A is for Ashes-to-Ashes, Dust-to-Dust . . . errr . . . Books to Compost

As some of the more loyal readers, or even just regular readers - my 'eemies' are here most days! - may have gathered, a few years ago now, I got the storage stuff out of storage and put it in the garage, it was rather at my Mother's insistence, for valid financial reasons (it was my money not hers), but it wasn't a brilliant idea.

 

It rained just after we'd unloaded the last van, but I'd managed to get a handful of tarpaulin's from the magic, wonderful, now, covid-gone Baker's in town, just before the heavens opened, so everything was saved that first night, but it became obvious that the Jenga pile on the drive was never going to fit, and over the next few weeks a lot of the metal furniture and filing cabinets went to a passing scrap-merchant, and over that winter most of the wooden stuff was burnt . . . heay, it kept us warm!

But a bunch of 94-litre Really Useful Boxes ended-up under tarp's for a few years, with some cardboard boxes on top, two of which suffered water ingress, resulting in the loss of most of my bedding and most of my coat-hangers! But, on the bottom, one of the Really Useful Boxes had a crack in the base!

Here on the left is the offending box, the two contained the bulk of my Sci-Fi papaerbacks, and luckily the one on the left also had a large, old-fashined sweet-jar, filled with marbles, and a glass flagon type thing filled with glass-beads (which I think they use on the roads, for reflective paint), and can just be seen behind the two obviously shot Bradbury's, the two jars reflected light nicely, and were heavy enough to act as bookends. I should add, for context, that I let the hardbacks go years ago.

 

The box on the right is fine, and now cleaned-up, resides back in - even more expensive - storage, waiting for this minor nightmare, which I certainly didn't think would last three years and see the passing of not just my Mother, but both cats, to end. And the box seems to include or go from F-Z?

But . . . that leaves Aldiss, Anderson, Asimov, Ballard, Bliss, Bova, and the penmanship of Aurther C Clerke, as well as Deleny, among others, now (or. 'then', this was the summer of '22), as a solid mass of damp pulp, half of which had already been converted to a fine mahogany slime, by snails, worms and woodlice!

 

It was, in its entirety, spread along the hedge-line at the bottom of the garden, where its remnants have now had two years-worth of leaves and garden-clippings, dumped on top, and I doubt you can read a word of the tens of millions in that box now. Even the wipeable foil-coatings on a lot of modern books are only cellulose, so apart from a slight rainbow-shimmer when first dug-over, you will never know the greatest works of Sci-Fi were left there to die, along with some space-opera trash!

 

The jar of marbles is under what was once the boxed-set of Herbert's Dune trilogy, he missed the saviour box, despite his surname, by having a bulky outer . . . a lesson there for all of us - eat less, exercise more!

However, I can report that the Library has started clearing out it's old novels, and they appear to be doing so alphabetically, consequently I have started to replace the missing chunk of my library, under the confidence that even if I've read them, anything authored by a before-F is 'new' to shelf . . . when/if they finally have a shelf again!

 

Do not mourn my misfortune, or, if one of my 'eemies'; do not celebrate it. Firstly I had half an idea things were not good in that box, and probably could have saved the top layer if I'd acted earlier, and second, nothing lasts forever, everything dies, whole galaxies with a billion stars each, crash-into each other, ripping their very atoms apart, and starting again with a big cloud of coalescing gas.

 

You are only remembered while people still alive, remember you, once the last of them has gone, you have gone too. Whole civilisations disappear with little to remember them, the city's of Mohenjo Daro and the 'Indus Valley' culture - millions of people over hundreds of years - all gone, leaving so few clues as to their coming, or going, we are at a loss to explain them, or their end!

 

Ohhhh, you may survive as a statistic for another century or two, on a list, as someone who served, someone who received benefits, someone who held a licence of some sort, someone who paid bills, or, if you get your fizzog in the local paper, you may live-on for another century or two as a microfiche thumbnail a few millimetres square, but ultimately everything dies, including your favourite books!

 

I had, after all, already read them, some more than once, or I wouldn't be the fusty, anti-establishment cynic I am, so they had done their job, while I was still a teenager.