Bottled Up

Bottle Collecting by Edward Fletcher, 1972.

Chapter 1 - "finding bottle sites - libraries - newspapers and magazines - town hall records - talking to old people - rivers, streams, canals and ponds." (Yes it really says all this in the table of contents!)

Chapter 7 - a group project - "the key to the success of a group project is organization; and the first step towards organization is to decide exactly what the project's aims will be. A family may decide to excavate the entire contents of a dump associated with an abandoned and isolated house..."

"Visit it often (the library) and tell the librarians what you are looking for; they will be delighted to help you in your research. Ask the librarians for Victorian diaries by local writers and any old maps or photographs that are available and any local records that are stored there."

Let me just go grab those delightful diaries that we can pour through looking for reference to a bottle dumping area! That's what I would write about in my diary! This book has managed to evade weeding for 34 years! In the Victorian era, this particular neighborhood was a forest - nope, no dumps or bottle factories. I think this book isn't terribly relevant in our country, but I may be wrong (it was published in the U.K.). I observed that during the seventies, books seem to have been written about every possible mundane hobby from silhouette cutting to aluminum foil art. Someone pointed out to me that these were simpler times, pre-internet so how else would you find out about these topics? True, and now these little gems brighten my day!

...Am now considering starting a collection of odd books.