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This is the daily blog of Saturday Books. Updates will be posted regularly on here as well as on the facebook page Saturday Books, where we like to interact with members of the community and those who are interested in Saturday Books.

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Monday 21st February

Weekend fairly comatose after  Saturday afternoon had drawn out – pleasurably – with the visit of Peter and Jane True, supporters and customers for the past nine years.  They too are enthralled at the prospect of Nauruz, the secular celebration of the coming of spring, marked at the equinox, the 20th March, with music, dance and the spoken word.  That such an event could take place in Dudley, beginning at the top of Castle Hill, concluding in Priory Park.  Already there are good signs of the possibility.  Dudley Council have offered advice.  The Gather Cafe are already involved.  St Edmunds (Bottom) Church have indicated that they may be prepared  to allow use of newly-cleared community space – if the builders have finished by then.

Aside from all this excitement, I found a few hours to sink into Francis Brett Young’s novel, The Black Diamond, published in 1922.  Brett young was brought up in Halesowen, the son of a doctor.  His writing captures not only the dialect but also the toughness of the miners of the era.  For all the hardness of industrial lives portrayed, the setting despite the spoil-heaps is essentially bucolic, and there is a nostalgia for the time before the first world war.  Brett Young is a marvellous, effortless, gifted storyteller, and should be recognised as one of the region’s great narrators.

 

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Weekend 19th February

The much-anticipated gale wind that pushed me uphill to the bookshop, my bicycle rusty from the rain.  It had brought trees down over footpaths on Fens Pools when I walked at dusk, requiring deft negotiation of branches, though the dog skipped nimbly beneath.  I went out into the mid-morning rain with three Iranian friends, to look at the route for a prospective Spring Procession, which in their tradition is called Nauruz. This is to involve poetry and music. It is already supported, I found out, by the Gather Cafe and DMBC. Much of the days taken up in discussions.

[/et_pb_text][/et_pb_column][/et_pb_row][/et_pb_section][et_pb_section fb_built=”1″ _builder_version=”4.8.2″ _module_preset=”default” background_color=”#0C71C3″][et_pb_row _builder_version=”4.8.2″ _module_preset=”default” custom_padding=”0px|||||”][et_pb_column type=”4_4″ _builder_version=”4.8.2″ _module_preset=”default”][et_pb_text _builder_version=”4.8.2″ _module_preset=”default” text_text_color=”#FFFFFF” custom_padding=”25px|||||”]Blog 1: The Young People Employed at the Bookshop

Teenagers have taken the blame here for file-corruption, for mis-placing of books on shelves, and for books that are unsaleably overpriced, or catastrophically underpriced. And yet these students who have worked summers and weekends for the bookshop should take credit. So much beautification – and they have been there for immediate action, getting boxes of books upstairs, sorted onto tables, from there to shelves. They have taken over at the counter and have allowed me time. Instead I should be glad to pay them for progressing the shop, and giving it a new presence through their youth and good looks, so adding to sales and to reputation. [/et_pb_text][/et_pb_column][/et_pb_row][/et_pb_section]