By

Craig Ennew

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Ten: Turning the Page

This week: Craig contemplates what to do with the treasured Ennew Library

As we inch from Salisbury towards West Lulworth on our move to the South Coast, our hoard of books becomes the latest focus of our Great Decluttering Project.

My wife wants to keep two of the bookshelves. This means keeping two bookshelves worth of books. Two problems arise. Firstly, looking at the plans for The Shack at West Lulworth, I cannot for the life of me see where two unwieldy pine shelving units will fit in either practically or aesthetically. Secondly, we have considerably more than two shelves’ worth of books.

Leaning tower: bedside reading

We bought a sizeable number with us from our last move and over the last decade, they have gone forth and multiplied. Apparently, the average home in the UK houses around 140 books. Half of these remain unread. For certain, we have more than that: and we’d have a similarly unread proportion were it not for my wife’s attachment to the sizeable foreign language library from her uni days- a library that she insists on hauling from place to place.

You’d think I’d be the one with all the books – I am an English teacher, after all. I have a tweed jacket with elbow patches, therefore I am an avid reader. Come Christmas and birthdays, most wrapped gifts headed my way are suspiciously book-shaped. However, I should point out that a lover of words I am, Withnail, an avid reader I am not. In another universe – one where I have all the time in the world; one where, after nine o’clock in the evening, I am not completely knackered; one where I am not spending four hours a day doom-scrolling or looking at pictures of pandas falling off walls on Facebook; this may well be the case. But in the real world, I work with books – I’m looking at them every day with students, trying to convince young people of the worth of turning a page occasionally. Subsequently, there are titles that I know inside out. To give you an idea, I reckon I’ve taught Macbeth every year for over thirty years, which makes me something of a Macbeth bore. Give me the beginning of any line from the play, and I’ll complete it for you. Dinner parties with me are a total hoot, I can tell you.

It proves mildly diverting whilst nursing a hangover on Boxing Day, but has never been opened since…

So yes; when, in December, the question arises as to what to buy this awkward old sod for Christmas, then ‘book’ is the easy answer. Some that I receive are very random: my mother recently gifted me a book about American economic trends of the nineteenth century. I suspect the fact that it looked brand new (and was therefore almost certainly gleaned from a charity shop) trumped any fleeting thought that I might be interested in the subject matter. Then there was a large Where’s Wally-type of volume – also from my mother – made up of cartoons of various famous music festivals – Glasto, Woodstock, etc – inhabited by thousands of tiny famous pop singers. ‘I thought you’d like it because you go to festivals,’ she says. It proves mildly diverting whilst nursing a hangover on Boxing Day but has never been opened since.

Other gifted books are very niche: I have one along the lines of 101 Cocktails for Busy English Teachers – where some bright spark has managed to spin an entire volume around one ‘Tequila Mockingbird’ gag. Then there are those ‘journal’ type books; I’m sure you’re familiar – the ones that you’re supposed to fill in yourself– Favourite Films from A-Z That I’ve Watched on a Saturday. ‘I thought you’d like it because you watch lots of films on a Saturday and might want to remember them.’ Really? Or was this something from the ‘re-gifting drawer’ in your spare room? As I thumb through such banalities, I rail against brain-dead publishers who are eager to waste reams and reams of what is essentially blank paper – ‘Get your exciting ideas down in the space below!’ So hang on – I’m actually writing this book for you? Even worse: those who publish ghost-written children’s books by greedy ‘turn your hand to anything’ celebs like Doctor Ranj, whilst being loathe to publish my own genius works of fiction. Forgive me, dear Reader, if I sound bitter.

Such volumes often spend their final days in our ‘Khazi Library’. Every home has one: a special shelf in the smallest room decorated with such gems as 1001 Ironic Theme Parks to Visit Before You Die and Spray Can-Can: Graffiti Art on the Streets of Downtown Paris. See also: ‘hilarious’ takes on childhood classics, such as The Ladybird Book of Micro-Brewery and The Fussy-Eater Tiger Who Came to Tea. While one questions the hygienic benefits of encouraging shared reading in a space designed for defecation, such works of satire do help pass the time, even they help to pass little else.

The occasional book that catches my eye – perhaps that novel with clever graphics on the jacket, or a new title by an author whose work I have previously enjoyed – will be placed into my bedside library. The size of this has now exceeded the capacity of my bedside table; consequently, it grows as a teetering four-foot column beside the bed.

So now for the cull. But I can’t throw books out – that’s out of the question. Recently, during a visit to the local tip, I was appalled to find what I could only describe as a graveyard for books. This, for me, is borderline sacrilegious. Then and there, I was super-tempted to superglue my hands to the allocated skip in protest. Meanwhile, I decide to place unwanted tomes in a plastic box on the pavement outside our house, knowing that there is always a neighbour or two who will not only look a gift-horse in the mouth, but will stick their entire head and neck down said gift-horse’s gullet. But, alas, the days I choose to do so always turn into the very night that a storm of biblical proportions breaks over South Wiltshire. The next morning, all that remains is a very literal interpretation of Pulp Fiction. At least I feel less guilty about binning the ensuing soggy mass of papier-mâché.

So, as I write, I am in the process of moving from room to room in our house in Salisbury, attaching pink Post-It notes to unwanted items. I apologise to each as I damn it with the indignity of being consigned to one of the many charity shops in our humble city. But it is the only way. I assiduously avoid my wife’s university collection and The Boy’s room is also a complete no-go area. Don’t get me wrong – The Boy is to ‘reading for pleasure’ what Russell Brand is to humility – yet he still harbours a ferocious attachment to the hundreds of books he has never opened. These include multiple sets of treasures such as The Sparkle Book of Whitehall Fairies: Nigel the Milkshake Fairy; Liz the Pork-Farm Fairy – you know the kind of thing.

Cookery books that have never seen the kitchen, garden books that have never been dug over, volumes and volumes of tatty magazines saved for articles that might have changed our lives in some small way. They must all go; there is no room at the inn of West Lulworth for such trifles. We will move there unburdened, after which, we shall find locations for the two pine bookshelves, then start all over again. But for now, it’s just a pair of socks for me this Christmas, please.

©Craig Ennew 2024

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