AA book of the new sun

[hirez]

I like to avoid 'Today I did...' posts for much the same reasons that I avoid the Telegraph supplement - in certain broken states of mind they're just no fun at all.

However, today I abetted Ma in guerilla tree-planting and got to ask a bloke in a hardware shop for 'fork handles'.

Hardware-bloke didn't boot me out of his nice shop, but instead suggested I try West Midland Farmers Countrywide[1] in Bourton. Which was odd. I still feel like (even more of) an effete imposter in places like that. As if someone in a Tattersall shirt is going to beetle up and go 'Oi! You in the fecking climbing boots! Put that down and bugger off! There's nothing for you here!'

On the other hand, you can't beat shops that smell of chainsaw oil and cattle-cake.





[1] Which, I don't know. A great wedge of my childhood certainties vanished when WMF, Midland Shires Farmers and Aubrey Rees of Cirencester vanished when I wasn't looking. I mean, I remember being up at Reeseses with the parents (fetching hydraulic oil or parts for one of the I-H tractors) when someone steamed into the place going 'Concorde!'. Everyone piled outside to watch the pointy-and-smoking aircraft from the future howl overhead on final approach to Fairford.

I've written before about the feeling that something is actively removing the things I think I remember from the collective understanding.

Comments

[reddragdiva]

"I've written before about the feeling that something is actively removing the things I think I remember from the collective understanding. "

I get that when I try to tell the kids about anything, anywhere, that happened before 1995, i.e. in the irretrievable past of prehistory.

[sarah-mum.livejournal.com]

Any of those sort of suppliers is WMF in my head, even the ones over here in the East Mids. Similarly my visits to the Farmers Market (market for farmers, not the poncy sort) are full of Proustian delights.

You'd love the place next to the Beer Mines, C&M Tractors. It's basically a shed full of zinc plated hardware, rat poison and tractor spares. Oh and the bloke who runs it is called Saxon.

[hirez.livejournal.com]

Isn't it.

You know that mall-smell? A mix of Lynx/Impulse (or Teen Spirit if in the US) and a terrible industrial accident in a scented-candle shop. That's the anti-smell of proper establishments where you can buy zinc things, electric fencer bits, sledgehammers and moleskin strides.

[quercus.livejournal.com]

There's one of those in Abergavenny. Closing in the next few weeks, so that they can build flats over the sheep market 8-(

[hirez.livejournal.com]

There'll be a rubbish and ersatz one along in a moment. Although the buckets will no longer be zinc, but instead hand-painted by 'artisans' (ie - houseplant psychologists who've 'downsized' from Primrose Hill, who's partners are 'in property' and are about to be the subject of a feature in a Colour Supplement in re. their charming hameau.)

[zotz]

It'd be pretty short. "The roads are all closed. Buy yourself a nice bunch of averns and stay home instead."