The Aardvark Blog

Maps, books, random thoughts
24/04/2016

Map exhibition is now on countdown to next Saturday's opening and as usual there is a massive amount to do. I have been buying items right up until the last minute and keeping my trusty helpers busy. Fortunately I have bought in a massive supply of midnight oil to use over the next week, so hopefully all will be well. Map exhibition opens at  11.00 on Saturday and if previous years are anything to go by it will be worth turning up early.

Meanwhile before I can get to the maps I have an enormous amount of books to wade through and hopefully put into stock. I have been going as fast as I can, but unfortunately recently the buying has massively outweighed my ability to process books into the bookshop. Still yesterday we had a rare quiet day and I was able to get through a lot of titles including a wonderful John Craxton illustrated poetry volume published by Frederick Muller. This was one of a series Muller did which included other books illustrated by Ayrton, Colquhoun and John and Myfanwy Piper. They are all superb, but the Craxton volume is probably the rarest and most valuable.

Amongst my random cultural thoughts recently have been: why is it that one only ends up playing music once the musician has died ( we have all been guilty of dives into Bowie and Prince records recently). On the former I would like to defend the reputation of the double album Stage, which was definitively not ruined by Tony Visconti's tinkering and remains one of the best live albums ( although nothing will ever touch Dylan's Hard Rain). Yesterday gave us a wonderful R3 Building a Library on 'Falstaff' by Verdi; have been listening in the car to Magnus Lindgram's Brazilian jazz album - just wonderful, and brings back memories of the best Brecon Jazz gig we ever attended.