapt recipes and things. As you do. At least if you are a physics graduate with an inquiring mind and like experimenting with things.

This week is science week in Manchester. Me, I think it’s a clever guise to get children to go and look at sciencey things, in order to get hooked, and then sign up for science at university when they’re older. Daughter wants to go, and I know just the person to go with her. (And for the record, the witch got top grades for both Maths and Science at school. She just knew when to give it up. In time.)

How to ruin a book with a sticky label

As I understand it, Oxfam staff are meant to write the price of the used books they sell, in soft pencil, inside the book. Many branches of Oxfam do, and all I need to do post-purchase is to get my eraser out, and the book will look fine.

Some of my local branches, like the big one in central Manchester, use sticky labels. You know, the kind that divides into three or four pieces, in order to prevent shoplifting. The ones they use are particularly sticky, and for good measure they use two per book. One on the outside, front or back. One on the inside where the soft pencil should go.

Some book covers are strong enough and glossy enough to allow removal of the label without too much damage or difficulty. The inside is another business, and I’ve torn a good many books that way. The very worst is when the book cover is soft or has a matt finish. Then the outside label can’t be removed. The worst I’ve ever had was a really old copy of an Arthur Ransome, where the label ruined the dust wrapper completely.

Oxfam could argue that with used books it doesn’t matter, but I just don’t want an ugly label stuck where it doesn’t belong. If the books were still sold for 20p, my case would be weaker, as it would be really good value (though I still don’t think it’s OK to ruin books), but Oxfam are expensive. Sometimes the books are not much cheaper than the big online bookshop. And if I’ve found an old book, it would be good to have it free from both labels and damaged covers.