THE ILL WIND

IT IS AN ILL WIND, ACCORDING TO ANCIENT WISDOM, that blows no one any good, and thus the recent scathing cuts announced by the LibDemCon Government, as I will henceforth term it after the Dave Cameron and his Conservatives gave way to the multi-coloured-scarf-wrapped liberals in the by-election yesterday, must surely bring good times for someone.

MY PICTURE ABOVE IS A SNAPSHOT, à la Robbe-Grillet, of my recent existence. It shows a partial view of the outside of my house here in Chester, and a full-on shot of my computer, my working area and some books.

THESE, HOWEVER, ARE NO ORDINARY BOOKS. Cuts in public spending often result in libraries having to be shut down. Although this has not yet affected the local libraries in Liverpool and Chester, it means they have to sell off excess stock. For me and my good lady wife, informed as we are by electronic mail about these sales, this is the wind that blows least ill in the government of this upstart Cameron and his playground pal Clegg. Even the private library just over the border in Hawarden and once owned by our great Liberal PM, Gladstone, is doing a bit of shaving.

THE BOOKS ON VIEW: I bought five 1920 bound editions of Thomas Hardy’s Wessex novels, at “Five books for a pound”. This means that when they were sold at 4 shillings and 6 pence in 1920 the price was right; Alford’s “Queen’s English”, in its 1870 version, which once belonged to Gladstone himself; an original 1939 version of G.V. Carey’s Mind the Stop; and a rare full version of the Larks Rise to Candleford trilogy by Flora Thompson, now all the rage on television for those young ladies who love looking at the past but would vomit their guts up after a minute of the smells involved in being there, yet would not mind a little cummerbund tumble.