With Gervase Phinn

Gervase Phinn at Rickaro Books

Last Friday, I spent another fascinating evening at Rickaro Books. I’d been looking forward to it with great anticipation since the Ian McMillan / Tony Husband event that took place several weeks ago. This time, the author was Gervase Phinn. I hadn’t met him before – though my husband is very familiar with his books – and he did not disappoint. The event was extremely well attended: I calculate that at least forty people managed to squeeze into this distinguished but pocket-sized bookshop.
He focused upon his latest book, Mangled English, which delights in highlighting the way we all misuse the language (I certainly do!), and touched upon such matters as mis-spellings, Spoonerisms, Malapropisms and howlingly bad verse (guilty!). He also told many amusing anecdotes about people he’d met. He now spends some of his time as a performing artist on cruise ships, so the tales he had to tell were varied. However, the one that I liked best – although it was also one of the most poignant – was the one about the old people in a care home. One of them was actually his mother-in-law. She was obviously out of the conversation (he was very sensitive in the way that he talked about her dementia), but he derived real humour from recounting the reaction of the old man who was sitting next to her when he was asked his name. He wouldn’t give it and, when asked whether he had played any part in ‘the war’, would only reply ‘I might have done’. Getting no other response from him, Gervase turned to his mother-in-law and asked her name. While she was struggling to remember it, the old man suddenly burst out: “Don’t tell him, Pikey!”
In a more serious vein, Gervase extolled the virtues of encouraging children to read at a young age – as he had himself been encouraged as a boy – and deplored the government’s ever-changing education strategy. As a former inspector of schools, he is better qualified than most to do so. He took an especial interest in the children at the event.
It was a privilege to meet him and I had two opportunities to talk to him. However, the best part of the evening for me was actually being at Rickaro Books itself, looking at the excellent rare books collection that is on sale there and drinking mulled wine – it was the gateway to Christmas for me, in fact. The experience was made even better by being invited to join Richard and Carole Knowles, the proprietors of the bookshop, for dinner afterwards in their local Italian restaurant . As I’ve said in a previous post, Richard and I go back a long way, and it was very good to have the opportunity to listen once more to his (sometimes elliptical, always amusing) take on life, the universe and bookselling… and to get to know Carole a little better.
Watch this space: I’m sure that there will be more posts about Rickaro Books in the future. Should you ever be in Horbury, I wholeheartedly recommend that you take a detour (it won’t be much of one, as the bookshop is in the very heart of the town) to pay a visit.

• Gervase Phinn Horbury Ian McMilllan Mangled English Richard Knowles Rickaro Books Tony Husband