Living La Vida Local

Following last week's "crisis" Zoom meeting of the Executive Committee of the Threadbone Press during which it is believed Mrs Amanda J Threadbone gave several senior executives "a very stout talking to", there is evidence of a change of direction in its non-fiction publishing strategy.

Having previously identified self-isolated, socially-distanced police-enforced citizen's semi-voluntary-house-arrest or "lock-down" as the perfect opportunity to sell practical manuals aimed at crisis survival or at best sanity-maintenance [The Professor Thrupiece Guides to Home Survival, Contrik-69 and The Art and Iconography of Contrik-69] - together with one rogue title offering a nod in the niche direction of self-isolating gay mountaineers - the latest edict from the CEO has instructed all series editors to seek out more diversionary volumes and to scour the back catalogues for "feel good" titles that will remind readers of former and better times in the hope that, if and when such times return, they will not have forgotten entirely what "life as we used to know it" was like. [Whew - some sentence [Ed]]

"Social skills like any other can be easily lost if not practised regularly", says social anthropologist and non-orthodox phenomenologist Astral O'Pythicus, "only last week, I said to my wife early one morning "Good morning darling and thanks for last night it made a pleasant change". Such was her "social rustiness" that she claimed to have no idea what I was talking about. It was as though she had actually taken the medication I had acquired for her and had been unconscious throughout the whole sordid episode".

The first two titles selected for accelerated publication are from prolific antiquarian and amateur historian Les Thantwomeeters whose "Before the Lock-down" and "Remembering When We Used To Leave Home" will form the backbone of the new Threadbone "How We Used To Live Classics" series. Both titles [one a short history of social intercourse in the narrow [1.34 metres] streets of Bincome and the other a memoir of an expedition in the early 2000s to an international conference in Geneva, Switzerland] will be on sale next week.

Threadstones the quality High Street bookseller which remains closed due to the current emergency will be distributing the new titles to personal callers on an appointment-only basis through a narrow bio-secure opening recently fitted to the front entrance of its Corfe Mullen branch. Personal sanitisers will be available, but intending customers are asked to provide their own latex gloves and/or carrier bags. [Two-metre queuing markings must be obeyed. Try to avoid booking peak time slots [Monday - Saturday 8am-8pm, Sundays 10am-4pm].]