Trolley hunt in Ryde

There is a large and handsome Tesco's between Ryde and Brading which I thought might be as productive of strayed trolleys as our own (rather shabby by comparison) Sainsbury's in Kiln Lane in Epsom. Sadly this proved not to be the case, with no trolleys to be seen on the approach roads at all. Perhaps the place is all wrong for strayed trolleys. Perhaps it has the wrong sort of customer.

However, the second hand book stall (where we did very well last year, as noticed for the second time at reference 1) was still there, possibly manned by the same lady, as her story sounded vaguely familiar.

On this occasion we pulled J.K. Rowling's first venture into adult fiction, 'The Casual Vacancy', which, as I recall, attracted rather mixed reviews at the time it was published. Reviews probably tainted by her being a very successful writer of fairy stories set in a boarding school. Such an English thing for stories which were, I believe, written in Edinburgh. Although she did go to school somewhere near the Forest of Dean, about which very odd stories were current when I stayed in nearby Tewkesbury, some fifty years ago now. Lots of inbreeding and dark goings on in the woods. As yet unopened, and it remains to be seen whether it ends up gracing the bookshelves of our holiday cottage.

The lady was an enthusiast for her subsequent detective novels, which, after consulting her telephone, she told us were written under the pen-name of Robert Galbraith. My own off the cuff reaction was that she wrote 'The Casual Vacancy' under her own name for perfectly sensible and decent reasons, but maybe, given how things turned out, maybe a pen-name was better. But see reference 2.

Plus something called 'Under the Sun', a 350 page anthology of bits and bobs - from otherwise well known authors - for light reading on holidays or short breaks, put together by John Verney and Patricia Campbell in 1964 and published by something called Constable Young Books. Old enough to be a properly bound hardback which stays open at the right page without needing to be held. And furthermore, BH has had good value out of it already - particularly out of a story called 'The Woodcutter's House' by one Robert Nathan of the US of A - while I have learned about the sloppy habits of some Londoners extending to uncocked hats. As of this evening, the chances are that this one will end up gracing our own bookshelves.

PS: finding out what an uncocked hat is left as an exercise for readers, as it was for me.

Reference 1: https://psmv3.blogspot.com/2018/08/thank-you-tescos.html.

Reference 2: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/J._K._Rowling. For the full story about her pen-name, the shenanigans concerning which had completely passed me by.