Searching for my library card

and what I found instead...

This is a short one (okay—maybe not so short, lots of m-dashes and parentheticals… just sayin’), but one that will put a smile on your face (I hope.)

I woke up this morning and thought, “YES!! It wasn’t a dream. Yesterday was a day of buckets of good news!!” And I set off on the day full of energy and goodwill toward all. I made a lovely breakfast of fruity porridge (my kids know what that is), a boiled egg where the yolk is just about to get custardy, a small slice of GF toast with whiskey marmalade, and a pot of hot Barry’s Gold tea. FBOAW… favorite breakfast of all weekdays. Weekends are for the Full Irish (with GF ispíní).

Replete and still happy with the world, I decided I would try to download the last kindle copy of Angela Thirkell’s Barsetshire novels, Three Score and Ten. I then entered the Twilight Zone of seeing that the book is there for $2.99 but NOT AVAILABLE IN MY COUNTRY… Weird, all the other 28 of the 29 books were available. I know, I have them on my very old bedroom iPhone (it’s only purpose being to provide a small and discrete device where I can read a book while my husband is sleeping, and to be my alarm clock on the rare times I need it. No SIM card, has to stay plugged in, but it works for me.) I tried using the co.uk site and the fairly recent .ie (Ireland) site I hardly ever use. All the same message… “not available in my country.” SO…

I am now determined to get this book in whatever format there is because I’m halfway through the three chapter preview on the previous title and I’m committed to reading the rest.

True, Angela Thirkell is not one of the most exciting reads, nor does she come close to D. E. Stevenson, my all time favorite for really well written, cozy, heartwarming books. I’ve read them all several times… in PAPER. My all time “cheer me up with irony and wit” is still Terry Pratchett. My growing favorite for when I’m knitting or quilting, because it is so wonderfully immersive is Philip Pullman’s His Dark Materials and the DUST trilogy. I have them in hardback but I can’t knit and hold a heavy book at the same time. Besides, the lovely thing about audio books (and I’ve recently discovered libro.fm, thanks to Robert Reich) is that it’s a warm and comforting thing to be read to by a really good narrator. A bad one can ruin even the most beloved of books. HOWEVER, these books are great to get sleepy on. There are mind numbing “divigations” (her word, not my invention), a cast of characters that expand to populate a whole made up English county—everything from lords and ladies to the odd jobber and the gypsy horse whisperer, the butcher, the baker, the candlestick maker and it spans generations. I can see that her style of writing has become catching and is transparently invading this post. My friend Meg knows about this phenomenon—remember when I was reading Jane Austen and then sending emails that were eerily 19th century?

Let’s get back to my problem… I have a County Waterford library card from the Dungarvan library. It really allows me access to ANY Irish library in the public library network. The problem was… where was it? What was my code and password for the online network? I’m embarrassed to say, it has been a few years since I actually used either the physical card or the online site. The search began.

First stop was the shelf in the dresser (an Irish dresser is kind of like a New England kitchen hutch—dishes, cups, important pieces of mail, and other detritus that mysteriously finds its way into one of the drawers or shelves behind the pottery pitcher you got as a wedding present and haven’t ever used… but it’s pretty). There is a shelf where appointment letters from doctors, gift certificates from Christmas past, seed packets that need to go in the greenhouse, postcards from friends traveling through Spain/France/somewhere sunny, and a half-eaten bar of Cadbury’s Fruit & Nut hidden so no one would finish it on me, all find a home. That was my first stop.

No luck.

BUT… what I did find was a bunch of really funny note cards. I seem to remember, sometime in January, deciding that I should send a real, handwritten note to each of my lovely RWU Goddess friends (you know who you are!)

Here’s the thing, every time I thought to sit down and do this, fountain pen at the ready, I looked at/read the card and couldn’t seem to part with it.

So I’ve scanned them all—please make sure (in good academic fashion) that the artist/writer is credited if you pass the image on. AND, if you want your own share of bovine beauty, you can go to Brigid Shelly's online shop. Her Ardmore gallery is now closed but she’s still working away at her art. The wordy cards are from Coulson Macleod. I found them in a little stationery/gift shop in Clifden, Connemara.

(I haven’t found my library card yet… still looking. But while I’m doing that, you can be reading this and enjoying some delightful notecards—see if you can tell which one is intended for YOU!)

CLICK ON THE IMAGE TO SEE THE WHOLE CARD

Huge HUGS! — Rox