Two of my favourite things*

Yes, I know, I didn’t write a post yesterday. I’m going to write two today to make up for it. I know this won’t really make it any better, but at least I will have attempted to atone for my blogging sin(s).

I didn’t manage to write a post yesterday because I was out for most of the day, and the bits of the day that I was in for involved meals or sleeping (or not) or just not having enough time to write a blog post.

In the morning I went with Mum to help out at the local Oxfam shop. As I think I’ve mentioned before, she helps with sorting out, cleaning and displaying books that are donated to the shop. It was nice to be able to work with books without the stress of dealing with people! We had to sort out any books that came in as donations and decide which ones were good enough to put out in the shop. (Yes, I’m afraid that not all books make it into the shop, some of them go to the special book heaven). These books have to be cleaned (using baby wipes) and priced as appropriate. If any books that come in are very old or are thought be particularly valuable they are checked on AbeBooks and (in this particular shop, but not in all Oxfam shops) will probably then be sold online via eBay, rather than going to be sold the shop. Once the books are cleaned and priced they go into the shop if there’s room, but some books have to wait until the book stock is rotated and there is room on the shelves.

We did some ’stock management’ - taking books off the shelves that had been there for more than a few weeks - because there wasn’t much room to put any new books in the shop. I was asked to put the fiction books in alphabetical order, because some of them had got out of sequence, so I did - in strictly alphabetical order of surname. Then I was told that they don’t put them in ‘proper’ alphabetical order, just by first letter of surname, because they like to put all the books of the same size together within each letter’s section. Apparently it looks better (I suppose it probably does) and encourages people to browse. This method didn’t really appeal to my librarian sensibilities, because I thought it wouldn’t really help people who are looking for a specific author. Anyway, the fiction books are now shelved librarian-style, so I hope I no-one gets into trouble for shelving them in the wrong way!

In the afternoon I went round to see my uncle and aunt and had a very long chat over a cup of tea. It was good to see them again and catch up with their news and news of what my cousins are up to.

Yesterday evening I went to the rehearsal of the local choral society, again with Mum, who is a long-standing and active member. I was supposed to go and watch, but in the end I couldn’t restrain myself and attempted to join in with the singing. The good news is that I no longer have to sing everything an octave too low - I can manage to sing notes up to the C above middle C. I was sitting in the soprano section (mum is a second soprano) so a lot of the notes were way out of my range and would have been even if my voice was back to normal, but hooray, my voice (such as it is/was) is coming back! Sitting (and singing a bit) in a choir really made me want to be able to sing on a regular basis again. I must try and do that this year, but I’m still no nearer to making this a realistic objective.

*The two things are books and singing, in case you were wondering!