Welcome, reader!
In a change of pace, rather than look at a Lego set or moan about the impending price rises (though I'm sure I'll get to that before long), I'm going to take a look at a book.
My wife and I have just come back from our summer holiday, which - with the exception of 2020, when we (and many millions of others) were going nowhere - we spent in the same place we've gone to for the last 20-odd years: Cornwall.
Having been so many times, we've done all the 'touristy stuff' which means that we don't feel any pressure to go and visit places, which means we can kick back and relax. And for me, that means reading.
I usually take an optimistically large number of books with me - and typically come back with several more. This time I only managed to get through two, which is sub-par for me, but we did make the most of the glorious weather, and get out and about quite a lot.
One of the books I read was 'The Storyteller' by Dave Grohl, he of Nirvana and Foo Fighters fame (excellent book, which I can recommend to anyone with an interest in music generally and Dave Grohl in particular) and the other was the subject of today's musing.
'Adrift - The Curious Tale Of The Lego Lost At Sea' by Tracey Williams.
It's a small-ish hardback book, priced at £20.00, though it's not difficult to find it online at a reduced price. I'm all for supporting bricks and mortar bookshops, particularly independent ones (1) but sometimes convenience and timing demands that you use... that website. Anyway. The title suggests it might be of interest to those of us with a love of the brick, so what's it about?
As the book states on the inside flap:
"On 13 February 1997, a huge storm near the coast of Cornwall pushed sixty-two containers off the cargo ship Tokio Express. One was filled with nearly 5 million pieces of Lego, many of which were themed around the sea. Beachcombers in the southwest of England soon began finding plastic octopuses, spear guns, scuba tanks, cutlasses, flippers and even dragons on their shores - pieces that are still washing up today."
If I'm brutally honest, if you've read that paragraph, then you're pretty much done and dusted with 'Adrift'.
The bio on the back flap describes Tracey Williams as 'Writer and beachcomber'. Some googling suggests that her only other book is a tome from 2016 entitled 'The Big Resource Guide To Teaching and Learning Texas History', but I'm going to go out on a limb here and suggest that that might be a different Tracey Williams. Happy to be corrected. Other than that, her writing seems to be contained to social media.
Having said that, she's had 'Adrift' published, which is one more book than me, so yes, she's a writer, and she definitely seems to be a beachcomber.
If I'm sounding a bit critical, it's because for a book that runs to 184 pages, there's just not that much in it. It reads like a handful of blog posts that have been stretched very thin indeed. There's a lot of repetition, but more frustratingly, Ms Williams will often say something interesting, and you turn the page to find out more, but that's it! She's on to something else.
It would appear that the book began life as a Facebook based photo project - there are a number of images scattered throughout the book of bricks, dragons, ducks and so forth photographed on beaches and more of collections of pieces laid out in an artful fashion which could be turned into posters, if sea worn Lego is your your sort of thing. Other pages are taken up with sea-related poetry and paintings which fit with the overall theme, but don't add much to the story.
The main thrust of the book is one of conservation. Of keeping the seas and the beaches clean. And to that end, the Lego from the spill is simply one more type of plastic 'waste' that's polluting the beaches of the UK, mainland Europe, the USA and beyond. Over the years, Ms Williams has worked with a number of others on this and related projects, two of whom are credited as co-authors. One is Mario Cacciottolo, who was a BBC journalist on a twelve month sabbatical some years ago. While travelling, he saw a mention of the Lego spill in a Hong Kong newspaper, remembered it when he got back to work in mid-2014 and persuaded his editor to let him chase up the story. He went to Cornwall, met Tracey Williams and later the story went viral.
The other significant contributor is Oceanographer, Dr Curtis Ebbesmeyer, who is based in Seattle, Washington and seems to have made a name for himself tracking items lost at sea. Most notably, thousands of athletic shoes that went overboard in 1990 and started appearing on the west coast of the USA and a couple of years later, nearly 29,000 plastic bathtub toys - including 7,200 yellow ducks - which went overboard in the Pacific in 1992. Strange way to make a living, but I guess it takes all sorts!
As a book, it's a nice idea. The design, however, grates on my sensibilities a little - it's as though it was batted back and forth between Laura Ashley and Cath Kidston for a while and the end product screams 'floral' despite there not actually being any flowers on it.
Ultimately it's an interesting distraction that you could read in an afternoon. The problem for me is that you could replace 'Lego' with 'any other toy / mass produced plastic item' and it wouldn't make any difference to the story at all.
If you're known among your friends and family as a Lego fan, then this is the sort of thing that may well turn up as a birthday or Christmas present at some point. If it does, give it a go. You might find that you enjoy it.
But buy it yourself? Given that you could put the money towards a Lego set, which you'll enjoy a lot more, for a lot longer, I'd have to say no.
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1. Thumbs up to Shrew Books in Fowey. It used to be a bookshop called Bookends which was taken on by a lovely lady called Kate who has turned it into Shrew Books. It's about the size of a modest broom cupboard, but has a great selection of books, and just as importantly, Kate has excellent taste in music. I spent a lovely half an hour or so pottering around in there and came out with a couple of books for the 'to read' pile. If you're in that neck of the woods, I heartily recommend a) popping in and b) buying something.
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