Holiday Reading

It’s always fascinating perusing other people’s bookshelves and there is none better than a bookshelf in a holiday cottage – well I say cottage, this holiday let is actually a barn conversation complete with mezzanine reading nook!

The reading matter is various, 1970s blockbusters by Jilly Cooper and Jeffrey Archer, more up to date novels by Victoria Hislop and Jacqueline Wilson. Books on British butterflies and birds. A book about the medicinal properties of honey and one about wind, thankfully not the flatulence variety, but a children’s book with picture of wind making mummy’s washing blow on the line - maybe daddy uses the tumble dryer!

There is a book called No Dogs on the Bed – a cartoon book for adults and dog owners – a subtle reference to the rules on the property perhaps.

The History of Stilton Cheese is wedged between a book discussing the divisions of Brexit and a book about female spirituality written by a man!!!!

What can be deduced by such an eclectic collection?

Are these lost books left by previous guests?

A job lot from a family house clearance?

Much more interesting is a Royal Canadian Air Force Pilots Flying log book belonging to Fairbairn. D.I. F/SGT D/O F/O F/LT

I may not understand all the notation but on one of the early pages I can decipher that Flight Sergeant Fairbairn completed a grading course in 1942, with his first solo flight on 7^th September. In the back of the log he lists his record of service from Stratford to Ontario, Melton Mowbray to Ceylon. On the final page is a list of aircraft he has flown alongside the engine type. Everything is meticulously recorded in very neat handwriting.

What a life, I wonder what stories there are to tell from his travels? It intrigues me even more than the eclectic array of books on the shelf above. I feel I have history in my hands, but with only these bare bones I don’t have enough to create a story – I wish I could smuggle the book in my suitcase and pass it on to my friend and fellow Resolute author Lindsay Rumbold, who wrote the dual narrative thriller Banshee.

These logs would undoubtedly spark her imagination although maybe there needs to be a mystery attached, is the fact the word Canadian is crossed out on the cover a clue? There is a field airstrip on the grounds, if only I could uncover a murder!

Is a small pile of log books on their own too prosaic – summing up an ordinary life, albeit one far removed from my own.

However I resolve to leave a copy of my own memoir, of my seemingly ordinary life, in the book nook for future guests to discover but my librarian brain is still wondering whereabout to file it on the shelf – somewhere between cheese and Brexit or Jilly Cooper and Victoria Hislop?

 

 

Update: I got to talk to the owner and asked about the reading matter. They are a collection of books from the previous owners. He then told me the flight logs belonged to a friend of his father who used to spray the fields, when that was a thing. Not a glamourous mystery, but it could explain the airstrip.

I told him I left a signed copy of my book behind for future guest and he seemed happy with that.