Barter at Barter

Travelling back from Edinburgh felt like racing sleet and snow, it was in front, behind, at the same time all the time. When it wasn't snow it was idiots trying to live out their misguided Top Gear fantasies and overtake in inappropriate places (it's a fallacy, Top Gear is a controlled environment and very far removed from reality like all rom-com sitcoms are).

After the driving came the pleasure, arriving at Barter Books in Alnwick. Stopping here is a tradition, an institution. If travelling North of Newcastle I implore you to make it a stop-off point. A wide range of pleasure can be sought at Barter Books, food, words and music. If your pleasure does not involve one of these in some way, I am not sure I understand you or why you are reading this blog. Maybe one click too far has brought you to this oasis and you are currently contending with the unfamiliar desire to discover a book.

Or a record.

Or a fantastic slice of flapjack.

I didn't start off with a list. I had a couple of authors and titles in my head that I thought I'd like to look for, and upon finding nothing available on said 'not-list' I mooched around and wandered.

I wandered far and wide, among Christian mythology and Northumberland folktales, across dead desert and dessert to dye for, from Jonathan Strange to Strange Fruit. And I found her. Jessica Fletcher. In book form. There's a co-author, someone called Don, but the book I walked away from the scene of the crime with a Murder, She Wrote book. I might just have to read it next.

Jessica Fletcher and Donald Bain, Gin and Daggers
Barter Books, Alnwick Station, Northumberland

Postscript. Another tradition, and another I suggest you try out, is drive along the A1 around Newcastle. Say, Whickham, as if he's betrayed your younger sister for money. It will help you feel better.

Post-postscript. I have a particular fascination with Jessica Fletcher and Murder, She Wrote. This has resulted in me watching the same episode more than once on TV during the same day. To paraphrase the shopping trolley from Bo Fowler's Scepticism Inc, I was mad then, I'm much better now, I only named a central character in a story after her (see Coming Soon).

City of contrasts

Food-wise, and this blog post is mainly about food and tea and coffee, Edinburgh is right up there for things to consume.

On Sunday, having purchased A Very Short Introduction To Management and decided against Ethnomusicology in Waterstones, it was lunch in the Caledonian Waldorf-Astoria. I say lunch, it was high tea accompanied by a live harpist. It was lovely, I would urge everyone to have a high tea if they have the time. It's something else.

This expensive high tea was followed up by breakfast the following day at the Haven, on Anchorfield in Leith. The experience was different but the same as the high tea. So, there's no haggis, I'll have extra bacon, but you know what, that harpist was an hour late.

Wandering around is fun, one discovers things and learns. The Haven offers a better breakfast than the Premier Inn though the beds are non-existent. And you know what, you can buy records, books and art there too.

And the final contrast. I was told that Bond No. 9 was the best place in Leith and indeed Edinburgh for cocktails. I didn't try it out, instead refreshment was found in Roseleaf in Leith. I can't remember the location, I didn't have a cocktail in a teapot, though the staff were very accommodating in supplying me with a bourbon, a rum and a whiskey. I in return left a message on the blackboard in the men's toilet.

Breakfast
The Haven, 9 Anchorfield, Edinburgh

Cocktails

Roseleaf, Sandport Place, Edinburgh

An Armchair Confession

I need a soundtrack for this blog post. Something suitable. As it was cold out in Edinburgh I thought maybe Belle & Sebastian's Winter Wooskie, but that doesn't quite get the mood of this confession.

What works is Been Caught Stealin' by Jane's Addiction. It works very well.

There are some places that one knows like the back of their hand. I am fairly capable of making my way around central Edinburgh, and that includes some of the cutty-across-streets and bridges that crop up. Near the Grassmarket there's a couple of bookshops and other curiosities. It's Sunday, so a little hit and miss that smaller independent shops are open, and it's not a problem if they are closed, but sometimes it's worth having a look to see if that book shop last seen in 2009 is still there.

It is, along with a few others down the road from the College of Arts Library. The strip-club has gone, but the only people that lament the closing of a strip-club unfortunately will find another way for the sexual objectification of others. The others are closed but Armchair Books is open.

And how, so many nice books ordered in fairly useful descriptions. Literature, Poetry, Warhammer, Art Net. Easily a considerable amount of time was spent among the shelves, and deep inside I found a copy of Wisden's 2008. I decided against this as I don't remember much happening in cricket in 2007 (or at least I don't remember anything I would want to remember at a later date).

What I did come away with was Herman Hesse book (Knulp), Alastair Reynolds's Absolution Gap, and Asterix and the Banquet. The last two books are good finds, Armchair's windows proudly show of the invitation to find Asterix inside. As for Absolution Gap I had been standing in Waterstones Princess Street not three hours earlier contemplating whether I should buy this and end the Revelation Space trilogy.

Now, my confession. Armchair Books have a small selection of Richard Brautigan books. I even asked if there may be some others elsewhere in the stock. So, these five titles of Brautigan were almost technically in the right area but not together. I helped, I rearranged them and the next person looking for Brautigan will find them all together after Melvyn Bragg and before Brooker.

Asterix and the Banquet ("Text: Goscinny. Drawings: Uderzo"), Knulp, Hermann Hesse, Absolution Gap, Alastair Reynolds
Armchair Books,
72-74 West Port, Edinburgh

Minimum

I remember comic books I read in the 1980s. I remember Beanos and others, a really odd few months of reading GI Joe, and sequential art in the form of Rupert the Bear and other newspaper strips. I vaguely remember reading an odd issue of 2000ad.

