On the High Street

Warning: May contain over-dramatic metaphors


I am now firmly convinced I live in the best town ever. Four years ago we moved to a medium-sized market town on the verge of being swallowed up by a fast growing city. Having moved from the city itself, this isn't something I particularly resent, but the longer I live here the more I fall in love with little town life. Out of some appeal to originality, I'm trying to avoid the word 'vibrant', but I can't think of any other way to sum up the atmosphere in this town. It's so full of history and culture and life. Like many towns, it's experienced it's losses, such as the closure of the branch line (now a lovely, shady walkway) but it hasn't become a dead, commuter town. Old families stay. People move here and never move away. The churches and the clubs and societies and the multitude of coffee shops and the scout groups and the festivals teem with happy locals. I love it, and when I move away in September, I'll miss it more than anywhere else I've lived. 


The high street is only five minutes away from my doorstep, so this morning I went up into town to raid the charity shops. As you may or may not have guessed, I am a book fiend, and as it happens we have a particularly excellent selection of book-selling charity shops here. After visiting Oxfam (my favourite, but smelt weird this morning), Willen Hospice (always excellent for books) and Age Concern (spotted useful book on Hitler in window display) I was meandering towards the co-op to pick up 4pints of milk (thrilling) when I remembered that I'd heard about a new book shop opened down one of the side-streets, so I thought I'd take a look.


And then I was transported to book lovers heaven. 


Maggie and Josie's Bookshop is an independent shop, selling a wide selection of second hand books. Walking around, it was obvious that they'd been selected with love and taste: everything was in good quality and the selection was fantastic, from sports biographies to 50p Danielle Steels to Dr Faustus and English A-Level textbooks. The shop itself felt quiet and homely, with a few beautifully kitsch touches like the front of the desk, papered in book-leaves. Clutching my armful of books, I had a lovely chat with the lady who runs the shop about books, and unashamedly dragged my long suffering mum back later in the afternoon so she could buy some too. In the end I purchased 5 myself, plus 1 mum bought for me, at only £12.50 in total, which was fantastic! Having also bought three books in charity shops earlier, I now have nine new books. It's too good for words, so here's a picture instead: 

Courtesy of Maggie and Josie's bookshop: 
The Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger. 
The Buddha of Suburbia by Hanif Kureishi
Peter Pan and other Plays by James Barrie 
Save me the Waltz by Zelda Fitzgerald
A glossary of literary terms &
a palgrave book of 20th century literary theory.


I am so happy to have been able to get the original play version of Peter Pan, which I have been looking for for ages. I was also tempted by Yann Martel's Life of Pi and Vladimir Nobokov's Lolita but I had to stop buying at some point. Also Lady Chatterley's lover, but somehow it does not feel quite decent to own it. I had to get it out of the library by the self-service checkout. 


I also bought Animal Farm by George Orwell from Willen Hospice and The Moonstone by Wilkie Collins and Burning your boats: collected stories by Angela Carter from Oxfam. We already have the Moonstone, but I am a Wilkie Collins fanatic and require my own copy to attend university with me! 

The other high street shop I want to talk about is Queen of Threads, a relatively new vintage clothing shop at the other end of the high street. This used to be my opticians and I was gutted when they closed down as they were really lovely, but all that changed when Queen of Threads opened. At present, it is the only clothing shop on the high street. Quirky and colourful, it sells the most amazing range of jewellery, bags, shoes, dresses, skirts, tops and trousers to be found in the county, all at affordable prices. Being reasonably conventional in my tastes, I haven't been brave enough to buy any of the more exciting pieces yet, but I love going in to browse. Although my 'sleeping mouse' ring broke, I still have a gorgeous dress with a woolly dog on it and this wonderful, hand-knit jumper photographed right. It's the perfect jumper for snuggling up in on a winter's evening, but it also looks great and makes me feel confident. What more can you ask for? Love it! 


So that's my materialistic outpourings for the month. I hasten to assure you that I am a deep, fulfilled, spiritual person and did not jump up and down with joy at the prospect of double-stacking my bookshelf...




Till next time, God bless & stay groovy!


J.R. 

Look - No glasses!

