The flying ants which emerged yesterday afternoon from their nests to take advantage of the humidity set me thinking. Do we take the extraordinary devices Nature provides to procreate species to much for granted? After the ants have mated in the air before losing their wings, the females burrow into the earth softened by rain to build found new colonies. The males, their sole purpose of impregnating queens once achieved, collapse and die. Ant society is composed of males developed from unfertilised eggs, wingless, sterile workers developed from fertilised eggs. And queens are also developed from fertilised eggs cared for in a specific manner. Such complexity, such timing! Oh and homo sapiens. Save that for another day.
At the bottom of The High Street, a lorry belonging to Choice Textile Recycling invites "Call on us for your book recycling needs". I have sometimes thought that writers in producing new books often do no more than recycle what they have read. But I think Choice Textile Recycling is intent on chewing up old books and turning them back into paper. Ebooks I suppose are one line of defence against such aggression.
2 comments:
"Wingless sterile workers." In publishing they went straight into middle management.
Do you ever recycle books? Get rid of books you know - if you are honest - you will never read again? Or have you only bought books of enduring value and sorted out the shelving at a later date? Over the last three or four years I have been discarding. The benefit is that what's left looks more coherent as a collection. Suggesting to the casual visitor that the acquisitions were part of a grand plan. Proving I suppose that I'm not a true bookie, merely a frustrated interior designer.
It sounds like a chattering classes strategem but it isn't really. To get the full effect the casual visitor would also have to visit the next-best bedroom and then the master bedroom. Not exactly a casual visitor. But I think I can say, hand on heart, that I would never have re-read Tschiffley's Ride. Now there's a tester for you. Google allowed.
I used never to part with books, but eventually space demanded a visit to charity shops. I even sold my early editions of Proust to make way for new translations. Some hardbacks I give to my children and grandchildren. Eventually the process took pace following the arrival of Kindle which somehow made it easier. Now I still miss the books which I have got rid of. The habit dies hard.
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