Wetherspoons Library

Short visit to the Wetherspoons Library at Tooting last week.

Started off by admiring what I took to be a hop plant climbing all over a tree across the rails from the Waterloo platform. It was a lot more vigorous than those which we saw at Ventnor last month (see reference 1) and I wondered how high a mature hop plant could climb. Would one top a mature oak? There would be the problem of access as first there would not be enough sun around the trunk and second the trunk itself might not be very climbable - but assuming that the hop made it to the foliage in the sun, how far would it go then?

Smart but wet, folding umbrella found in the train. Red in colour. Pricks of conscience about not handing it in to lost property smoothed over by thinking that it was most unlikely that the owner, probably a young lady, would bother to try to get it back from British Rail lost property, efficient though they were. Pricks of conscience about the offensive advertisements posted from time to time by the maker - Benetton - overruled. BH quite pleased as it seems that while wet, the umbrella was of a better quality than the last one we found on a train.

Lots of foreign language books in the library on this occasion, particularly German, including one with a very nice red binding. I almost took it for its binding, but that seemed a bit silly given my complete lack of German, and settled instead for a light novel, perhaps a ladies romance, from Duhamel, 'Cécile parmi nous'. Subtitled with a quote from Racine 'Êtes-vous, parmi nous, à ce point étrangère'. The seventh, and at that time last, in the 'Chronique des Pasquier' series, from what appeared to be a popular and successful author, member of the Académie Française, but one of whom I had never heard. First owned by one S. V. G. Lay in December 1938.

A book which looks as if it was printed in France for sale in France, but with 'The French Book of the Month Club' printed in English across the bottom of the original front cover. The original front cover now being obscured by a second binding. But, oddly, with the original spine being preserved inside the second back cover. Not clear from when this second binding dates, beyond it being some time ago. Perhaps the custom was to make the book with soft covers in the first instance, but then to bind a proportion for the better class of trade. In any event, further evidence that the French book trade is not run on quite the same lines as our own.

After all this, I was made to feel my age on the way home by a couple of young girls getting off the bus, on their way to something very important. Just old enough to be allowed out for such purposes, just leaving childhood for the big wide world. For some reason they made me feel old.

PS 1: I find this morning that the book rates an entry in the French version of wikipedia, the first of the google results for the quote from Racine - which turns out to be from Athalie. See reference 2. The second google result is from an online version of the French version of OED (Littré) in which the quote is used to illustrate the meaning of the word 'parmi'. I dare say if I look a bit harder there will be the odd result from the master himself. A further example of the fascinating intricacies of the world of search engines, dictionaries and encyclopedias.

PS 2: and a further sign of age being my decaying typing skills. One example of this decay being 'over a' for 'of a' in an earlier draft of the foregoing.

Reference 1: http://psmv2.blogspot.co.uk/2015/07/botanic-1.html.

Reference 2: https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/C%C3%A9cile_parmi_nous.