Canterbury musings, Six Charming Real Photo Miniatures of Ramsgate, I think I used to call this a Sunday Ramble.

I was standing by the river in Canterbury today watching a rather intelligent looking rat. The rat appeared to have acquired a human sized sandwich cut up into rat sandwich sized pieces which it had stored nearby and every so often having finished one rat sized sandwich it would go off and get another one and then come back and sit in front of me and carry on eating.

The mixture of thoughts about bubonic plague to the little paws like human hands ran through my mind as they do, but what happens about this. I doubt Canterbury Council will be engaging a pied piper or offering a ransom per tail to enterprising rat catchers.

I can see there would also be issues over any mass extermination schemes based on poisoning the local wildlife or arming local teenagers.

Personally I find the rats more interesting to watch than the other wildlife, I also get the feeling that this is reciprocal as I am sure the rats watch me with some speculation, I am fairly certain that my reflection often appears in their eyes.

Something that interests me in Canterbury is the bookshops, recently the biggest one closed down for ever, this was the St Margaret’s Street branch of Waterstones, which (correct me if I’m wrong) was the largest bookshop in East Kent and possibly even Kent.

Now if a significant library, art gallery, theatre or historical attraction had closed it would have been major news item but being just another bookshop, or for that matter shop, there wasn’t a ripple on the waters of the major media.

Anyway off I went to the remaining much smaller Waterstone’s to browse the books, my main interest is in the history books about this area, East Kent, frankly it is not a large section, the loss of the bigger branch is very significant. Up in the lift to the general history section, also much smaller.

They did have Asser's life of King Alfred but it was well over a tenner and the physical book is available new on line for significantly less than a tenner, so I just browsed away.

We don’t have it in stock at the moment, and I have now resorted to reading the bits I want online https://archive.org/stream/asserslifeofking00asseiala/asserslifeofking00asseiala_djvu.txt

The other book I consulted while I was in Waterstones we the Kent edition of The Buildings of England, I have the current edition, but it’s too long and sticks out of my pocket, I have kept the older one and often carry it around with me, but I hadn’t got either with me.

I noticed the current edition is now £35 and speculated on living in a time where three ordinary new books could cost over £100 in a shop but would be much cheaper on the internet.

I considered like King Alfred having a moaning prayer; “he complained and made moan to the Lord, and to all who were admitted to his familiarity and affection, that Almighty God had made him ignorant of divine wisdom and of the liberal Arts” I think this is now summarised as OMG, although personally I think I prefer, made moan to the Lord MMTTL.

On to Chaucer Bookshop where I bought six old photos of Ramsgate, obviously they all date from the same date, anyone fancy guessing the date?

Back to my own bookshop and here are the books that went out yesterday http://michaelsbookshop.blogspot.co.uk/2018/01/landscapes-of-britain-in-bookshop.html

I may ramble on after supper, I hope not to burn it like King Alfred, curry which takes half an hour cooking and preparation and costs about 30p per head – don’t ask.