Sunny days and time machines

Ok, so I didn’t really have a time machine this weekend, but the days were sunny and it did still feel like I had been thrown back in time.

Finally, the French weather man has decided to tick ‘non-stop, annoying, horrible rain’ off his list and has started shining some sun on us all. There is nothing that can revive me like a warm sunny day and yesterday was no exception. Not only that, but I spent a long while discovering the library in the building where I live. Most of the books haven’t been touched for the last 45 years and they are all so old and, well… like something out of a book! I know I wasn’t really in a grand old mansion discovering long hidden treasures, but it sure felt like it. Half of them were falling apart, and I managed to find some real gems! (Like some smashing books about Britain and our way of life, allbeit 50 years ago, and ’The Book of the Scots’ – I could hardly understand most of it, even Wee Willy Winkie, so I’m not sure how it came to be living in a little Parisian library…)

Wee Willie Winkie rins through the toun,
Up stairs and doon stairs in his nicht-goun,
Tirlin’ at the window, cryin’ at the lock,
‘Are the weans in their bed, for it’s noo ten o’clock?’

‘Hey, Willie Winkie, are ye comin’ ben?
The cat’s singin’ grey thrums to the sleepin’ hen,
The dog’s spelder’d on the floor, and disna gi’e a cheep,
But here’s a waukrife laddie that winna fa’ asleep!’

Onything but sleep, you rogue! glow’ring like the mune,
Rattlin’ in an airn jug wi’ an airn spune,
Rumblin’, tumblin’ round about, crawin’ like a cock,
Skirlin’ like a kenna-what, wauk’nin’ sleepin’ fock.

…

Not only are there loads of French books, but a good stash of English, as well as Arabic, Greek, Italian, German, Spanish, Chinese…… all old and all amaaaazing to look at! There was also an old illustrated Bible so huge that you need both hands to pick it up and….. to my surprise and pleasure I found a ‘Teach Yourself Italian’ book. Perfect! Just what I wanted! It is such a cute little hardback in blue, printed in the 1940s, pages already slightly brown and in English, which is a little strange for a French library to say the least…. Along with that I found a vocabulary book with French and Italian (two birds with one stone, bingo!) that is even older, more brown and more amazing.

The library is all wooden and has that glorious smell of old books. It was great. And naturally, when I left I just had to pick up the little copy of Pride & Prejudice… it would have been wrong of me to leave Miss Austen behind…

There’s nothing quite like spending a sunny day travelling in a time machine with little Miss Jane.