A Red Kite

Hooray! I managed to take a picture of one at last!

OK, so it’s a crap photo, and bearing in mind I live in the Chilterns and see these things literally every single day (honestly, that is not an exaggeration) I ought to have got a better picture than this before now. I also ought to be more nonchalent about them, but I love them and never get bored of seeing them.

Happy Christmas!

(Thank you to Teresa Stanton for this image of Victorian Christmas cards.)

I can’t believe I used to wrap presents really carefully, with little home-made tags and that shiny stuff… er, I can’t remember what it’s called, but it’s like flat string in metallic colours – oh, you know what I mean. They were all arranged under the Christmas tree (a bargain, because I worked at the Christmas tree farm) about a week before the big day. I’m not sure whether it’s writing or motherhood, or just plain laziness that has prevented me from getting round to doing anything yet, but anyway: Happy Christmas, everyone!

 

 

This is my first blogging Christmas, and I understand it’s traditional to post a heart-warming tale about some Marines travelling 600 miles across a frozen waste to bring presents to dying kids whose impoverished parents told them Santa couldn’t afford to visit this year. Sorry to disappoint you, but I’m going to try and stay British and on-topic with a historical Christmas message from the Liverpool Mercury on this day 150 years ago. The whole thing is a bit long, so here are a couple of select paragraphs:

 

 

CHRISTMAS

Crowned with evergreens, garlanded with the mystic mistletoe, and surrounded by an atmosphere of venerable associations, Christmas, with rubicund and jovial countenance, after a twelvemonths’ absence, stands again upon our threshold. With all our heart we bid him welcome—welcome for the short but delightful truce which he proclaims to the battle of existence; welcome for the bright though evanescent smile which mantles at his presence over the anxious face of society. For a few hours at least, under his beneficent influence, the world becomes something more than a vast workshop and a field of strife…

…We have to add a hope that from those magnificent reservoirs of the good things of this world, a satisfactory portion may find its way to gladden every home, be it high or be it lowly ; and that the princely hand of charity will afford no stinted boon to those who are so unfortunate as to require its aid. It were a pity should any victim of want repine amidst prevailing abundance, or solitary misery rebuke the general joy.

Liverpool Mercury, December 24^th, 1858.

 

Or, as Charles Dickens put it rather more succinctly:

A merry Christmas to everybody! A happy New Year to all the world!

Campaign for the Book – Wirral library closures

 The book was on a high shelf, and I was a short eight-year-old kid, but there was something about the spooky lettering on the spine that made me tiptoe to reach it. It was a collection of real-life ghost stories, and it scared the living wotsits out of me so much that I didn’t sleep without a light on until I was at least fourteen. It is twenty-five years since I borrowed that library book, but it is directly responsible for an aspect of Kill-Grief. Childhood reading has a deep impact.

 

The ghost book came from Irby Library, which is due to close next year along with 12 others across Wirral. Irby Library was where I developed the habit of reading widely, discovering new characters, stories and worlds whether or not they were aimed at people like me. As well as the countless re-borrowings of the Little House books and the Willard Price Adventure series, there were others I loved, some I hated, some that inspired me and some that made me laugh. I would have missed out on these books if they’d only been available at a price, in a shop miles away.

 

In spite of putting a vaguely green gloss on the closures by citing ‘energy costs’ as one of the reasons, Wirral Council expects everyone to churn out a few more carbon fumes by travelling to a central library in Birkenhead. NOT, however, the current Birkenhead Central Library, which is to close too in spite of its recent renovations. No, they are going to close the swimming pool and make that into a library… or something. Bad luck, swimmers.

 

The situation in Wirral is a specific example of a countrywide swathe of job cuts, funding reductions and school library closures – I don’t need to go into detail here, because Alan Gibbons is amassing a sobering collection of these stories and statistics on his Campaign for the Book blog. The policy of these philistine councils seems to be:

 

1. Cut spending on books so people can’t get what they want from libraries.

2. Boot out the qualified staff so that libraries are more difficult to use.

3. Reduce opening hours so people can’t get into the libraries.

4. Notice that no one is using the libraries, therefore they should be closed.

 

Please support Alan’s campaign by following his blog, supporting the libraries and attending council meetings in your area and joining the fast-growing Facebook group to keep up with the latest developments. There’s also an online petition against the Wirral closures at: http://petitions.number10.gov.uk/WirralCulture/

 

A library, despite the studious and sedentary associations of the word, is a place where children can take risks. You don’t have to choose a book that’s safely like that one you had last time – you can borrow a pony story, an alien adventure, a guide to garden birds and a teen romance all at the same time. You can risk not liking any of them and you can risk having a different opinion from that of your friends. But with the risk comes the possibility of a greater gain – the experience of finding an unexpectedly wonderful book that will continue to inspire you long after it has gone to the next reader. What a disgrace that children are increasingly denied this pleasure.

 

UPDATE: See also my January 26 2009 post HERE

New Medical History Links page

 Having a links page on your website can sometimes be a bit of a pain.

 

• You have to keep checking for broken ones – too many and you look out of date.

• People keep asking to exchange links, which is awkward if they seem like a nice person but their site is irrelevant or you don’t like it.

• Some people don’t understand the concept of external links. No, really – on a site I used to run, I had a link saying “The County Council would like you to visit their site and fill in their questionnaire,” then had people emailing me to complain when the Council’s server went down. Groan.*

• Visitors click on links, find something more interesting than your own site, and forget to come back.

Even so, I’ve just added a new links page to my website, here: http://www.carolinerance.co.uk/links.html

 

It focuses on the history of medicine – at the moment it’s just a few random things I find interesting, useful or entertaining, but I plan to build it up to include as much as possible to do with medicine, surgery, quackery, health and disease in history. I hope it will be handy for people doing research into these subjects, and it’s also going to be for me what Lee Jackson calls an ‘online brain.’

 

*First wiseguy to point out to me that the Lady Mary Wortley Montagu link says ’smallpox vaccination’ instead of ‘inoculation’ wins the last remaining supply of smallpox virus.

Kill-Grief proof copies

My proof copies arrived today!

 

 

It’s going to take me a while to pluck up the courage to read it. Howlers here we come!