Normally, I’d shut myself away at weekends. Everywhere gets busy and I’d just rather be at home than fighting through crowds. Today’s been an exception. I’ve been attending a book club on and off for the last three years which is loosely attached to the Red Lion Bookshop in Colchester, an excellent independent bookshop with a varied stock and lovely staff. It’s a long way from my home in terms of traffic and parking obstacles, so I don’t go often, but it’s THERE. A huge comfort in lockdown, especially when they started Zoom meetings. An author talk with a cat fast asleep on your lap, what’s better than that?
Today’s author talk was so good it drew me out on a Saturday this close to Christmas. A K Blakemore was signing copies of ‘The Manningtree Witches’, followed by Robin Ince, appearing as part of his 100 Bookshops Tour with his new book ‘The Importance of Being Interested’. Book or not, an hour listening to Robin Ince is never wasted.
He was even better than he was on the radio. Fast-talking, wide-ranging, hopping from one subject to the next in seconds and never being the famous man talking to his fans – more like the popular bloke leaning against the beer keg at a party with a circle of mates listening. He over-ran by fifteen minutes, and everyone was still leaning forward, listening and laughing. From Charles Darwin’s false nose to the difference between American astronauts and English astronauts, we could have listened for another couple of hours. And now I have the book to read. I’m hoping that, like Billy Connolly’s books, it will read like Robin Ince’s voice bouncing from one subject to another.
That was stop 34, by the way, so there’s another 78 chances to catch him on his 100 Bookshop Tour. He’s a comedian, not a professional mathematician.
On the subject of numbers – Scriptly 13 has been submitted, 24 hours after the brief was issued. It gave me a chance to take a story I wrote for an earlier brief on to the next chapter, from a different point of view, and the chance to air a gripe about the almost amusing part of public service jobs. My father probably thought that getting my accountancy qualification and that senior post in Finance meant that I spent my time drawing up the accounts and budgets in ethereal silence. In reality, it was a job carried out in the centre of a crowded open plan office with sixty other people discussing numbers on their phones, a job composed largely of petty admin, of managing staff who did not see why they needed to work when they could be surfing FaceBook instead – and playing Reception Bingo. Reception would take a call from the public that didn’t have any clear home (or the extension was busy and the caller was getting angry), so they’d pick an extension at random and patch them through, and sometimes I’d be the lucky one. At any stage, I’d be persuading a furious resident that I wasn’t the best person to come down and fish a dirty nappy out of their pond, didn’t have the authority to arrest their neighbour for growing a hedge that shaded out their garden and wouldn’t nip round to empty their bin for them. In between, sometimes in the peace of my own home at weekends… I drew up the accounts and the budgets. It’s been four years since I gave up being polite to rude officials and residents, and they’d have to pay me double to go back to it. Both of my successors drew the same conclusion in a quarter of the time it took me, and I believe my old job is now vacant.
Julia Chalkley 