Arty-crafty ...

No, not just the fact that I've messed around with the photo. I spent at least an hour today on what the wrapper on the transparent plastic sticky stuff I was using might have considered the "craft work" for which it recommended wearing an apron and covering the work surface ...

I did neither. But I was amused - amused until I remembered what I knew about what we always used to refer to as "Fablon". Remember the wee advertising song? "Fablon ... puts the bright new surface on things//you never thought it would". The tune was as dire as the product. And yet the other day I found myself asking the lady in the Observer shop in Dunoon if she knew if Fablon was still A Thing. I explained that I needed it to mend a book that had fallen to bits. And she knew exactly what I needed and was able to find me some innocuous-looking clear stuff.

Innocuous my eye. I'd forgotten. Fablon was Of the Devil, and here I was using Son of Fablon to mend my music copy of Hymns Old and New which has fallen on hard times. (Actually what finished it off was falling off the bookboard in the pew, which is not good for a 20-year-old book that was never well bound anyway). But I digress. It took me many curses and the acquisition of a second pair of hands whose owner was rash enough to appear wanting lunch before I'd stuck the end papers to the inside cover (one sheet of sticky stuff each end) and then covered the entire book for good measure.

And this had me remembering the countless brown paper covers on school books - my own, my children's - and the various techniques that people used. I liked the mitred corners myself, and the careful snipping off of the bit at the spine, varying the amount depending on the thickness of the book.  And this I remembered even as I sweated and swore and pulled apart bits of plastic that had inexplicably sought each other out and fastened themselves together ...

And then it was finished. I ironed out the blisters with the roll of double-sided sticky tape (used inside the spine) and threw out the debris. I felt quite proud of myself. Will the hymnbook last a further 20 years?

Will I?