A Heron Peregrination – 25 January 2025

On our last day of secondary school, a teacher read to us Oh, the Places You’ll Go by Dr. Seuss. The teacher in question had never taught me, nor even had reason to tell me off in passing. Yet I remember her as clearly as the Latin teacher for whom I felt a certain love (what rhetorical style; what incredible cheekbones).

I recall this teacher’s hair, poker straight and falling forward as she looked down at the page. I can see her stance, her shoulders: that Geography teacher look of someone confident with a clipboard. I can hear the tone of her voice, hear the smile it contained and the tremble over certain lines. I waver over the same ones when I read the book now.

Perhaps it was also memorable because I was, for reasons once known to me, dressed as a bear, perched on the edge of the stage and eating a bowl of porridge. Perhaps not.

Perhaps even as it was happening I knew it would be a scene and a book that stayed with me. Perhaps not.

If you don’t know it, your life is about to change so I say: Congratulations! Today is your day. You’re off to Great Places! You’re off and away!

Which, incidentally, is how the book begins.

It holds great lessons and a calming philosophy. While sometimes things don’t go well (‘I’m sorry to say so but, sadly, it’s true, that Bang-ups and Hang-up can happen to you’), often they do and, ‘When things start to happen, don’t worry. Don’t stew. Just go right along. You’ll start happening too.’

Well, folks. Things are happening. I am going right along. I hope you’ll come with me, for I’m off to great places, I’m off and away.

I say that. I’m not going very far. Heron Books is moving to 7a Regent Street, Clifton.

All being well (and I have heard that refurbishments always run according to strict timetables and are very relaxing) the herons will stop standing on one leg in the Clifton Arcade and open a new door on 8 February. Plans are in the works for a celebration – details and warm invitations to follow.

Whilst preparing to share news of our odyssey, I have been reading The Odyssey Complex and Other Poems by David Briggs. The sections are named for themes from Homeric epic and Greek tragedy yet the references span the centuries. In the moving section about the poet/narrator’s epileptic, non-verbal adult daughter, they read and re-read The Tiger Who Came to Tea while he laments that they’ll never argue Eliot over Dickens. Between tragic familial love and a heady trip to an underworld of sorts are poems about Michael Douglas becoming one’s lodger and seeing Edith Piaf perform at The Gallimaufry, not to mention a gorilla wondering if he’s wasted a decade aiming at physical supremacy when he could have been writing poetry.

My reading habits have been a little different in recent days. Last week, I wrote of wonder, of science and poetry meeting in the universe and in Maria Popova’s book. This week, I’ve been reading insurance policies. Fire regulations. Alarm manuals. Doubtless life’s wisdom can be found in these ineffable documents. But I look forward to turning instead to Open Socrates by Agnes Callard, an examination of the Socratic method and of what might come from one’s life. The unexamined life, after all, is not worth living, and the unexamined risk assessment, well… I’d better do some more work on that one.

I did find time for a quick heist – there is always time for a story of police corruption, kidnapping and Reggie Kray’s cigarette lighter – in the form of Spanish Beauty by Esther Garcia Llovet, translated by Richard Village. Excellent fun. Don’t think the police officer at the centre of the story was too worried about health and safety certificates.

Further inspiration to follow your own path comes in the form of a snail. Like Socrates’ interlocutors, the snail in My Path by Jana Curll tries out different routes, gets stuck, realises mistakes and tries again. Unlike Socrates, the snail comes to a satisfactory conclusion (sans hemlock).  

In a rather more pacy quest, strange things are happening in Ancient Egypt in The Cursed Tomb by Iszi Lawrence. Portentous dreams, giant birds, glimpses of people thought to be dead… and then Henut manages to fall into the Nile during a royal parade, just when a crocodile has been spotted. This is a frenetic, energetic adventure and the antidote to being a grown-up.

Finally a call to all budding classicists, adventurers and houseplants: the paperback of our favourite Peregrine Quinn and the Cosmic Realm by Ash Bond has landed and Ash will kindly be coming in to sign and personalise copies at the end of next week. Let us know by Friday morning if you’d like a signed book and a special message.

I so look forward to sharing the new shop with you.
May your weekend bring you to Great Places,
Lizzie