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December 04, 2007
Books, pelmanism and Georgie Fame
A good book is a great thing. When you get to the end it’s hard to put it down. It’s even harder to find another book to start. It’s especially hard when it’s late at night and you’re going along the bookshelves in your slippers with a torch and you can’t find the one you want.
Pelmanism* can help you only so far – usually about two moves. That is: you knew whereabouts on the shelf the book was and if it isn’t there then there’s an even chance that you’ll know where you moved it to. But after that it’s Open Season for Book Hunting.
What is called for of course is a classification system. Now, I don’t have enough books to warrant the attentions of Mr Melvil Dewey and his fancy decimal system, a simple alphabetical order would suffice. Just for the novels, you understand, the big books have a distinct and individual classification system known only to the present incumbent.
Well, when you start poking around in the bookshelves sorting piles of books according to the first letter of the author’s surname, you find all sorts of books you’ve forgotten. You also find out that you have more books by authors whose surname begins with M, than any other letter. And of course you come across such classics as these:
Then you find things you’ve put on the shelves in a time when there was more space than books. Such as your collection of 45s. Which includes the first record you ever bought:
*a system of memory training, devised by Christopher Pelman, a British psychologist, and later used to describe a species of card game.
Posted by john at December 4, 2007 10:42 PM
Comments
..........Please tell what is this strange visual object you present before us, COLUMBIA 45 ???? what is this, "I" do not regonise it ; )
Posted by: paula at December 6, 2007 12:15 PM
Aaah a 45! I'm looking for my Dansette record player now - - ! You could pile up six or seven of these 45s and when one had finished playing the next one would start. And this, I tell you, caused more excitement than anything an iPod can do. Oh, they knew about technology in those days.
Posted by: Daphne at December 6, 2007 05:40 PM