I've moved fractionally up the seriousness scale since my last post, to 'I'm taking myself seriously, but it's not really important'. 

This morning I did something I've been meaning to do for a while - try and draw my room without my glasses on. I knew this wouldn't be a great idea, as I have no artistic talent whatsoever, but the idea was to try and give you an impression of what it's like to open your eyes every morning and see the world as a giant fuzz. For those of you acquainted with the linguistics of optometry, my eyes score -4.5 and -5.5 respectively. 0 means perfect sight, -20 is no sight on the short-sighted scale, and +20 is (I presume) no sight on the long sighted scale. Basically, my eyes can't focus on objects further away from my face. It's a very common problem: I reckon, although I have no statistics, that more of us wear glasses than not. Thinking about it, I suppose in numerical terms, this means I've lost a quarter of my sight... Being short-sighted though, without any other medical conditions, isn't necessarily permanent. As the shape of your skull changes, your sight fluctuates; apparently it can improve in middle age. It can also be cured by laser eye surgery, although I believe you have to have -8.0 in each eye to have this done on the NHS. (Don't quote me - I'm speculating here!)

Since I started wearing specs just after my ninth birthday, I've become rather fond of them. I have a particularly lovely pair at the moment with green stripy sides, although the glass is beginning to look depressingly thick. People often ask me to remove my glasses and then exclaim that I look different, and stare at my face as if my nose has suddenly turned green or something equally disturbing; most of my friends have only ever known me with glasses these days. I think I look smarter in glasses, personally, although I wouldn't mind trying contacts. There are, of course, disadvantages to glasses. I have to take them off to go on rollercoasters, so I can never see the big dips coming.They fall off and break at the worst moments. They slide down your nose when you're sweaty (ew!) and you can see the rim of the glasses constantly, although after a while you become blind to this. Glasses don't cover your peripheral vision and nice frames are really expensive. All this aside, I think they're fantastic. If I'd been born in the days before glasses I wouldn't have been able to read or sew or enjoy the theatre or any of the hobbies I suppose they had in those days... It's a scary thought! Yet glasses are just one of those tiny alterations you make to your life these days, imperceptible changes for the majority of us. In all seriousness, thank God for opticians!

As promised, the picture of my bedroom without glasses:

I think it looks a little bit like impressionism. Naturally, this is because of my gift for drawing, not because the impressionist were short sighted. 

The blue blob on the wall should have been a calender. On top of my wardrobe there are two framed paintings, a Van Gogh and a Salvador Dali, a photo frame, several souvenir glass bottles of sand from the Isle of Wight, a Venetian carnival mask (Not even drawn - it's white so I couldn't see it), a glass coke bottle wearing an innocent smoothies hat, and a red table decoration from my 18th with little multicoloured 18's spilling out of it. The piles of oddments on my desk are completely obscured, the jacket on my chair vanished into it, and the pattern on my bedspread is gone. Drawing with the paper on my lap, I couldn't even see properly what I was drawing, doubling the inaccuracy of my sketch. Even so, this is in as much detail as I could see. For perspective, my room is about 4m long, and my focal point is about 15cm away from my nose... 

Drawing this was an interesting experiment, although I'm not sure it's one I'll repeat, if for nothing else than for fear of boring you all to death. 

Prizes for anyone who can guess what the other unidentifiable blobs in the picture are!

God bless 

JR x  

Magic me there?

I've been writing a lot of serious posts recently, so today I have decided to write you a short summary of my favourite fictional ways to travel, which I'll probably update as I think of more. Please leave me your suggestions to be added to this list in the comments!

1. FLOO POWDER

From: The Harry Potter Series

Advantages: Quick, Magical folk only, looks amazing

Disadvantages: Dirty, No muggles (awh!), may deposit you one grate too early, not very environmentally friendly.

Why? I like the idea of being able to step into your fireplace and go wherever you like. There's something wonderfully quaint and mystical about this aspect of floo powder. It's cute without being gimmicky, and as far as I can tell, it's pretty original. 

2. BABYLON CANDLE

From: Stardust 

Advantages: It's really valuable, it can travel long distances ridiculously fast, it can follow imprecise commands like 'take me home' 

Disadvantages: It gets confused and takes you to places you'd really rather not be, it's hard to get hold of, and each candle only has one or two journeys in it. 