I recall with a strong feeling when I started reading comic books properly. I happened upon some Simpsons comics and the rest is history.

Between 1996 and about 2004 I read quite a bit of Simpsons but fell out of love with it. My best ever Simpsons related  experience was reading them in a terrible flatshare in east London with my best friend in 1997 fighting away the feeling that London and university were not for me.

Today I needed to make up a minimum amount to pay by card. There was nothing appealing in the big two, so I feel on a old-friend and purchased Simpsons Comics #216. It's not 1997 good but for once in a few years I did think about reading it again.

Ok Comics, Thornton's Arcade, Leeds

It is hard to see from the inside

I'm currently reading Richard E Feist's A Darkness at Sethanon. The whole Riftwar trilogy ends with this book, and I've bought all three from secondhand bookshops. About a year ago I set out to read something other than A Dance of Dragons so had a couple of names in mind, Feist, Jordan, Giddings, Hobb, all sourced off the internet with no real indicator of whether I would like them or not. The Magician was the first book I found and read, next up was Jordan and I didn't take to it, so I continued to read through the Riftwar saga.

Sometimes it is difficult finding a particular book in secondhand bookshops. I like reading in order so waiting for The Magician seemed to be a difficult task. When eventually I bought it I immediately started finding copies everywhere, including one to read at the Youth Hostel at Boggle Hole. But then that's part of the joy of discovery, sometimes it's not the thing you are looking for that you will find.

Having said I like reading in sequence I have broken another fantasy series. At the mobile library in Kirkstall I picked up Gotrek & Felix: Road of Skulls. This is book 13 in the Warhammer series, though I am sufficiently confident that it will not deviate too much from the formula that has seen Gotrek seek his doom and Felix chart his saga. The last book I read was book 7.

While we scanned the books at the mobile library we were told that there was some rotation of stock though the non-fiction books we returned would not stay with the library. I guess fiction is only for the outer rim, nearer the galactic centre they can deal with facts. Galaxies are notoriously difficult to see from the inside, whatever shape or form they take is beyond our current capabilities. There are patterns, a doppelganger is never good in fantasy, the quarreling strangers will be lovers at the end of the movie, yet mysteries.

Josh Reynolds, Gotrek & Felix: Road of Skulls

Mobile Library, Kirkstall Morrisons, Leeds

Postscript. Did you know that Leeds Libraries renews library cards every three years?

Not a new year revolution

It was not a new year resolution. Yes, starting in January 2015 I would go to at least one gig a month, but honestly, I wasn't thinking of that when I bought the ticket.

I was thinking about Bis and Cowtown. I've liked Bis since way back when I bought two Eps (Secret Vampires! and Starbright Boy) and while they were music I cherished I didn't get anymore records. I knew they did things but what they were who knew.

Until Powerpuff Girls, that is.

I have liked Cowtown since seeing them at Indietracks. I've been meaning to see them live since moving to Leeds but every time they were playing I was out of town.

So the opportunity to see both in the Belgrave couldn't be missed. I purchased my ticket in November from Jumbo Records, part of a birthday present to myself, I also got a Doors record and Hookworms. Holding the ticket, looking at Jumbo's big blackboard of gigs, made me think I'd like to see more acts again. When we first moved to Leeds we saw two bands a month, so a plan was hatched, following Bis and Cowtown in January I would go to at least one a month.

February looks good for music, including a band I missed at the Liverpool Psyche Fest, Spectres.

Gig tickets, The Doors, L.A. Woman, Hookworms, The Humm,
Jumbo Records, 5-6 St Johns Centre, Leeds

A book-themed non-book rant

I am on my third rereading of Susanna Clarke's Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell, it is a book I enjoy a great deal (I expect that the forthcoming BBC TV programme will be amazing).

When I first read it, and this morning when I sat in my usual coffee house reading it again, I am struck by the possibility that one of the main reasons I like it so is because characters from 'the North' feature strongly and favourably. In fact, one tenant of the book's narration develops because of someone from Newcastle, and the fact that two of the most deceitful characters are 'southerners' just adds to this.

Obviously, this is just one off-shoot of an afterthought while reading the book, but it does chime with something I have been mulling over for a week or two now.

In an unnamed education institution a member of staff expressed the view that 'students came first, teaching staff second and support staff last'. Essentially, students "wants" were the priority, then those of the teaching staff, and it was support staff members' role to deliver these expectations without question. Leaving aside the whole customer service argument between the words "wants" and "needs", this statement has left me a little staggered.

I must add that it was told to me by the person who received this wisdom first hand.

The implied extension of this statement was that the top two thirds could survive and blossom without the bottom third.

I know of far too many individuals in education who think this way. It is damaging to place too much emphasis on the perceived hierarchical nature of education, each of the three elements need the other two to function. Without students no teaching; without teaching staff no assessments; without support staff no marks entered. Like with the Golgafrinchans, forcibly removing a third of your structured workforce will not end well.

[Spoiler Alert - For One Paragraph]

Which brings me back to Jonathan Strange & the secretive Mr Norrell. Childermass is possibly one of my favourite characters. He knows the view his boss has of him and still continues to do what he wants. He knows too that he supports his boss and that this support is not mutual. Childermass is a lot more powerful that those people above him.

[Spoiler Ends]

I don't know when the BBC TV programme will be broadcast, I kind of hedged my bets by reading the book this early in the year. If I were to schedule it myself, probably aim for Spring or Winter - it's not a Christmas book but I think of it as being more about those seasons than Summer or Autumn.