Re Collections

I've reached a difficult decision this week - not to go to Greece for a summer holiday (the first miss in years). It's been a tough call, because the temptation to go is huge.

It's not that Greece isn't a safe place. Compared to the UK's 304,000 cases and 46,000 deaths (both conservative figures as we know), Greece had only just over 4,000 cases and 206 deaths - yes, that few, you didn't read it wrong.

More people have died of coronavirus in Blackpool & the Fylde than in the whole of Greece, so I'd feel perfectly safe if I were on some sun-drenched Aegean island right now. The issues are more to do with travelling, the unpredictability of airlines and flights, doubts over the validity of holiday insurance. On balance, it seems wisest to stay in the jewel of the north this summer, to stock up on retsina, work my way through some Greek recipe books and hope we get a decent run of weather this August and September.

You may wonder what all of that has to do with collections and it's simply this, I've been 'collecting' Greek destinations for over forty years. It's the country I've visited more widely and more often than any other. I nearly retired to live there; it's almost a spiritual home. From each place I've visited I've brought back not only the happiest of memories and abundant photographs but also local pottery, just one of the things I collect.

Pottery from Crete and Paros and Rhodes

Strangely enough, I've also got a collection of hand-blown Finnish glassware, though I've never been to Finland. Less unusual, if you know my musical tastes, is my collection of West Coast concert posters from the psychedelic sixties, but then I have been to San Francisco on several occasion in reality, and many more times in my mind.

Where did it all start, this collecting lark? With stamps probably, as a boy; and those picture card series of birds and flowers and footballers that one could collect in packets of PG and Ty-phoo tea... all gone many decades since.

Of course, as you'd expect, I have other, more mainstream collections, of books and records, CDs and DVDs, football programmes and music magazines. I've even got an anorak.

I've made one other decision this week. From time to time readers of the blog have commented asking if I've published a book of poetry. No I haven't, not even a pamphlet, just occasional pieces in anthologies. So instead of a Greek holiday this year I'm going to fund publication of a selection of my poems, my first collection if you like - though there won't necessarily be a second one! There, I've said it, a declaration of intent, so I've got to do it.

I've not written a poem for this blog, but I'm working on a Rhapsody, ῥαψῳδός  (rhapsodos) in Greek, meaning the stitching of a lyric together - based on lines and ideas I've been collecting in my notebooks for a while. Instead, I'll sign off today with this photograph. Missing you!

Temple ruins on beautiful Kos

Thanks very much for reading. Have a good week and if you're a collector, happy collecting. S ;-)

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Collections

'Don’t tell my wife’, was a phrase I would regularly hear when I ran my antiquarian and second-hand bookshop in Ambleside, Cumbria, as a man bought another book for his collection. I even had one man hiding behind a bookshelf when his wife came in and asked had I seen him.

Or, there was an occasion when a man was wanting to buy a set of natural history books and the woman who was with him hit him across the cheek and ordered him to put them back, as in her mind he had more than enough books already.

There does seem to be an anoraky male tendency to collect every book on a subject or every football programme or every Vinyl LP or every part for the train set and diorama.

I devised my own ‘anorak of the year award’ and the man who won it was someone who came into my shop and asked if I had a particular edition of a book. He was very specific about the only edition of this book that he wanted and didn’t have. This particular edition was printed on thinner paper than the others during the war when paper was scarce.

I went to see if I could find a copy and came back with the only one that I had. ‘How would you know if it is the rare copy?’ I asked. He replied,’ you can only tell by weighing the book to see if it is very slightly lighter than the others’. ‘How can we weigh it’? I asked, ‘I don’t have scales that would weigh that delicately’. ‘Ah’, he said, ‘I do’ and with that he took out a pair of scales from his rucksack and proceeded to measure the book.

Sadly for both of us, it wasn’t the rare copy and he went on his way.

This is not to imply that ladies don’t collect things. There were ladies who bought books for their collections, but in my experience they were in a minority.

As well as over 6000 books I have now for online sale, I also have my own collection of thousands of books and miniature books, which furnish my library/study and which are a constant source of pleasure for me to read, look at, hold and reminisce.

In honour of collectors everywhere, I have written this poem:   

Collections

 

And there will never be a time

when we see our lives laid out

on the floor for the scavengers.

 

We will never weep to see our

trophies laid out on newspaper,

turned over for the lure of profit

 

or still heaped in their cartons of transport

where nothing is thought to be beautiful

that cannot survive its ownership.

 

The things we liked are like the things

we did, kept by us and remembered,

but imperfect to the injudicious eye.

 

The things that are only what they pretend

to be for as long as one pays them attention:

objects that tease by confusing the appetite.

 

What has always been said is also

true: you can’t take it with you.

So let’s establish a useful countdown

 

like eating the contents of the fridge

before departure. A satisfying meal

to the condemned prisoners we are.

 

All these objects that we believe

define us: they ache already with

our love and their forgottenness.  

Thanks for reading,

David Wilkinson

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