Books

As I have gashed my left hand ripping up old laminate flooring from the gite, I'm on light duties for a day to let it knit together.  Thought I'd write a bit on my favourite books and peoples and sich to make y'all as bored as I am.

"Narrow Boat" by LTC Rolt.

I often wonder what England was like before modernism got a stranglehold.  This is a glorious, poetic book to show you a place that has long vanished under by-passes, luxury developments and cheap tat, written by someone who must have had an engineer and a poet for parents.  A journey around the canals of England in a narrowboat before WW2, showing you what has been lost since.

"Sailing Through England" by John and Sally Seymour.

A similar book as the above (John S. wrote a book on narrowboating after this one in a similar vein), but more adventurous, chaotic and funny.  Another personal view of England, this time on the rivers and wide canals in the 50's.

"The Education of Little Tree" by Forrest Carter.

This is one of those books you haven't heard of but ends up changing your life.  Semi-autobiographical story of a young half-caste Cherokee boy being brought up by his grandparents in the mountains and learning about the world from a mountain "indian" perspective.  Funny, touching, and enlightening.

Lord of the Rings, by JRR Tolkien.

Read into it what you want about war, progress, the ruin of the countryside, etc.  I like it because of it's huge depth more than it's literary quality.  Pinching elements from Nordic, Celtic and German myth to make something unique that I have to read once a year or I start seeing pink Oliphaunts.

"Unto This Last" by John Ruskin

Man was a genius.  I attribute my spitting hatred of PVC double glazing on old Breton farmhouses to him.

"On Walden Pond" by... see picture.

"We are in great haste to construct a magnetic telegraph from Maine to Texas; but Maine and Texas, it may be, have nothing important to communicate."  I wonder what his comment on mobile phones would be?

"One Straw Revolution" by Masanobu Fukuoka

Every bloody person with more than a patio should read this book about how to farm properly without ruining us all. 

"Cobbett's Cottage Economy" by William Cobbett

The original "back to the land" book, to help the poor and needy not be poor or needy.  Great wit and style, a master of prose.  Not a huge fan of tea and potatoes though: apparently only good for whores and the Irish.

William Blake's poetry.

Touched in the head, but touching.

...Last but not least...

Most books by John Seymour

Have only what you need to live well (ie, not bloody cars, tellies, phones and other sh-te), get some exercise outside in the fresh air, dig that lawn up and grow some bloody onions, then get pish on home brew with your mates!  Leave those big cities to fall down in the dust!  I blame him entirely for my current predicament.  I could have been content with a flat in Brighton, as an overweight office chump, with nothing to think about but trainers and records, and only a distant inkling that I had it right when I was a kid when I used to go out to the crags by myself and get stuck trying to climb them.  As long as I avoided Ray Mears I would be ok, but then I saw this bloke's book, looked at the nice drawings and got it into my head that I should be doing the same as they were and not devouring the only place we have to live on with everyone else.  So here I am in Brittany (not France, by God!  Bit like saying Wales is in England) with a sore back, gashed hand, sunburn, a beard of all things, callouses everywhere, and on top of all that, because I tried milling my own flour for sour dough bread and cracking my own barley for home made beer and growing my own veg I can't eat anything in the shops any more like normal people 'cause it all tastes like shite and I'm now starving to death!  AND the chickens haven't laid a bloody egg all week, the little bastards!

Better than working for a living though.