This Is Not A
BLOG!
Date: 09/06/05
The Meaning Of Life (+1)
I hit 43 today...
...my case comes up next month...
OK, all silliness apart, I spent this morning wandering around
Wrexham town centre, desperately hoping to find something worth buying
myself for my birthday.
Wrexham might be on that list of 'clone towns' which there was so
much talk about last week: you know, the places where the town centre
has been generalised almost out of existence by thoughtless
'redevelopment' or mercantile shortsightedness. I don't know, I didn't
check: but it wouldn't have surprised me.
But it's been like that for a long time now. Way back when, I
suspect Douglas Adams might have visited: his Shoe Event Horizon was
obviously inspired by a walk down Regent Street any time in the late
1970s. Then it was travel agents; more recently, shops selling mobile
phones. Each successive wave lasting scarcely more than a couple of
years before being replaced by a new fad (it seems to be 'empty shops'
at the moment, unless I'm being very naïve and it is, in fact,
some extremely post-modern marketing strategy).
Not that the shops which are left have all that to offer,
especially if your tastes go beyond the dozen standard patterns of
whatever it is you're interested in.
For example, I went in to two major book shops and what I think is
the last remaining second-hand book stall in town. Nowhere could I find
a single book by this man:
Stanisław Lem is one of the all-time great science-fiction authors.
I've just been re-reading some of his work (The Futurological
Congress, The Star Diaries, The Cyberiad,
etc.), and wanted more.
W.H.Smith? Nada. Waterstone's? Forget it. If it hasn't been made
into a movie in the last two years, they don't seem to want to know.
Much of his work seems to be out of print in this country at the moment
anyway, itself testimony to the commodification of book-selling.
So, my wanderings proved fruitless (except for a punnet of
strawberries). My imagination usually deserts me at such times anyway.
I just did my usual shopping (plus one or two little luxuries - a tub
of Iceland Cornish ice-cream, for example) and dragged myself
back home.
For tea, I'm afraid I over-indulged (but then, what are birthdays
for?), following a plate of chips, fried egg and baked beans with a
sizable piece of my sister-in-law's home-made fruitcake, covered in hot
custard. I had to have a lie down after all that.
And, in other news, my buddleia globosa has decided to
flower for the first time in about five years. I'm looking forward to
seeing some butterflies around the place this summer.
(buddleia globosa, as featured in my garden at the
moment (bee not included))
