Tuesday 14 July 2009

Brown paper parcels tied up with string…

Happy Bastille Day - how I love sharing a birthday with a purge of the idle rich.

I went straight to work from my parents today, and was greeted by two wondrous things. The first was a massive pile of parcels: seemingly all the books I've ordered recently have come in the same delivery. OK, it looks like I've bought myself a load of birthday presents, but I'm still childishly excited by opening parcels and smelling new paper.

One of the books was To Hell With Culture: Anarchism and Twentieth-Century Literature edited by H. Gustav Klaus and Stephen Knight, the latter of whom was one of my PhD external examiners. Funny that to buy the book at its cheapest (£25 second hand), it had to go from Wales to India and then be sent to me… Coincidentally, Knight wrote the definitive 'biography' of Robin Hood, and another of the books which arrived today was Adam Thorpe's revisionist Hodd. The others were the massive pile of OUP sale books (on medieval literature, modernism and the Victorians), Kiberd's new book on Joyce's Ulysses, and most wonderfully, the fourth volume of the Moomins strip cartoons. Just as a physical object, Drawn and Quarterly (PDF sample on that page) have produced a thing of beauty.

The other weird and wondrous thing this morning was receiving an email from Hilary Wright. It took me a few minutes to work out that this was my sister, returned from honeymoon and starting a new life with a new name. Regardless of your views on marriage and surnames, it felt like a significant moment even to those around her: I have a sister but after 26 years, her new position in the world and new relationship to us all are aurally and visibly announced.

2 comments:

Some Chilean Woman said...

At least your sister's surname is understandable.

The Plashing Vole said...

I guess so. It's a general term for 'maker'. Her original surname is Byrne - anglicised version of the Irish O'Broin from the Irish and Welsh god, Bran, which means Raven. Which I think is cool. My first name is an anglicised version of Aodhán: fiery. Which so very much doesn't describe me...