Hoarder? Qui, moi?! By Jan Needle

You may not have noticed it, but hoarding is in the air. As a writer, of course, I'm way way way above that sort of thing, and always have been. Those diaries dating back to when I was sixteen (what DO those little stars against some dates mean, I wonder? She was only fourteen) are quite clearly important documents. Those notebooks scrawled with shorthand, when deciphered, will almost certainly reveal plots and scenarios that will (finally) make my fortune. And that Pocket Oxford Dictionary, self-wrapped in mock leather stolen from my car-upholsterer father's supply, is probably worth a fortune to a discerning museum. It's got my name in it, in fountain pen ink - JANeedle, Form 4D. 16, Church Street, Landport, Portsmouth, Hampshire, England, the world, the universe, outer space. So even then I was massively original, you see! Especially for a D-streamer..


So proud was I of my non-hoarding nature, that I went into the back room to contemplate my books after the latest TV prog. Since I got a Kindle a few weeks ago I realised that I could make some extra space for sails and oars and outboard motors and other such essentials, by getting rid of some old-fashioned paper volumes. Not that I had many, obviously. My Auntie Florence was a hoarder. She collected empty gin bottles. I'm not a hoarder. If there were any books in the room, they'd all be relevant and germane.


Or even German, it would appear. The first thing my eyes alighted on was half a shelf of ornate volumes bound in gold encrusted (faux) leather. Hhhm. Don't remember them. A few flicks with the duster, a few bangs with half a billiard cue that just happened to be lying there - and voila! Seventeen volumes of something classical. Good heavens, I thought. Have I read them yet? Must have done, surely? Or otherwise... A few masterful swipes with a soft cloth, a few good sneezes - and they were revealed. A Thousand and One Arabian Nights. Or, to be entirely honest, Tausend und Eine Nacht. They were in German. And in Gothic script. Which even the Germans finally kicked into touch in the 1950s because they couldn't read it. Whoops. What is the Deutsch for Oxfam?


So then I went into whirlwind mode. I was NOT a hoarder. It was an aberration. Every other book in that room would be a good 'un. And vital. And irreplaceable. Like The Good Soldier Schweyk, in the original Greek, or Czech, or Chinese, or whatever that weird looking language was. That language that I'd been determined I would learn once. Blimey, I even had the Teach Yourself somewhere. Among the fifteen other Teach Yourself books, including Serbian. Not a hoarder, see? Just possibly mentally disturbed.


I got fascinated then, and cleared a space among the junk for a pile of new junk - books that had to go. The first one was a volume from the 1930s called The Stationary Engine Driver. I could even remember when I bought that one. It was when I was writing radio plays, and I just thought it was the most marvellous title. A stationary engine driver! Magic. Which wore off a little when I realised it was about stationary engines and how to drive them, not a locomotive driver with a fear of locomotion. Good title though, even after all these years. I'd better keep it, just in case. So - off the pile.


Next up was Prison Health Care. Then Scientific Winemaking. Then the Topper Annual, 1982. Then One Thousand Years of British Monarchy, then Experimental Magic. The No 1 Detective Agency, Steam on Common Roads, American and English Steam Carriages (what is it about men and steam?), and four unread copies of King Cotton. The Dunlop Book of Facts, Longfellow's Hiawatha (I wouldn't give a jot for anybody else's), and Pears Junior Encyclopaedia - 14th edition. (Note the spelling. When I was a boy my sister only had a Pears Cyclopaedia. There's one upmanship for you!)


I won't go on, although I could, I promise you. I found eleven French dictionaries, and five German. Two Welsh, two Spanish, one Portuguese, two Dutch. Please don't ask me how many languages I speak. I'm picking Antje and Christin up from Liverpool Airport later today, and they always ask me to speak to them in German because it makes them fall about. Who says Germans don't have a sense of humour?


And when I get back from the airport, I'll throw some books away. Or burn them. No I won't. The Germans girls don't like jokes like that (German sense of humour again?) and they'll fix me with a very beady eye and say 'That's what Hitler did. We don't like Hitler, Mister. Think again.'


I'm not a hoarder, though. I've had my Kindle for about six weeks now, and I've only got fifty seven books on it. Candide in French - that's a good place to start. And A La Recherche du Temps Perdu. And a couple of volumes about early steam engines in the Irish Midlands. See - I'm not a hoarder. I might get A Thousand and One Arabian Nights in English. That would prove it, wouldn't it?


Long Live Books!




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Kicking Off

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Killing Time at Catterick:

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My Mate Shofiq
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Albeson and the Germans

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PS Why did I keep a copy of the Topper annual for thirty years? I didn't even rate the Topper as a kid. I was a Beano man from head to toe, no argument. I haven't thrown it away yet, though. How pathetic is that?


PPS The retiring boss of the Parole Board  yesterday predicted major trouble in Britain's prisons because of overcrowding. Maybe he'd just read Kicking Off.