Is it really true that the devil makes work for idle hands? More to the point, if it is true then how does that apply to the retired person? Should the very concept of idleness be banished from the lexicon of the retired person? After all there is one very strong theory that retirement should be about taking it easy. Therefore idleness doesn’t apply. Although admittedly the line between idleness and relaxation is a fine one.
I have no doubt that for many of us retired people relaxing doesn’t present a problem, it’s what we do, we say, we worked for forty odd years and now we’re reaping our reward. Kicking back and taking it easy. Fair enough and good luck to you, I say. But in brackets, you lazy sod. I envy your laid back view of life. But it’s not for me.
I can say this with confidence because of the story of the new bookcase. This last weekend I spent constructing a Billy (from IKEA) bookcase and heaving it into place in the barn. Nothing unusual in that, we have quite a few bookcases in our properties. But that’s the point. My best friend, if I had one, couldn’t say we needed yet another one and certainly not where we put it. I said we heaved it into position and the verb is appropriate. Given it’s positioned well above head height. You might be able to see where we’ve put it from the photo above.
Strange though it may seem to recount, but this is a dream come true. My only explanation, excuse even, for what might seem a bit high-flown, is that the barn has a double height environment. A factor of our conversion of the wreck we purchased all those years ago, and our wanting to make the most of the old beams that just about held it all together.
So from that very first time I had this vision of floor to roof (it doesn’t really have a ceiling) bookcases. You know the kind of thing you see in the glossy house design magazines. This was my dream. You know the kind of thing, when I have floor to ceiling bookcases I will truly have arrived. I will be happy. Complete tosh of course as anybody who knows me will tell you. Happy? Ha.
So, again, in all the years we have had the barn in renovated form I have stared at that space above the floor-standing bookcase, and dreamed of another above it. It may be a bit strong to say the space has mocked me. Call yourself a bibliophile and you haven’t got floor to ceiling bookcases? Shame on you and your book collection.
It’s true that at our proper home we do have floor to ceiling books but these floor to full height books are a very different animal as you can see below. In the sense that the two are much closer together. So no need to sit and stare at this set of bookcases and wish for more. The challenge is met, but not at the barn. You can’t see from the first photo of the barn how much room there still is between floor and ceiling at the barn.
But let’s not be silly. Getting another bookcase on top of what we’ve got would be positively dangerous. Not only hazardous to health but totally impractical even with our vintage library ladder which you can see above. Actually £15 from the Pateley Bridge car boot sale. True it’s not the full height Billy, that would be too ambitious, but the half size one.
As I write this, and as usual, I amaze myself by what I’m writing (as I’ve said many times, I have no idea what is going to emerge when I start or even as I proceed) I’m almost feeling I’ve made a case for a new bookcase as a useful and important activity, as opposed to the Devil and filling idle time. I didn’t see that coming.
And while we’re on the subject of books and bookcases I’ll briefly mention our third library set-up. This at our Heanor house, aka the Derbyshire cottage. A much more modest affair in one sense. It’s always possible that this will be the property we are most likely to sell. I didn’t want a whole lot of books to clear out if we did. That said this one almost gives me more pleasure than the other ‘bigger’ versions. Because I made it entirely myself. Hand-crafted you might say to fit this unique space between two downstairs rooms. Unfortunately the photo below doesn’t really do it justice but it will have to do.
But the question still remains why do I feel the need to fill my time with tasks and projects and such like? Of any kind, useful or not? Why do I fill or nearly, my time, with the kind of projects I’ve been writing about in these posts ranging from new summerhouse’s to lofty bookcases, gardening, tidying out outhouses? Dunno, just a restless soul I guess.
So when I come to that time to reflect on the usefulness of appropriateness of my retirement life, I’ll be able to look back and say to myself, bookcases. That’s what I contributed to the world – bookcases.
PS. And if you want a postscript (as related to books) to the theme of idle hands then no better example of me sitting down with my coffee after breakfast and for some inexplicable reason deciding to look at Amazon books. I didn’t even have a book in mind. What was I thinking? Fill a few moments of my time before getting up and doing whatever it was I was going to do. Before you could say the devil is in the details I’d spent £50+ on four books. Nice selection – Weimar Berlin, crime fiction, jazz and Georgian wine – a nice selection indeed but did I need any of these books? No, and as they came from 4 separate sources, I definitely did not need to pay postage on each individual item. Madness, I tell you. But that’s what happens when you abuse your retirement relaxation periods – at your peril.