planet vegan scotland

Well, blog-followers, I’m telling you now!

Of course, if you already know me personally, you won’t need to be given this information.  But people who visit our house for the first time usually reel back when they’re greeted by this sight…

‘Goodness!  You’ve got a lot of books!’ they say.  We have.  But these are only some of them.

If those reeling visitors look under the stairs, they’ll see these…

If they look behind them they’ll see these…

If they were to go upstairs, they’d see these…

… and these

And if they were to go into our bedroom, they’d see these…

And these…

And these

And another bookcase that’s just too messy to show you!

 When I told a friend, some years ago, about my problems with sinusitis, she suggested I remove all the books from my bedroom…  Er…  I think I’ll stick with the snuffles!

These photos don’t show all our books: some wouldn’t fit into the pictures as this is a small cottage and I couldn’t stand far enough back to get them all in.  But you get the idea, I’m sure!

We have eclectic tastes and if you hover over the pictures, you’ll see some of the categories of books that are stored in each set of shelves.  Kim, a fellow student on my Open University course, said to me that, following my blog post about mags, she had been thinking that seeing the magazines people read was a good way of getting the measure of them.  I suppose our books say quite a lot about us!

So, yes!  I love books!  Why?

Unlike many booklovers, including, of course, our offspring, I didn’t grow up in a home filled with books.  My mother thought they were untidy, so stored her small bookcase in the hall cupboard.  She worked fulltime from when Sylvia and I were quite young and had her hands full looking after the home as well.  In fact, if she ever saw me sitting reading, she would say, ‘Oh!  Don’t you have anything to do?’ and would assign me a task.  The only place I could read comparatively undisturbed (until someone else wanted in!) was the bathroom.  So that was my main reading room!

My father, not being over-burdened with household tasks, was a keen reader, but his books always came from the library and were always non-fiction and usually about the War (he was in the RAF) or about men who killed birds or man-eating tigers.  He did take us to the library with him, though, and one of my favourite childhood memories is of him carrying Sylvia on his shoulders, with me walking beside him, to and from our local library.

My children always had hundreds of books when they were growing up.  When I was a child, a new book arrived at Christmas and at birthdays.  An enormous thrill!  I still love to get books for Christmas! 

One year I was delighted to be given Anne of Green Gables, a book my mother had often told me stories from.  It’s inscribed ‘To our darling Penny on her eighth birthday with love and kisses from Mummy and Daddy’ and is a treasured possession. I LOVED that book and still do.  I read it to John when we first got together and to the children when they were young.  (Couldn’t manage the Canadian accent, though, so the Anne they heard had a Scottish one!)

 Also, I was lucky enough to win a prize at school every year.  In the photo above you can see my Primary 5 prize, Star and Company, another book I enjoyed, though it’s not in the same league as Anne.  An abiding memory is the first day of the summer holidays, sitting in the back garden in the sunshine, with a new prize book to read.  Happy days!

Here’s another of those prize books…

This is also a treasured possession, not least because my beloved first dog, Klaus, a Great Dane, used it to cut his puppy teeth on…

So, why do I love books?  Well, I read them for entertainment; to learn about people, places, times past and ideas I’d never experience otherwise; to enjoy beautiful and/or clever use of language.  I don’t read horror books.  I do read detective novels, but only the ‘Golden Age’ type, where the solving of the crime is a puzzle.  I love history and well researched historical novels; biographies of interesting people; classics; well-written modern novels; ‘cosy books’ from the first half of the twentieth century…  I hate books that are badly written and punctuated.  If the author doesn’t know where to put a full stop, his/her editor should!

And here’s what I’m reading at the moment…

Shakespeare, Aphra Behn and the Canon for my OU course; Sweet Water and Bitter – from the library, about the slave trade, in preparation for my next course with the OU (From Enlightenment to Romanticism); Wild Women and Books – fascinating stuff about mostly-forgotten women writers, inspired by studying Aphra Behn; Vegan Freak (2^nd edition) – because I love the way they write and it’s good to have verbal ammunition.  Distressing reading, though…); Bill Bryson’s Shakespeare, because I adore the Bard and am enjoying reading about the times he lived in;  Bluestockings – about women’s fight for an education – inspiring and infuriating!; The Victorian House – an extremely interesting look inside the Victorian home at all different levels – lots of pictures, too; Cookley Green – from the library – light reading – a fictional tale about life in an English village at the beginning and at the end of the twentieth century – interesting reading about the hardship suffered by poor families while the rich lived off the ‘fat of the land’; Montaigne’s Essays – reading this slowly and savouring;  what a guy!;  Travels in the Interior of Africa – reading about Mungo Park in preparation for next OU course;  Othello – my next essay is about Othello and Aphra Behns’ The Rover – I read Othello with the offspring, but am re-reading it; London Belongs to Me – my other light read – about the lives of a group of people who all live in the same lodging house, just before the Second World War.  Thoroughly enjoyable – funny and touching.

And how do I find the time to read?  As well to ask where I find the time to eat and breathe!  I read at every opportunity and in any spare moment: while eating alone; while stirring food on the cooker; while waiting for buses; in the dentist’s or doctor’s waiting room; on the bus or train; while my mother’s under the hairdryer when I wash and set her hair; in the bathroom (Still!  Old habits die hard!  Sorry if that’s too much information!); while ironing (talking books); while washing dishes (ditto); while walking the dogs (ditto again – on my iPod); in the evenings; in bed before going down to sleep…

And do you want to know something great?  My dear husband, John, is very bookie, too!  It’s so good to share books we love and recommend them to each other!

 So, that’s it for now!  I thought I’d give this introduction to my reading as a warning that I’ll be including bookie stuff with my foodie and family stuff from now on…

But, especially for my foodie, non-bookie, blog-followers, here are two meals we’ve had recently…

This is chilli with broccoli and a corn crust.  My friend, Krys, of Two Vegan Boys, had posted a photo on her blog that made my mouth water quite disgustingly.  I asked her for the recipe and she kindly sent it to me.  Thank you, Krys!  I want to eat this corn crust on EVERYTHING.  In fact, I want some NOW!

And this is a nice, quick, light lunch we had the other day…

Homemade bread, with marg. and hummus; lettuce from the allotment; tsatsiki made with cucumber from the allotment, soya yogurt, mint from the garden and a wee drop of salt; olives; stuffed vine leaves and felafels.  Not bad!

And for my animal-loving blog-followers, our adorable Daisy!

And now I’d better get on with that essay…

Today’s soup: onion; carrot; celery; marrow (one down and about eight to go!); broccoli stalk; seaweed; barley; ground pepper; vegetable stock powder.  A utility soup, but tasty and nutritious!

Today’s title: Have I Told You Lately that I Love You? (Well, darling, I’m telling you now!) by Scotty Wiseman (not the Van Morrison one, or my first line wouldn’t work…)