Hello again, fellow Bookworms!
Time for another blog ahead of my week off work! I won’t be available, though, for much of it, I expect to be busy doing stuff, so I have taken the precaution of reading a bit ahead in The Wrong Kind of Snow so that I don’t have too much catching up to do, and I am blogging now to update you on some progress with a couple of my Ongoing Concerns, and to let you know of some charity shop purchases I made yesterday in Swinton!
England have won 1-0 vs Romania this evening in Middlesbrough, with Marcus Rashford MBE, captain for the occasion, scoring the only goal of the game from the penalty spot in the second half.
Today is, of course, 6th June, anniversary of D Day, but I have read up to 8th June in The Wrong Kind of Snow, so that there’s less to catch up with once I am able to do so.
Classic FM are still reading my blogs, I am convinced of this. As I said recently, there are no bread books currently on the go. However, I think they are hedging their bets that there will be, as I have heard the Largo from the New World Symphony, the Hovis advert music, a couple of times in recent nights and they did play Ravel’s Bolero not long after I found my Torvill & Dean book the other week, lol!
I have now read five of the lessons in Seven Brief Lessons on Physics, by Carlo Rovelli, and am now 62% of the way through that one. I am also over halfway with Passion Pure, by Charlie Connelly, on my Kindle. Currently 57% read as I type, but I may well make further progress later.
Time to have a look at what we’ve bought… the books were from a combination of three shops on Swinton Precinct. The Salvation Army, Oxfam and Barnardo’s. Sadly, Headway seemed to be shut, and I actually forgot that there was another charity shop on the precinct, for an autism charity, so I missed out there, but I did get a few purchases.
First up, we have Cross Stitch Samplers, by Jane Kendon, which, as you can tell, is for one of my other hobbies. I’m not really thinking of doing a full-on sampler, but thought the motifs and alphabets might come in handy for my bookmarks! This one and the next book were from Barnardo’s.
The Now That’s What I Call Music Book, by Pete Selby and Andy Healing, is a guide to the NOW series of compilation albums which have been going since 1983, and is not even my first book on this series of albums, as I also own The Story of Now That’s What I Call Music in 100 Artists, by Michael Mulligan, which I have had for a while now. As you might expect, I also own a fair few NOW LPs, especially from the early days in the 80s! Wouldn’t know anyone on the recent ones, though, lol!
The Salvation Army shop browsing session led to three very different books being acquired. The Danube, by Viking River Cruises, is a guide to the river and the sights that can be seen if you were to go on one of their cruises on the Danube. As I’ve never had good sea legs, I am not sure I fancy an ocean cruise, but I still wouldn’t mind trying a river cruise.
Mondegreens: A Book of Mishearings, by J. A. Wines, was one of my other purchases, and this is all about misheard lyrics. The term mondegreen came about because of a mishearing from a Scottish poem years ago. They had slain the Earl of Moray and laid him on the green were the proper words, but an American writer, Sylvia Wright, had misheard the last part as Lady Mondegreen, and it stuck.
As a kid, I remember Bruno Brookes doing some misheard lyrics on his drivetime show on Radio 1, and in more recent times, there have been the misheard lyrics collected by comedian Peter Kay – if you need a good laugh, just go on YouTube and search for “Peter Kay misheard lyrics” – I have heard these loads of times and they still make me laugh my arse off!
My own personal set of misheard lyrics, however, come from when I was at primary school, and we are going right back to the academic year of 1977-78, when I was only just starting school and was in the reception class… I may have blogged about this previously, but not for a while, so new followers will be able to enjoy this…
It was from school assemblies, and we infants were not given hymn books. I would have been fine as I could read even at that age, but not everyone could at that age, so they only expected the junior classes to sing, not the infants. Anyway, one of the frequent hymns which was sung regularly at Monton Green Primary School back then was “Lord of the Dance” and I am sure it’s a pretty well-known one on both sides of the Atlantic as it does come from a Shaker melody.
“Dance, dance, wherever you may be. I am the Lord of the dance said he…”
Except that my little ears didn’t quite hear it that way at the age of four and a half… oh no… my lugs heard it as “I am the lord of the damp settee”! So, it has always been the damp settee ever since, lol!
The third book from the Salvation Army shop was Feel: Robbie Williams, by Chris Heath, which had a cheeky dedication in it to the previous owner, lol! Observant readers might know that I have read a Chris Heath book previously, that being Pet Shop Boys, Literally, which I finished off in 2017 having started it donkey’s years ago. He also wrote Pet Shop Boys versus America, which I have still yet to read.
This just leaves the Oxfam Shop and a couple of Penguin Classics were purchased from there, those being The Phantom of the Opera, by Gaston Leroux, and Three Men in a Boat, by Jerome K. Jerome, and that completes the votes of the Swedish jury, er sorry, lol, getting confused with Eurovision for a moment, ha ha, it actually completes the round up of charity shop book purchases from Swinton.
Although you never know… the Swedes might have given some of these books “douze points”, lol! The countries along the Danube might be quite inclined to give their top votes to the Viking River Cruises guide book. Perhaps there should be a Eurovision Book Contest?!
Well, I think that’s about all for now, so I shall get this finished off and published so you can have a good giggle at the lord of the damp settee, lol! Until next time, take care and Happy Reading!
Joanne x x x
Books mentioned in this blog entry…
- The Wrong Kind of Snow – Antony Woodward & Robert Penn
- Torvill & Dean – John Hennessy
- Seven Brief Lessons on Physics – Carlo Rovelli
- Passion Pure – Charlie Connelly
- Cross Stitch Samplers – Jane Kendon
- The Now That’s What I Call Music Book – Pete Selby & Andy Healing
- The Story of Now That’s What I Call Music in 100 Artists – Michael Mulligan
- The Danube – Viking River Cruises
- Mondegreens: A Book of Mishearings – J. A. Wines
- Feel: Robbie Williams – Chris Heath
- Pet Shop Boys, Literally – Chris Heath
- Pet Shop Boys versus America – Chris Heath
- The Phantom of the Opera – Gaston Leroux
- Three Men in a Boat – Jerome K. Jerome
Joanne's Bookshelf 