Something Old

Before I bluffed my way into the world of secondhand bookselling, I naively assumed that the older a book was, the more valuable it might be.

How wrong I was. With a few notable exceptions, it's the 20th-century books that make any real money.

I suppose it's all to do with memory. Long-forgotten titles, that have slipped out of our collective cultural consciousness, can be very hard to sell and I've even had to throw some 18th-century books away.

Admittedly the books were very dull and in terrible condition. They couldn't even have graced the shelves of a provincial faux Ye Olde hotel, but it still really went against the grain to bin them as they'd been built to last.

As I tossed the books to their doom I thought of their long histories, from their auspicious debuts in the libraries of gentlemen like the one above, to their sad demise - 250 years later - in a skip on a drab industrial estate in Sussex, with Heart FM playing in the background.

From Haydn to Rihanna. It was just too awful to contemplate.

I'd kept the books for as long as possible, until my desk was surrounded by teetering piles. After a fruitless search for new owners, I realised that I was in danger of looking like one of those people who bottle their own urine because they won't throw anything away. In the end, the books had to go.

Yesterday I found another 18th-century book that will probably also be impossible to sell:

Perhaps it's even the book in Gainsborough's portrait, although I think it's highly unlikely that David Garrick would have owned a copy of this:

It sounds terribly dull, but in fact it's a box of delights, giving the reader a fascinating glimpse of late 18th-century society:

Over 6lb of opium? Nancy Reagan would be spinning in her grave (but apparently she's still alive).

In the same chapter, the author makes a few little jokes to allieviate the tedium of the subject matter, creating characters like Roger Retail, Thomas Teapot, Lady Strawberry and Ben Bibant. But my favourite part of the book is a section called 'Rules of Practice', which lists the sorts of things a gentleperson might buy:

15 pistols, 16 cwt. of cheese, 22 tons of hay, 81 firkins of soap, 33 yards of flannel, 120 doz. candles, 54 acr. land, 56 pipes of wine, 63 gall. of oil, 99 bushels of malt, 70 barrels of ale, 144 reams of paper, 100 stones of wool, 110 sheep, 18 cwt. of tobacco, 66 gall of rum and 48 acr. of pasture ground.

Oh for the days when a gentleman could casually buy 54 acres of land! But I'm not sure about selling 15 pistols to an alcoholic drug addict. It would never happen today.

Other chapters concern vulgar fractions, promiscuous questions and evolution - maths was never this exciting when I was at school, but at least it was less complicated. I know that the media keep telling us that young people are getting progessively cleverer, but I'd like to see today's generation of hugging, halter-top-wearing GCSE students tackle this:

In fact, whenever I find a very old textbook, I feel humbled by its complexity. If I was transported back to a 1788 classroom, I'd be the one in the corner wearing a dunce's hat.

Were people cleverer then? No, of course not. Was the standard higher because the most stupid people were excluded from the education system? As the descendant of generations of barely literate Kentish peasants I'd naturally disagree, but I suspect that Messrs Cameron and Osborne might nod their heads in approbation.

I can't say that I have any great yearning to go back to the 18th century, but the prospect of wearing a wig and tricorn hat would appeal greatly. I would also enjoy throwing my silk gloves onto a shop counter and saying "Sir, I demand satisfaction!"

After London

Twelve years ago I was a London commuter, highly skilled at the art of slipping quickly through slow-moving crowds without spilling a single drop of the latte I'd just bought on the station platform. I needed the coffee. After a journey that involved a long walk, a painfully slow bus journey and 20 minutes on a crowded train, I felt exhausted before the day had barely begun.

In the evenings I would stand on the platform at Clapham Junction and look longingly at the destinations of the trains that rushed past: Winchester, Exeter St David's, Arundel, Dorchester West. But although I loved the countryside, I never seriously thought about leaving London.

In the world before children, I didn't mind commuting. I liked the possibilities of being in a city. Impromptu after-work drinks, publishers' launch parties and gallery exhibitions were easy to get to and although the last trains were never quite late enough, there were always taxis.

Today, things are very different. This is how my day at work began yesterday:



The sheep in the front is particularly ridiculous, but all of them are fairly absurd. I've noticed that they succumb to fits of mass hysteria twice a day, bleating as if something awful is about to happen. I've checked and it's always a false alarm.

When I look at the sheep and the outline of the South Downs in the background, I always feel slightly frustrated that I don't enjoy it more. It's an idyllic place, with no noise apart from the sound of birdsong and the bleating of sheep. In the days of dark winter afternoons on Clapham Junction, this would have seemed too good to be true.

