Research

At the end of last year the British Library decided to allow photography of copyright-expired material in some specialised reading rooms. This has just been extended to the one I usually use for fiction etc., so I've spent the morning taking photos of the covers of some of George Griffith's books, and the first chapter of The Great Weather Syndicate. When I get home I'll try OCR on the images. It's a bit trickier than scanning, and I obviously want to avoid anything that might damage the book; so far it's also a bit tiring since I have to hold the book at arms length to take the pictures with my iPad, and it's a 300+ page book. But if the OCR works well I'll try a wide angle converter lens, see if that helps, and possibly my Fuji bridge camera rather than the iPad.

More later, I hope.

later - really not good enough to be practical, unless I spend a lot of time tweaking every page before OCR. It would probably be easier to type the text manually, and I really don't feel inclined to do 300-page books that way. However, while I was doing this I stumbled across someone selling a relatively affordable copy of The Great Pirate Syndicate, so I've bought that and will scan it normally as time permits. I also found The Lord of Labour on line here:

https://archive.org/details/lordoflabour00grifuoft

Apparently his last deathbed novel.

Kangetti Bolognese

The kangaroo meatballs were very nice with spaghetti and my version of bolognese-ish sauce. Fried half a pack (six meatballs, a bit over 100g) in olive oil with plenty of garlic and onions and some pre-mixed Italian herbs, capers, pepper, and a teensy bit of Worcestershire source, then simmered in a can of chopped tomatoes. They came out very nice indeed, with a good meaty taste that survived cooking and the other ingredients. A nice meal with some salad and garlic bread, and definitely one to try again.

150%!!!

Forgot to say I sold the Viewmaster music box - for £50+P&P, e.g. a 150% profit. I probably could have got more if I'd really worked at it, but in the end I sold it to the guy who runs the Viewmaster site I linked to - he'll probably sell it on for at least double that, but I would have no idea where to start looking for someone who wants it, whereas he probably has a waiting list, and it was simply a LOT less hassle to do it that way