Why? The candle is black and for something supposedly good, looks wonderfully evil. Also, the phrase 'travel by candlelight' has a wonderful ring to it. 

3. HEART OF GOLD

From: The Hitchiker's Guide to the Galaxy (Douglas Adams)

Advantages: Beautifully random and eccentric, doesn't have to go through hyperspace, flickers through every point in the Galaxy at once, looks pretty, is filled with wonderfully strange rooms/people/fish. 

Disadvantages: Often appears in very dangerous places, easy to loose when you've misplaced it, vulnerable to the attacks of cricket-robots, not as fast as the bistromath, can't fly and make tea at the same time

Why? This is without doubt the coolest space ship in the universe. It works on the principle of improbability. The whole series refuses to take itself seriously, and as such, is the most hilarious and yet beautiful science-fiction series of all time - and certainly it's only trilogy in five parts. 

4. ASLAN'S BREATH

From: The Silver Chair (6th book of the Narnia Series, C.S. Lewis)

Advantages: Fast, very good view, warm and comfortable, very safe

Disadvantages: Only Eustace Scrubb and Jill Pole get to try it out, and even then only once. Also, involves falling off cliffs. 

Why? Although it sounds initially VERY WEIRD, in context, it makes a lot of sense. Aslan is a lion/God, he's sending them on a mission, they're all at the top of a cliff looking over the entire world, so he lets them float to their destination over Narnia on a sort of cloud made of his breath. C.S. Lewis' writing, as usual, is extraordinarily beautiful. Don't start the Narnia series with this book though - the best introduction is the 2nd chronologically, but principle book, the ever famous The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe. 

5. DRAGON

From: Everywhere, but I'd like to pick the time Dr Faustus gets to write a dragon with Mephistopheles in Christopher Marlowe's play Dr Faustus.

Advantages: Seriously cool, quite fast, and if you tame them it wouldn't be a bad ride. 

Disadvantages: The scales might make it quite uncomfortably, people run away from you, the dragon may decide to eat you, and it's very hard to steer a dragon. Apparently. 

Why? Again, the cool factor triumphs. Also, Dr Faustus is enjoying the benefits of being seriously evil at this point, which is quite a welcome rescue from wizards in pointy hats jumping on their cute pet dragons etc. I saw a production of Dr Faustus at the Globe where the dragons were these wonderful blackened skeletons, terrifying looking things, the perfect complement to the Jacobean dress and all... It was beautiful, comic, and haunting. Also, the fire-breathing could be quite handy.  

6. NAZGUL

From: Lord of the Rings

Advantages: Fast, powerful shriek, quite hard to kill (a sword through the neck usually does the trick)

Disadvantages: Large size makes it hard to balance on buildings, ugly.

Why? Most of the characters travel by foot, horse or pony in LOTR, which emphasises the human aspect of the epic, but frankly, isn't very exciting. As ever, the baddies, who have no need for the valour of a slog across Middle Earth, get the coolest transport, although the goodies get the best costumes. The Nazgul are horrible, but with all the SFX, they are  also quite spectacular. 

7. T-65 X WING STARFIGHTER
From: Star Wars 

Advantages: Fast, cool navigation & targeting equipment, precise, fits one droid & one human/humanoid, good weapons if you like blowing things up

Disadvantages: Blows up ridiculously easily, no good if you land it in a swamp

Why? Luke Skywalker has one. Also, it's possible to blow up the Death Star with one of these, as they're very fast and can make quite precise moves. Also, it kind of means unlimited access to any planet in the galaxy. 

8. HAGRID'S MOTORBIKE & THE FORD ANGLIA, also THURSDAY NEXT'S SPORT'S CAR
From: Harry Potter Series & Jasper Fforde's The Eyre Affair 

Advantages: Technology at its utmost, augmented by magic! Fast, potent, and eccentric.

Disadvantages: Occasionally unreliable, all of them stand out, two of them are dependant on magic

Why? It's a bit retro and  and very effective, and a great way of announcing that you're a trustworthy character.

My inner geek is satisfied.