Articles, essays and miscellaneous writings

The Extraction Service

I have no interest whatsoever in domestic animals and the politest way that I can say this is that I have had a lifelong disinterest. However, I do come across many clients who are very keen on such creatures and one in particular was a lady who has a small cattery business at the bottom of her spacious garden. This lady was also a veterinary nurse with a specialism in equine animals.

When she called round one afternoon to go through her tax return and sign it, she turned up at my door and when I asked her if she was okay she said ‘Not really, I’ve just killed a pheasant on the way over’. ‘Oh dear, I said, is it all sorted out now?’ To which she replied no, it’s not actually, because it’s still stuck in my radiator grille!

‘So you would like me to help you remove it would you?’ I said, to which she replied ‘Can we leave it for now, when we’ve done the tax return?’. So that was fine and we sat down at the dining room table, discussed all the usual, she signed the return and then I said ‘Okay, shall we sort this out now?’ She just sat there. Then I realised that she didn’t want to have any part of it.

So, being a hero, I went into my garage, got my gardening gloves and went out to her small car and immediately spotted the pheasant, fortunately very dead, completely wedged into the plastic radiator grille and which was actually broken. I managed to pull the pheasant out whole and placed it on my garage floor.

So that was my good deed for the day and off my client went, somewhat relieved.

On my next invoice, I included an item, ‘Removal of pheasant from radiator grille (no charge).

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Recently read

My idea of a good novel and why I would seek one, is for the purposes of entertainment and distraction from everyday life. Which I suppose is why everyone reads fiction, including historical novels. I am not interested in science fiction or fantasy novels, such as Tolkien's, or even the extremely popular Harry Potter novels. I read the first one just to see, but was not inspired. And ditto for the Philip Pullman's Northern Lights. I simply do not see the point.

So why War and Peace? One of the reasons is, it has been described as one of the greatest novels ever written. It has also been described as a great story. I expected this novel to be a huge challenge, not least because of its epic proportions. 1300 pages is quite a lot of book. The usual test to persevere for at least 100 pages before deciding to continue, always seems to work for me. Once I had purchased the good quality hardback copy, I continued to read where I had left off with the cheap paperback as I had decided after only 50 pages that I was up for it.

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I mentioned earlier that not only I have derived great pleasure and satisfaction, one way or another from reading, whether non-fiction, fiction, academic or other sources such as a computer screen, magazine, etc but I also enjoy books as artefacts in their own right. In particular, I like books which have an aesthetic appeal and are of good quality in terms of paper or hard covers and the actual quality of the text and the material it is printed on.

I have several books which I particularly like the look of and as well as their contents, are a pleasure to read from, handle and look at. I have favourite textbooks, a number of fine quality Shakespeare books and of course books which are described as coffee table ones with particularly pleasing illustrations or photographs. Dorling Kindersley publications are a very good example of not just good content but very pleasant text and picture quality.

A particular example of a very technical publication of mine is a hardback of a microwave radio textbook. Not only is this very good quality, but it has some excellent diagrams which fold out to produce illustrations which would not be so effective within the confines of the page size.

In my bookcase I have an excellent copy of The Wind in the Willows, by Kenneth Grahame and Cider with Rosie by Laurie Lee. These are favourite children’s books which I have read to my daughters and I hope to read them to my grandchildren. They are additionally pleasurable to read because of the way in which they have been produced. Not only quality literature, but this is also reflected in the high standard of text and illustration.

I have two hardback copies of different translations of War and Peace, which are both very good quality hardbacks and in particular the font size and the white paper most definitely enhances the reading experience.

Personal taste, but yet another reading benefit!

This is an extract from Chapter 7 of 'How Reading is Learned'