HAPPENSTANCE GOES HARDBACK

It’s here. The fire has been lit.

The official publication date for Gerry Cambridge’s Notes for Lighting a Fire is January 2012. But we have made good time and the first set of volumes arrived out of the blue this week, such are the vagaries of printers.

Gerry’s book is not blue, however, but the colour of the top of the milk in the days when milk came in bottles. And it is a proper hard-backed book with a paper jacket. It will sit on the shelf and not disappear.

Meanwhile, three pamphlets are with local printer Dolphin Press and about to arrive in time for Christmas. They are Arson by Sue Butler, Taking Account by Peter Gilmour and The Last Walking Stick Factory by David Hale. They provide a complete contrast to each other, in the best possible way. I won’t say more yet, though there will be plenty to say.

Pamphlets, of course, do have a habit of disappearing. It is their weakness and their strength. They are unassuming and slight. They don’t make the same demands of you that books do. You can bend the covers without a smidgeon of guilt, and because their soft covers and flimsy centres disappear so readily, they become rare and valuable before you even know it.

There are new PoemCards about to arrive too – even more ephemeral, those proud little upstarts.

It is all go here at HappenStance!