Today is the last day of my 6th decade. Tomorrow I will be eligible for free prescriptions and a senior railcard. I don’t feel old enough to warrant those and other concessions but the grey hair tells me otherwise!
While browsing the bookshops in Hay I came across these magazines from around the time I was born (sadly I couldn’t get one for the actual month of my birth) and I thought that it would be fun to find out what passed for science fiction back then. This is a present to myself.
Lost Again
When we came to Hay in 2015 we did a circular walk out through the hills during which we got lost. We thought that we would give it another go today as it would fill the time until the bookshops opened at 11. We got lost again but this time it was in a completely different place! Help came in the form of the excellent OS Maps app which guided as back to Hay.
It is a lovely walk, if a little hot today, and incrediby quiet. I would love to have a garden this peaceful but then you need to be a long way from civilisation and that, of course, has both pros and cons.
Tutting
In the afternoon, we walked around the town, visiting all the bookshops that were open, which were basically all of them, so we needn’t have rushed here yesterday. Oh well!
Despite Booths claiming outside that they are the “world’s largest secondhand bookshop” many of the books in there now are new and expensive. This was true in many of the other shops too. If I wanted new books I’d go to Waterstones or Amazon and, to be honest, if it is secondhand books you are after you are better off with World of Books.
That said it is lovely to walk around these shops, some of which are huge, marvelling at all the books on esoteric subjects many of which are not on World of Books or Waterstones.
In one shop, Helen spied a book that she was interested in for £4.50. She took it to the counter, and the guy asked, not unreasonably, whether she had cash but said that if not, a card would be ok. Helen said not.
If that had been the end of the conversation, I wouldn’t be making any mention of this transaction, but instead, the shopkeeper tutted loudly. I was incensed and so waded in with “I don’t think the tutting is necessary” and there followed a conversation that included how card readers weren’t recyclable and that the UK is building 100 data centres a year to process credit card transactions. I hasten to add that it wasn’t me making those points!
I get that there is a cost to accepting credit cards and that, under a certain amount, retailers may wish to say cash only. Fine, but to say that we could pay by card if we didn’t have the cash and then to tut when we try to is a bit much.
Anyway, that interaction notwithstanding, and the one we had on the first night where Helen noted to our server that it was busy and she was told in return “I’ll be glad when it’s September.” It’s been a great trip and a great way to celebrate 59 years and 364 days around the sun. I absolutely refuse to say the s-word!
