Local

We don’t seem to have been at home much over the last few weeks but we are now staying put for a while and I have decided that we need to do a huge sort of books. My fiction collection is fine, all organised and (mostly) in the right place. However, we have a massive collection of  non-fiction books, acquired over years and years, and now spread all over the house in a disorganised fashion. We can no longer find particular books so this has to change. In between the thankless task of cleaning bathrooms I started sorting a shelf of books in the guest bedroom. These are local books that are used a lot, although there are some that we will be getting rid of. So, one shelf is sorted and here is a bit of it. A wide range of local interest books and I was pondering where they all came from, and of course spending some time looking through them - more interesting than cleaning! 

By chance my photo, which was taken randomly, has the set of volumes of the History of Penrith written by Michael A Mullett. Now this is sad. The reason I have these volumes (Numbers 2 and 6 are missing, but I am sure they will turn up sooner or later) is that Michael used to appear at every Keswick Words by the Water Book Festival and each year he would talk through the latest volume and I would buy it and get it signed. But no more. I think his history is complete, but that is not the problem. The problem is that this year there will be no Words by the Water as the people from Ways With Words that ran it, and other book festivals, have given up. The pandemic and economic circumstances has meant that they find running festivals is no longer viable. This is such a shame as they ran the festival so professionally and it attracted many people from far and wide. It is just at this time of year that I would be looking forward to going - days planned, tickets booked. Very sad.