Tuesday 6 September 2011

There are bookmarks and then

there are bookmarks.
You know what I mean don't you? There are times when a reference book I am using will look like a hedgehog. There will be seemingly endless scraps of paper peeking out between the pages. Oh yes, I use bookmarks.
People have given me bookmarks on occasion. They have come in all shapes and colours. Some of them have been just cardboard, others have been cloth, one was leather with a fringed end. There was a fancy embroidered butterfly shaped bookmark that was much too elaborate for me.
There was the cardboard cat made by the Whirlwind that I actually used until my sister accidentally threw it out. There was the longish bookmark with the weights at each end which was supposed to keep a paper back open. (It did not.)
My father has an embroidered - but very masculine - bookmark in his desk dictionary. Like me he also uses a hedgehog of paper scraps.
At the library there is always a container on the loans desk. In it there will be a variety of lost bookmarks. They keep one another company until someone rescues one or more of them.
According to another young friend "they like living at the library more because they get to play with the books at night"!
And now it seems there might be some useful bookmarks. One of the internet book companies has taken to popping one in a parcel. They are printed with useful things. One has the Morse Code alphabet on one side and the NATO phonetic alphabet on the other. I might need those in an emergency. Another has basic piano chords one one side and basic guitar chords on the other. It could be useful in the unlikely event I ever take up a musical instrument. There is a metric to imperial and imperial to metric length mark. Now that really could be useful. This household still uses imperial at times. Yesterday the bookmark was fahrenheit to celsius on one side and litres to gallons on the other - useful when talking to friends in America.
Now I hope they have done one with a Braille alphabet and the manual alphabet (or even the one handed and two handed alphabets?).
I can think of some other potentially useful bookmarks as well. Will I use them? Well yes, of course I will - but they might not go in a book.

6 comments:

Anonymous said...

Cat,

I have a wonderful collection of bookmarks ... lovely quotes, beautiful photos, lace, promotional ones, handmade ones. I have got into the habit of putting them into a nice box, which is never on hand when I want a bookmark, no matter where i keep it.

So I use the same as you .... whatever piece of paper is nearest, sometimes a sheet of news paper torn into strips, an envelope, raffle tickets ....

Judy B

PS My word verification is earia ... an aria just for listening too perhaps!

jeanfromcornwall said...

Ah, so you buy from the Book Depository too. The Imperial to Metric one lives where I sit to knit, since it is also a handy short ruler.
I just wish I could remember which book my lovely woven silk Liberty one is lurking in.

Miriam Drori said...

The one I received has multiplication tables - useful for people whose education was different from mine, I think.

catdownunder said...

I am glad you use what I use Judy! Yes Jean I am afraid I do. We do try to support the local indie but when I buy books for the guild it has to be the cheapest source and that is usually Book Depository or Fishpond.
Mmm Miriam - some people might find multiplication tables useful!

Sheeprustler said...

I have a large collection of what are unfortunately known as 'book thongs', which are beads on either end of a piece of thread or ribbon. I lovwe them because they tend to stay in the book when it is in my handbag (very important!), and I am very keen to have different colours/shapes/designs to match my mood, the mood of the book, etc. But if I am using a book for information I will fill it with scraps of torn paper :) And when I was little, for many, many years the things we used as bookmarks at home were strips of pink paper that were actually control tower forms of some sort - my father was an air traffic controller and he would bring the obselete ones home whenever new ones were printed.

catdownunder said...

Pink hedgehogs, Sheep Rustler? :-)