I tell a visitor that my grandchildren will be visiting us on Saturday. "I hope it's fine, " she says, "so that they can play outside." I am flattered that she should imagine that my grandchildren would want to go out and play. They are well in to their twenties. I shall of course make sure that they have the opportunity.
The short film about a world without books which Herhimnbryn mentions in her comment yesterday brought a tear to my eye. Hall's Bookshop has been a feature of Tunbridge Wells for many years. And has long been a favourite of bibliophiles world wide. Some years ago the bank next door which owned the lease were refusing to renew it on the grounds that it wanted to install a cash dispenser. Protests came from far and wide, Good sense prevailed and the bank renewed the lease. But it was a near thing. The film which is skillfully made and acted with charm and aplomb,envisages a time when there are no more books. The last scene shows the Hall's we all know and love hideously boarded up, its windows blank and the outside display shelves gone for ever. A nightmare scenario as though the bank had won.
2 comments:
The golf ball photo is amazing. At first you wonder what it is you are looking at and the single word against the cratered surface seems to have something to do with space travel.
I have not seen the film yet but it sounds excellent. The film Fahrenheit 451 is also about a world without books and is very moving.
Once I played golf. I lost lots of balls. It is quite conceivable several of them ended up in compost heaps. Certainly, many plopped into pools, lakes and rivers never to be seen again. Eventually my back intervened and perhaps it was just as well; I wasn't very good. However, one scene was memorable. It was winter and my ball, still carrying some velocity, bounced on to a frozen mere and skated on, endlessly, surrendering only tiny amounts of energy each time it bounced. Physics was to prove a longer lasting comfort than golf - still is.
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