Idiotic Hat Selections 1 & 2

As I mentioned previously, I've been compiling some "best of" selections of posts from this blog, concentrating on the written rather than the visual side. There's no real need for this, obviously, given everything is sitting there online for anyone to read, but at the back of my mind I'm aware that a plug somewhere needs only to be pulled once for the whole Blogger edifice to vanish without trace. I'm also aware that nobody has the time or inclination to go back through nearly 2000 posts in someone else's blog, looking for the good bits. Blogs, after all, are like newspapers, a variety of ephemeral information and entertainment. So I'm doing the job myself. If nothing else, it's a way of ensuring that something of the effort I have put in over the years since 2008 will survive.

So far, I have produced two themed volumes. The first compiles some of the surprising number of posts I have written that touch on the subject of music, one way or another. It's a 6" x 9" (15cm x 23cm) "trade" paperback of 144 pages, printed on the cheapest black and white only paper stock. I'm afraid it's not a thing of typographical beauty, as I put most of the design effort into getting as much text onto as few pages as possible, whilst juggling the page-count to meet the mandatory "multiples of twelve" requirement (I knew learning those times-tables would pay off one day). To be honest, it does look rather like a school magazine. But one packed with good stuff!

Selections from Idiotic Hat 1: Music

Mike Chisholm

The second selection I have called "Dreamtime", as it collects anything to do with childhood, family history, schooling, and my home town of Stevenage New Town. It is identical in format, apart from the fact it is even bigger at 156 pages.

Selections from Idiotic Hat 2 : Dreamtime

Mike Chisholm

My intention all along has been to make these cheap, and they will cost £5.49 each, which is actually less than the postage that Blurb will charge. If you would like to buy a copy, but balk at the shipping charge, do let me know by email, as I will probably have to buy a bulk batch at some point myself: most of my friends are too bloody cheap actually to buy a copy, and will mostly be expecting to receive one gratis. Luckily (?) I don't need more than two hands to count my friends.

Future volumes will probably include Art & Photography, Feeble Attempts at Humour, and The Meaning of Life. As far as possible, I will be trying to avoid duplication, so that, for example, a "humorous" post using photography to elucidate the meaning of life (and I can think of at least two) should only find itself in one of these collections. But if the page count of the "humour" volume in particular starts to look a little thin (it will need to have at least twelve pages) I'm not promising anything.