The Alternative Syllabus

There seems to be a lot of weather in the streets today; the flash flooding sort . I missed the bus home after a trying play session with the children ( too much going on, not enough hands...) and decided to carry on looking for the course books I started searching for yesterday. I found an excellent shop and cafe that sells second hand books, and only opened 2 days ago! Coffee £1.50, and it's on my way home! However, they didn't have them either, so I forwent (?) the coffee and scurried off to Stroud's eleventh charity shop, the one I had nearly forgotten.

There I found friendly staff, people asking to volunteer and being turned away, and reasonably priced books. After I'd found a book entitled Love on the Dole, byWalter Greenwood, I came up with the idea of finding three alternative books, published in the 1930s, that could be used to study literature and social history. I have been known to get obsessed by the quest for a particular item, so I thought I should switch my attentions from the ones I couldn't get.

So I bought a couple of books and took them home, via the supermarket, but luckily got there in time to gather up, clean and disinfect the birdfeeders before the serious chucking-it-down rain began. Though my blip name is woodpeckers, I have not yet blipped one. They only visit our garden when we put out suet, and our housesitters put out loads of nuts instead while we were away! So it is time for a fresh start. The goldfinches and chaffinches are back as of today, and when it stops flooding I'll put out a bird banquet.

The books are: Love on the Dole by Walter Greenwood
The Weather in the Streets by Rosamond Lehmann
Doctor Sally by P G Wodehouse

All were written in the 1930s. I chose the Virago cover because of the iconic cover design. Tried to set up a cosy blip including Bomble, the book, and a cup of tea, but Bomble is made of sterner stuff and couldn't be doing with it. I thought it was the sort of shot that my sister TMLHereandThere would excel at. Ah well, she will be here in a week's time...

I did actually read The Weather in the Streets once in the 1980s. It is about Olivia, a woman having an affair,and follows on from Invitation to the Waltz. I shall read it again, particularly if it carries on raining in this desolate manner.

PS I did my O Grades and Highers in Scotland in the 1980s, but we were never allowed to follow the alternative syllabus. It sounded so much more exciting, whatever it was...