They gambol in the fields,
those bookcases. The nice farmer sends picture postcards. I’m kept informed.
It’s all rather lovely.
I didn’t dismantle the bookcases in my
torture dungeon. Honest.
*
A lie was told there, surely.
The bookcases truly had to go. I tried
keeping them together using all sorts of fiendish tricks. No, I don’t mean
keeping them together as a family of three. I mean maintaining structural
integrity, uprightness, and holdabookability.
Borrowing from Comden and Green, the party’s over. The fundamental flaw
in bookcase design killed them off in the end. Those bookcases weren’t designed
to be moved around once constructed.
A shift here, a relocation there, a move to
the back of beyond and back again…and again and again, over and over again – again
– only more so…
The whirling storm of office updates down
the years exacted the ultimate cost. Ask not for whom the bookcase creaks. It
creaks for thee.
*
Rest in Pieces, Awkward
Bookcases…we hardly knew ye. They are dead – most sincerely so. Oh, I suppose I
could resurrect them from the imaginary ashes. I didn’t burn the awkward cases.
Instead, pulling nails and pretending they
were teeth, I dismantled, unscrewed, removed, and cancelled…
The cracks showed. Revealing the naked
underbelly of the bookcases, I discovered the situation was a little shakier
than I thought when I shoogled a bookcase here and tested stability there.
But this isn’t the story of bookcases long-past
their best.
*
It is, inevitably, the tale
of space vacated. This is the story of floorspace uncovered. It is the saga of
finding replacement shelves for books dumped unceremoniously on the carpet.
The dead bookcases…
Whoops. No. They live on, in spirit,
frolicking in the farmer’s fields…
The belly-up bookcases live on, in the loft,
lying there in bits. I could have them refitted at a small cost. Project for
another era.
Those deceased bookcases were half-size,
located under the windows. They just coasted into place and no more. Perfect
size. Ideal height. But move them, well…
Never move them.
You learn freely with ease and you learn the
hard way to your cost. Both forms of learning are, sadly, valid.
*
I moved swiftly. Other half-sized
bookshelves were all over the place, curling around each other for warmth. Out
came the tape. Down went the figures. Scribble scribble, scratch, shaky
diagram, miscalculation, measure twice and measure some more…
The casualty in liberating floorspace is the
imprisonment of wallspace. I killed three half-sized bookcases at the window,
and more half-sized units, bookcases, and strange items rushed in to secure the
territory.
And that liberated a few sections of wall
elsewhere…if I took pictures down. Down they came. I now have four full-sized
bookcases where half-sized articles lurked before.
*
Once more, I elude the danger
of saturation. You reach the point of no return all over again, and tread
beyond the natural limit of things for a short time. It’s a dangerous
pirouette.
This year, clearing bookshelves takes on a
different meaning. Usually, clearing a bookshelf means finishing the last of
the unread books on that shelf. But I’ve been all over the place with storage.
Looking around the shelves in front of me, I see STUFF perched here, balanced
there, or “temporarily” stored yonder.
Permanent features start out as temporary
affairs. I must clear these shelves of items that are, bluntly, not books.
There’s a box of bulbs – light, not daffodil. What’s that bottle of glue doing,
sitting there? Gluing itself to the bookcase, clearly. Well, it dries clearly.
How did it get to this? Gradually. An answer
that covers a growing multitude of bookcase sins. Fear not, readers. I don’t
store food there. Not yet.
*
Festive cards are
time-stamped. They go soon. I can’t do anything about the bottom shelf to my
right – it’s set up to carry the plugs for my computer. The office is a
paperless office. (Insert rabid laughter here.) And the office is a cableless
office, too. (Continue rabid laughter here. Try not to trip over the cables.)
These Blu-Ray discs need to go somewhere
else, though. I should just bite the bullet and go digital in film and book. But I can’t do that
– what would I do without physical books on cases? It’s only the weight
of all these dead trees that keeps the carpet in place.
I couldn’t allow DAYLIGHT back into the
writer’s crypt. Look what happened to Max Schreck in that F.W. Murnau documentary.
*
Yes, some things that aren’t
books must, by law, remain on the bookshelves. What else would I do with my
Spider Glass? I can’t leave that lying around the kitchen. The glass has played
temporary home to a legion of spiders and lions and bugs, oh my.
I keep meaning to add a label to the glass,
saying SPIDER GLASS. Clue’s in the
title. You may suspect, but, if you must know…
The Spider Glass contains a fold of paper.