But the sad thing is that we are remarkably adaptable. In the same way that my mother became used to having bombs rain down on her between the ages of 10 and 15, I have become quite indifferent to the beauty and tranquility of my new surroundings. Indeed, the main feeling I have when I look at the Downs is guilt over the inadequacy of my response.

I feel nothing but sympathy for the very rich. It must be awful to keep having what you thought you wanted, only to be confronted with the terrifying emptiness of your existence. I can quite understand why so many very wealthy people crave novelty and find it hard to settle in one place. The wisest of them realise that philanthropy helps.

The one thing that does make my heart lift is that I no longer have to pretend to care about things that aren't important, like 'brand values' and initiatives that I know will fizzle out in a few months. Today, my working life has been stripped down to a hut full of books and a field of sheep, but for the first time in years, I look forward to going to work.

Londoners

What makes someone a Londoner?

The Canadian writer Craig Taylor examines this question in his excellent book 'Londoners: The Days and Nights of London Now—As Told by Those Who Love It, Hate It, Live It, Left It and Long for It' and finds a bewildering variety of answers from the hundreds of people he interviewed.

For some, being a Londoner is simply a matter of having been born within a clearly defined geographical area, but nobody seems to be able to agree what on is and isn't London, with definitions ranging from anywhere within the M25, to a few miles either side of Trafalgar Square.

For others, being a Londoner is a state of mind, or a badge of honour that can be earned by anyone who learns to survive in the city.

Technically I suppose that I'm a Londoner. I grew up in the London borough of Richmond upon Thames and spent the first three quarters of my life living within ten miles of Hyde Park Corner. But as a child, I always regarded London as a remote, exotic place, full of odd-looking people, where everyone seemed to be in a hurry.

The impression of remoteness was compounded by the tortuously slow journey into London by bus and tube, which usually took at least an hour. On the one occasion I cycled into London, I was amazed at how quickly I got there.

We rarely went up to London. I was never given a reason, but I overheard depressingly bigoted mutterings about the expense, the coloureds and the people on drugs. My parents were much happier driving out to the Surrey countryside or, if the weather was good, down to the coast, where we would huddle behind a windbreak on pebbly beaches and pretend that it was still 1935.

My father always told people that we came from Middlesex and rued the day when the county was absorbed into Greater London, as if a wall had been breached. London was elsewhere. It began somewhere after Putney; on the other side of Hammersmith Bridge; just before Clapham Junction. It wasn't Wimbledon, but it was Acton.

For Craig Taylor, Londoners are simply "the people you see around you. The ones who stock the tube trains and fill the pavements and queue in Tesco with armfuls of plastic-wrapped veg. Whatever their reason or origin, they are laughing, rushing, coniving, snatching free evening newspapers, speaking into phones, complaining, sweeping floors, tending to hedge funds, pushing empty pint glasses, marching, arguing, drinking, kneeling, swaying, huffing at those who stand on the left-hand side of the escalator, moving, moving, always moving. It's a city of verbs."

But my favourite defintion of a Londoner comes from a stranger that Taylor met in a Cricklewood pub:

"The only thing I know is that a real Londoner would never, ever, ever eat at one of those bloody Angus bloody steak houses in the West End. That's how you tell."

A 448-page book consisting of 200 interviews with people who live and work in London could be a rather dry read, but Londoners is one of the most moving and compelling books I've come across, with some stories that are more extraordinary than any work of fiction. Anyone who has ever travelled on public transport and wondered about the hidden lives and secret thoughts of their fellow passengers will enjoy this book.

Reading Londoners, I felt an increasing admiration for the interviewees' passionate, brave, difficult and sometimes rewarding struggles with an unforgiving city, particularly those who had migrated from abroad, with no family or friends to support them. I also felt a growing conviction that being a Londoner was not a birthright, but something that had to be earned.

I have never eaten in an Angus Steak House, but I would never dare to call myself a Londoner.

Don't Try This At Home

If you've ever associated the term 'Swedish massage' with a state of heightened relaxation and sensual pleasure, prepare to be disabused. These sinister photos from a 1927 book called The Technique, Effects and Uses of Swedish Medical Gynastics and Massage, by Dr J Arvedson, tell a very different story:





It's probably very good for you, but when I have backache, I prefer to rely on the anti-inflammatory properties of a good glass of wine.