Apples and Oranges

You just cannot compare Apple and basically any other computer vendor! Today I went down to London and popped in to the Apple Store on Regent Street. Gawd. It's gorgeous. Fully of lovely Apple stuff, stuff I really really want. It is so nice to be able to see all of their products in one place. They have a cool Genius bar upstairs, and a theatre for presentations etc. It's such a cool space.

Bennett & Kerr Books

Today I went on an adventure, all the way out to Steventon in rural Oxfordshire. Hurrah. The reason for this incredible voyage into the heart of darkness is that a rather excellent bookseller is there and invited me out to have a gander around their books. Think Famous Five meets Ambridge meets American Gothic (without the pitchfork). The village itself is just beautiful, full of lovely early architecture, a lot of Tudor timber-framed buildings and parsonages and the like. There's a very unusual causeway (a type of raised footpath) that runs through one part of the village too. The directions to this bookshop included things like 'cross the railway line', 'down the lane', 'walk through the farmyard', which is intended to give you an impression of what it's like to literally stand in the middle of a field looking for the entrance to the farmyard! Picking my way through the chickens I eventually made it to the shop. The obstacle course isn't normally an issue since customers all purchase online. Very cleverly, Andrew asked me out to browse because he knew I'd be a danger once I got started. And I also met Edmund and did my very good impersonation of slightly crazy and obsessed bibliophile.

The stock is absolutely wonderful. It's a mix of remaindered texts and secondhand books, some from the libraries of various saints and scholars. For example their latest printed catalogue lists some books from the library of the late Marjorie Reeves. There were so many I wanted desperately but couldn't allow myself. A highlight that comes to mind (sadly spoken for) is Malcolm Parkes, English Cursive Bookhands 1250-1500, priced at a very competitive £48. I also saw a copy of Hoccleve: Facsimile of the Autograph Verse Manuscripts, for what I think was £50, which is good value. But you'll also find other bargains at lower prices. They've got an excellent stock of material on Chaucer, Langland and Beowulf. They've got lots of general medieval history, as well as a considerable Renaissance stock too. If you're after something, send an email and they'll do their best to sort you out.
I myself picked up a copy of Norton-Smith's Geoffrey Chaucer (London, 1974); Chaucer's Dream Poetry: Sources & Analogues, ed. Windeatt (Cambridge, 1982); and a kind of (serious) folly, Barbara Nolan, Chaucer and the Tradition of the 'Roman Antique' (Cambridge, 1992). Needless to say that none of these books is the book that I actually went out to Steventon to collect! That was Coulson & Roy, Incipitarium Ovidianum: A Finding Guide for Texts Related to the Study of Ovid in the Middle Ages and Renaissance (Turnhout, 2000). I had actually ordered this in Blackwell's and it had arrived and was awaiting collection when I saw Bennett & Kerr's copy for exactly half the new price! This justified blowing a fortune in my warped mind. But I am actually using these books at the moment so they're not being used to steady a wobbly table.

When I win the National Lottery I am calling to Bennett & Kerr Books for some serious shopping, just as I'm on my way down to London to Harvey Nichols for some very very serious shopping. Suits you sir, very nice. I could write a better thesis dressed in Prada. I just know it.

The Spitting Image of...

In an extremely funny episode of Spitting Image, a television producer presents his latest cool idea for the BBC to Janet Street Porter (former exec there, left). He has a platter such as you might see at a banquet, and after much hyped talk takes the lid off, to the disgust of the panel, who are hilariously wretching and covering their mouths in panic. 'Oh my god, it's a steaming pile of ... '; you get the idea.

My last official meeting with the superV went a little like that (though he certainly doesn't look anything like Janet Street Porter). Of course I could only agree with him. Well, after a cruel birthing process another piece of work has been sent to him and I felt a little like including a platter with a lid. In a fit of hypocondria I went to the doctor today thinking my viral flu was actually a kidney infection. While it's not in my head, it's not in my kidneys either. So I just need to sleep it off and rest.

Needless to say the platter was returned, its contents having been competently poked with a stick, worthy of a medieval physik. I now need to return to that platter and do something with it. Next time he'll just put it in a jar of formaldehyde and keep it on his shelf as an example of a rare and grotesquely disgusting creature, one that looks kind of familiar if you squint at it, but then it's gone; nah, it's just weird.

There's always a career at the BBC....