These items serve as a spider trap. The Spider Glass does whatever a spider
trap can. First, spot your spider. Next, curse your spider for stopping at an
awkward spot high on the wall.
Your stepladder is always in another room.
If you leave to fetch the ladder, your steps are bound to set up warning
vibrations – alerting the arachnid. No go. Instead, teeter on tiptoe with the Spider
Glass at the ready.
Pop the glass over that spider. Slide your
fold of paper under the glass. Whisk the contraption outside, and deposit the
arachnid in the wild.
That’s the short version. There’s usually
more of a struggle, with the odd threat to life and limb. If you don’t hear
from me again, a spider got me. A spider got me to throw myself carelessly down
the effing stairs and the glass shattered across my throat.
*
The Spider Glass must stay in
place on the bookcase, with the warning piece of paper inside. I could write Spider Glass on the paper, warning
people off. My heart’s not in it. Besides, I know the purpose served by the
glass with the fold of paper inside.
Readers of this blog who find themselves in
my company are forewarned, and need never fear accidentally quaffing a libation
from the Spider Glass. There’s a remote chance that a visitor might seize the
Spider Glass in a fit of madness and rush to the sink for a thirst-quenching
session that takes in whatever invisible spider shit happens to be in the
receptacle at the time…
I, for one, think the possibility unlikely.
*
Anyway, I’ve freed up
wallspace by liberating floorspace, and the films sitting on my bookcases here
will soon open their plastic cases and flit, batlike, to a far-off
stamping-ground.
Yes, I know I’ve bought the last of the very
last of the last-ever lastest final never-again no more lastestest latestest
bookcases. And I’ve hefted them, danced with them, narrowly avoided being
butted in the head by them…
The
only difference this time around was the use of an electric screwdriver to cut
assembly down to something resembling an aeon.
*
Every single time a new
bookcase arrives, there’s the opporchancity to review the array of books on the
old bookcases. Can I finally take that one awkward book and reorganise half a
library just to fit the bloody thing upright instead of in that unfortunate
yoga position the tome adopted?
Maybe.
And that is the long answer, as well as the
short one. Buying a bookcase isn’t about placing new books on new shelves. It’s
all about easing the congestion elsewhere. How long before I reach saturation
again?
*
Sooner than I think, I think.
I bought a few more digital books this past
year. Not many. A few. Book-buying shifted again, into different types of
physical book. I bought a lot of rulebooks for boardgames, so that I could run
my boardgaming channel on the YouTube…
Sadly, these slim rulebooks are accompanied
by bulky games. There seems no way around that arrangement. (I downloaded a lot
of digital rulebooks, read them, and deleted them if I thought the games no
good. Saved me a lot of bad purchases.)
There are no boardgames on bookshelves here
in the office. (Okay, there’s once small card game in a bag, perched on a few
jazz albums. And a prop statue with a gaming theme. That’s all. Apart from the
prop watch. And two parts of a Terminator model from a cheap boardgame. The
glue isn’t for use with that model.)
No boardgames here in this office. (Fifth
edition D&D sits on the studio
table, but that’s not a bookshelf. And I never use the table as a bookshelf or
impromptu storage area between video shoots. Honest.)
My library is split between three rooms. I
could consolidate, and shift all of the fiction and non-fiction books into
Library One from Library Two, and then move all of the games out of Library One
to form a game library…
But that means altering the height of
adjustable shelves to account for game boxes in one location and altering the
height of adjustable shelves to cram more fiction books into place…
That’s a lot of adjusting. Truth be told, I
prefer to wander from one room full of books to another room full of books…
*
And that means reintroducing
the writerly rule. An author’s library is not a library in the conventional
sense. Books are not stored alphabetically. They are stored where they
damn-well fit in.
Pauses to
think hard about the next bit…
No, I am fine. I am living carpet-clear now.
Books are on shelves, and all is right with the reading world. There was a
carpet migration, back in the depths of time. Do not store your books on
carpets – store your books on dead trees on top of carpets. The alternative is
to stack books freely, and that way madness lies.
Madness and a peculiar death brought about
by a bookalanche triggered on hunting a particularly devious spider. We’ve all
been there…we’ve all died like that. And then recovered at the last gasp, also
a last grasp, seizing the one piece of stable stone in the place and clinging
to it for dear life.
Spiders, I am informed, never have that
problem themselves. It’s a technical thing: they just don’t go around trying to
trap humans under glass.
