1001

So...

Just when you think that you've run out of ideas and things to say, and decided to pack your blogging bags and slink away for a while, somebody suggests something that they think you might want to write about and, before you know it, there's another piece that can be written, and your keyboard fingers get twitching and you're back on the treadmill.

On our way back home from a day out in Manchester, the beloved turned to me and, quite out of the blue, said "You should start a blog about the bits and pieces of unmitigated tat you pointlessly buy whenever we go into town..."

Well, considering that she seldom shows much interest in my unliterary outpourings, this seemed almost like some kind of an endorsement, so, ignoring the obvious criticisms of my profligacy, and looking (for once) at the bigger picture, I seized upon the notion and here I find myself once again word-wrangling for no better reason than I actually have something to write about, however banal it might actually be...

Notice that I didn't write "something worth saying" because that would probably be a leap too far... After all, I am a man of not-very-well hidden shallows...

So anyway, what had happened was this:

We had gone into town early on a Sunday morning because of a hair appointment coupled with some dodgy information that the beloved could try for another "walk-in" appointment for another procedure at 10.00am when the shops supposedly opened.

We duly got up early and made our way to the station for the rather lovely and comparatively peaceful early train and arrived in Manchester at 9.30am only to discover that most of the shops (including the one which offered the "walk-in") don't actually open until 11.30am...

There was, basically, time that needed killing, and not just the time which I had already known that I would be spending trudging the streets and looking in the shops whilst the hair appointment was going on.

Happily we found a place that did breakfasts and we had a languid "second breakfast" which we allowed to land on top of the swiftly grabbed bit of toast we'd had before leaving home, before I walked the beloved to her hairdressing emporium and then I set off and walked around town waiting for the shops that I wanted to go in to actually open.

You see, I had a "mission..."

A magazine (or "comic..." depending upon your point of view about such things) which I had thought was covered by my subscription but, as it turned out, wasn't, had come and gone at some point during the last month whilst I was distracted by hospital stuff, and I wanted to track down a copy after having spectacularly failed to do so in various other outlets for a week or more. So, in that hour, I trudged backwards and forwards between my last two retail hopes, and found that both were remaining steadfastly closed until a time that at least one of them refused to display in their windows.

Between them both was a remainder bookshop which was open, and I popped in and spotted two "bargains" which I resisted in my haste to get from one shop to the other for opening time, but which I returned to when I found there was still fifteen minutes to wait in both cases.

Well, it was something to do.

And so, to cut a short story even shorter, reader, I bought the tat...

One was a normally vastly overpriced "Star Trek" book that I thought looked far more interesting than it ultimately turned out to be, but at a price that I at least considered "tolerable" rather than the "ridiculous" full price might have been.

The second was an audiobook version of "Dr No" read by Hugh Quarshie across 8 CDs and is more difficult to justify the purchase of. I had been considering getting another book from the same range but was resisting it until I saw it at a more reasonable price. Naturally, that title was not available in the shop that I had foolishly ventured into, but my mind decided that getting another one from the same series cheap would help me to decide whether the expensive ones might be actually worth bothering with.

If you see what I mean...?

"Dr No" is a strange beast. The blatant colonial racism and casual sexism of the 1950s is very difficult to listen to (and I wonder about how Hugh Quarshie felt about having to read some of it, to be honest...) but the descriptive writing is actually far better than I remember it being, and it's been blaring away in the car for a few mornings now and I'll have to admit that I am rather enjoying it, once you get beyond those strange, old-fashioned ideas.

I suppose that modern readers just have to accept that these things are "of their time" and, perhaps, be slightly amazed at how attitudes have changed in just over half a century. After all, we might squirm at one or two of the lines in Shakespeare's plays, but we don't generally go around changing them just because they're unpalatable to modern ears, do we...?

Interestingly enough, I was convinced that I'd read the paperback when I was a teenager, but listening to it now, I'm not sure that I ever actually did.

I don't half buy some rubbish, though... Especially if I think it's a "bargain..." but, in my (rather pitiful) defence, I had resigned myself to not finding my "comic" and felt like cheering myself with a smidgen of "retail therapy" which is seldom all that wise a thing to be doing, I know.

I also successfully tracked down my "comic" so that was a bit of a result, too... From a particular point of view...