Tuesday 10 January 2012

The Borrowers [Good And Not-So-Good]

Did you enjoy this programme over the Christmas Holiday?

borrowers fry wood 2011

I am one of The Borrowers too – from my local village library. I popped in there on Saturday afternoon and got a bagful of books. My haul included this one

riverford Everyday-and-Sunday-cover

It is a new book from the Riverford Organics lot, who produce the fruit and veg boxes. [We had one of their delicious boxes a couple of years back as an anniversary gift from Liz and Steph]

This copy is very new too – according to the ticket in the front, only one other person has borrowed this book before me[and it still has that lovely ‘new smell’ about it too]

 

riverford

The book is full of recipes for each month of the year, designed for veg-box customers, to inspire them to use up their seasonal produce. Wonderful stuff -although I am still avoiding chard!

I trust that that The First Borrower who took this book out of the library enjoyed their spiced chicken, basic tomato sauce and the four other recipes they liked the look of.

How do I know which ones they fancied?

Because they turned over the corners of the pages and folded them down VERY firmly.

The Librarian and I were not at all impressed by this appalling treatment of the book. Brand new volume or older edition, there is no excuse for such behaviour. We muttered about the dreadful thoughtlessness of doing this.

One doesn’t expect such cavalier attitudes towards property in a village like ours, you know!!

You can always find a slip of paper, a postcard, bus ticket, old envelope…something appropriate…to use as a bookmark [I stress ‘appropriate’ after having been told by a Librarian in Kent of a cookbook once returned to her library with a bacon rasher marking the place!]

Rant over – I will tell you about the recipes another day…

13 comments:

  1. I hate any kind of damage to books , as do the girls.At college it broke my heart to have to write in my copies of Twelfth Night, The Crucible, The Whitsun Weddings and Pride and Prejudice - it felt very wrong, but I had to do it and they did belong to me. It was the same when I went to uni, but what annoyed me most were the people who underlined, highlighted and made notes in the textbooks from the library! I always made sure I had sticky tabs, post-it notes or scraps of paper to mark relevant bits and pieces that I wanted to quote in assignments, and always removed them before returning the books.

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  2. I thought you were going to say there was tomato splashed all over the relevant pages - that's how you can tell my favourite recipes in my own (not borrowed)recipe books!

    You're right - there's no excuse for turning down the pages of borrowed books. I like postits (Ben gets given loads of free, advertising ones)as bookmarks in recipe books. Quite harmless...

    What used to really freak me out in library books (I was a Saturday Girl working in the local library as a teenager) was people who made cryptic notes in pencil in the margins, usually in mystery stories. Or CORRECTED misprints!!!! Surely they were just trying to impress the next reader? It didn't impress me.

    PS Was the Borrowers good? We didn't get to see it.

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  3. I was a Saturday Girl in a library too - and we found an uncooked bacon rind doing the job as book mark so fold overs didn't seem quite so bad to me after that :) Though my boss had other ideas of course. I can also remember the head librarian being furious when well meaning borrowers had tried to repair a book with sellotape which damages a book. To be honest I used to quite enjoy watching her hyperventilating blue fit tizzy when a sellotaped book came back!! It was my job to mend books each Saturday afternoon using the proper tapes and glues.
    Happy days.
    L.x.

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  4. We recently had to change our veg box supplier and went to Riverford. We don't have a set box but pick and choose what we would like that week thus avoiding swede which neither of us like! We have been SO pleased with the food and it is still slightly cheaper than buying organic veg from our local supermarket!

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  5. I use paint colour samplers from the paint store as bookmarkers. Free and pretty!
    Jane x

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  6. I cant bear books being defiled by turned over page corners....or by anything else, including bacon! Rude comments too are unbelievable, especially when written in heavy biro.

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  7. Hahaha, I love libraries, in fact I popped in mine today, and I love hearing stories about them. I always treat books so well, because I love them, I can't understand why someone would deface them.

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  8. NO excuse for turning over pages. I hate it and rashers of bacon?? Surely the only place for these is cooked nicely in between two pieces of fresh wholemeal bread..... I used to buy my Mum a bookmark as a gift when we went on holiday, better than sweets as she was diabetic. We used to give them as leaver's gifts at my school. Now they have a CD with pictures of the leaver's party. I know which I would prefer!

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  9. One of my biggest pet peeves is borrowers who write in books. I don't understand this at all--it's a library book; you'll never see your little notes and highlights and underlines again. If you want to write in a book, buy your own!

    xofrances

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  10. I am glad to realise that none of you, dear friends, mistreats library books!

    Floss- we thought "the Borrowers" was well done, altho they were a long way from the original story.

    Sue - good to have a positive review of veg boxes.

    Chris - I suppose you could always use the CD as a bookmark?

    Jane - I like using paint cards too

    Thanks for all the comments

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  11. Aargh, I can't bear folded corners! I bet they were a finger licking page turner too - shudder.

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  12. I had to chuckle just a little bit. I am a page folder, but I promptly put the dog ear back when I am done (if it's a library book). Mostly, I use a book mark when the book is not my own. I can't imagine using bacon for a book mark. (I like bacon too much to leave it anywhere)

    Jody

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  13. I often buy /make bookmarks for Mr D as he is a corner-turner, but at least it's in our books! I am astounded that some people think it's OK to write/deface in library books.

    Like Floss, I expected you to say that the page was covered in splashes of tomato!

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