I know Amazon is the Great Satan, but it is awfully useful. It's a friend's birthday next Friday, and I thought a couple of days ago that it would be a good idea to get her a small present, a paperback book or something. Then as I realised that it was a Bank Holiday weekend I began to think I'd left it a bit late, but decided that if I could get whatever it was in the post by Wednesday I'd be OK. I'm due to do a daytime talk on Tuesday, but could get down to the post office first thing on Wednesday morning if the book arrived on Tuesday.
I typed Anne Tyler's name into the Amazon search box, since I thought my friend liked her, and it came up not merely with a list of Anne Tyler's novels, but others in a similar vein. I baulked at the latest Tyler title in hardback, being an impoverished skinflint friend, and thinking that hardback novels were too heavy and bulky to be of much use. You can slip a paperback in your handbag, which is still not as handy for travelling as a Kindle, but Amazon have yet to crack the Kindle gift book. I don't know what's taking them so long.
I worried about the earlier Tylers, in case she already had them, but settled on Colm Toibin's Nora Webster. It seemed not so ostentatiously Literary that reading it would feel like hard work, but not insultingly Chick Lit light. If she doesn't like it she can always regift it. It's the thought that counts. She has previously been kind about buying me lunch for my birthday, but since I don't see how I can fit a London trip to see her into the next three weeks I thought I'd better do something sooner than that.
Amazon sent me an acknowledgement email, and then one saying that my parcel would arrive on 3 May, which was today. I remarked to the Systems Administrator that Amazon were going to deliver my book on a Bank Holiday Sunday and the SA said that they couldn't be, their computer must not be able to cope with it being a holiday. Then they sent another to say that my order had been despatched and could not be changed, and then one giving a tracking number and delivery slot. I never even heard the van, which is worrying since I was busy in the kitchen at the front of the house through the entire designated hour, but suddenly the parcel was there lying in the hall. The driver had obviously decided to dispense with a signature, or perhaps our lack of a doorbell or knocker put him off.
That is wonderful. I know that Amazon is the Great Satan, but that is so convenient. I could make my choice sitting at the kitchen table over a mug of coffee instead of having to go to a bookshop which saved me half Friday morning, I didn't have to pay to park, Amazon even came up with a sensible suggestion. I suppose eventually the tax man will catch up with them, or the revolution, or something will happen to bring the party to an end, but in the meantime it is wonderful.
Meanwhile, I have been supporting real publishing at the coal face by buying a newly published book on a Northumberland garden direct from one of the authors. The garden is Herterton. We visited it at the end of the 2012 season and were instantly smitten, so when I saw a book might be in the offing I stuck my name on the list to be kept informed. It has been brought out by a recently formed publisher, the Pimpernel Press, indeed, I think it may be their first title, and to get the project off the ground the photographer who project managed the whole book had to put up her own money and take five hundred copies. My copy arrived a couple of days ago, very neatly packaged, so that leaves her with not more than four hundred and ninety-nine to go. It is a lovely book. I wouldn't necessarily have paid £34.95 for it if I hadn't visited the garden and liked it so much, but I have.
Addendum The other Great Satan, Tesco, is succumbing to the form of insanity defined by repeating an action and expecting a different result, which Einstein may or may not have said. They keep sending me booklets of vouchers for £4 or £5 off if I spend a minimum of £40 or £50 within a tightly specified time period. Given that their problem is partly that people are moving away from big weekly shops to the flexibility of more frequent, smaller ones, then sending them vouchers for use on relatively large, inflexible shops seems to be missing the point. I suppose that's what their marketing department knows how to do, and they will go on doing it until the new management come up with a different plan.
Addendum II Our Ginger can notch up another pair of ears on his basket. As we were sitting in front of the fire last night he suddenly appeared on the hearthrug with a baby rabbit dangling limply from his jaws. He was out first thing this morning as well, instead of squawking in the corridor to be let into the bedroom, and he is out now. He was out earlier this evening too, hunting along the bottom of the rose bank for a rabbit to come out, but they never did. We know this because the Systems Administrator was sitting on the deck behind the bog bed also waiting, loaded gun resting on his lap like Tony Soprano. Maybe after two hits in two nights the rabbits are getting more cautious.
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