Authors Electric

The Art Shop: delightfully situated in an old traditional row! Earlier this week I visited our local Art Shop… Why was this significant enough to post on Facebook (my only regular one of ‘ the socials’ )?  Maybe it’s continuity – continuity, like community, is important to human life. In my post, I also told readers that the Art Shop was a very human place. It is. For artists, crafters, sewing and modelling creatives, the art shop is an essential. Its raw materials – paints, canvases, sketchbooks, embroidery thread, pastels, drawing pens – and that essential art-shop smell… remembered from childhood, the Art Shop, with it brown painted outside, and its inner scent of pencils… Noticeably, this art shop post has attracted the longest list of ‘likes’ I can remember having – friends (‘real life’), friends (FB, only), and relatives crowded to endorse the good vibes of of a shop selling artist’s materials... Evidently, all regarding the Art Shop as a humane and satisfying place! So, why make

Can you imagine a world without phones? They've been around for a while, but not as long as you might think. 1960s: Two tin cans and a piece of string.  As kids, we built our own in-house telephone system using a piece of string and two tin cans. This worked on the same principle as Alexander Graham Bell's 1877 box phone, which transmitted a voice along a wire. If DIY is not your forte, you can buy a kit from amazon: tin-can phone Alexander Graham Bell's box phone. If you want someone to call you, it's "Give me a bell". 1970s: The age of the landline . Most households had a phone by then, usually situated in the hall, where they were jealously guarded by teenagers chatting to their friends. Landline phone with rotary dial, very satisfying to use with either finger or pencil.  Now something of a collector's item (try ebay). My family, wary of the extra bill, did not get a landline installed until I headed off to university. So if I wanted to call my best fr

November. We’ve just had two weeks in the North Lake District, where the autumn colours were glorious and the weather was sunny apart from a couple of squally days.One morning we woke to see the first snow on the top of Blencathra. I managed to see something I’ve long wanted – the falls at Lodore. Because of all the rain, they were thundering down in grand style, but that meant that the ‘path’ up to them was treacherous, so after a gallant but failed attempt to climb up closer, we saw them from a viewpoint by the hotel, but only the lower stretch was visible.   The falls are the subject of a poem by Southey, not the best poet laureate we’ve ever had, but I like this bit of it:  Dividing and gliding and sliding,  And falling and brawling and sprawling,  And driving and riving and striving,  And sprinkling and twinkling and wrinkling,  And sounding and bounding and rounding,  And bubbling and troubling and doubling,  And grumbling and rumbling and tumbling,  And clatt

Image Credit:  Images created in Book Brush using Pixabay photos. Okay, hands up, I buy books all year round. Just have to, right? But we are rapidly approaching the major book buying season of the year. Naturally I will have a list (and by the time this goes out I may be putting the finishing touches to it, ready to present to my loved ones. I am, at least, easy to buy for). I was wondering though whether you’ve found buying books for others fraught with difficulties. Do you ask them so they know what’s coming or surprise them with your choices? I do the former because I love being asked to make a selection myself but I understand the latter. My son loves reading political history across many eras so must ask him what he wants to avoid the duplicate book scenario. Has a book you’ve been given proved to be an unexpected choice for you? I spent decades focusing on reading fiction and that will always be my major love. In recent times, I’ve discovered the joys of non-fiction. This has co