Jackie spent most of the morning watering the garden. I managed a token dead heading session which nevertheless filled two trugs. Nugget even followed me around. It helps if you use his name.
Regular readers will know of my penchant for leaving bookmarks or other tokens in my books, for posterity’s pondering.
Occasionally previous owners of my second hand copies have had the same idea. The volume I finished reading this afternoon contained two examples.
One is an engraving or possibly a linocut clearly cut from another book. I wonder whether I will ever see the original?
The other is a transparent bookmark. Who left it? Perhaps a rep for CIBA; perhaps a sufferer of chronic bronchitis. Could it have been Kellettt (or perhaps Kenneth) Carding whose name appears inscribed upside down on the bottom left-hand corner of the endpaper? If so would that explain the equally sized clip taken from the top right hand corner of the flyleaf; perhaps the name of an earlier owner?
If the first is an engraving, although charming, it lacks the finesse of the work of Robert Gibbings, whose ‘Sweet Thames run Softly’ is the book concerned.
This is the first of the author’s meanderings along an eponymous river. Originally published in 1940, my copy is the third imprint – darted 1941.
Gibbings blends elegant descriptive prose into simple philosophy, amusing anecdote, sensitive observation, and informative history; profusely illustrated with fine wood engravings.
Here I present
sample pages
displaying both the author’s engaging writing and his exquisite illustrations.
With a work of Robert Gibbings, my delight is often enhanced by his material having been covered by me, either in prose or photography;
an example of a cruck built house as described above, is more fully featured in my post “Afternoon Tea”.
This final sentence would surely not be out of place in any publication today.
Later, I retouched this image of my Grandpa Hunter, Mum, and Uncles Ben and Roy taken at Conwy c1926. The sandcastle being built may have heralded Ben’s later employment as Clerk of Works.
This evening Jackie produced a meal of roast chicken marinaded in Nando’s spicy Chilli and Mango sauce on a bed of succulent peppers and mushrooms; crunchy carrots; and tender runner beans, with which she drank Hoegaarden and I drank Domaine Franc Maine Bergerac 2016 – one of Lidl’s finest.