Me, lender

No, this is not a play on the surname "Melinder", despite it being truly great to see all three of them all together, all happy and very smiley (Blenda) and the fact that this blog wouldn't have survived this long with Tomas' near-fervent blogging of life and times in Malmö. The "lenders" in question are the bastards, sorry, "friends", who borrow shit and never return it. I have lots (perhaps) hundreds of CDs and books over the years. Well, okay, maybe not THAT many, but quite a few anyway. I am probably guilty of a few "loan crimes" myself over the years (that was until I developed the habit of separating other people's stuff I'd borrowed from my own collection). Thankfully, I never lost any LPs as I don't lend out vinyl, they get scrathed too easily. Anyway, the point (or one of the points) of this blog is to say that I just ordered a new copy of Bill Drummond's "45". Nice new cover too, so I don't feel so bad about "losing" the last one (except for the fact that one of my best friends bought it for me from Bill Drummond himself after a reading in Liverpool). Actually, the porblem seems to arise only when a thrid party is introduced in the "loan equation". I don't lend things I've borrowed to a third party as the stream of respect is instantly lost and the third person already thinks of him/herself as guilt-free should anyting happen to the borrowed item as they may not know the owner personally or if they do they were not the ones who borrowed it from the owner. Also, they (the third party) have got absolutely no fear of who lent it to them as they know they are not the real owners of the item anyway. Then, when you add a third or a fourth party, the whole thing gets really complicated and things (CDs, books, magazines), as a result, almost inevitably get "lost". Then again, after having reflected on this point for a few moments (perhaps longer, perhaps my whole adult life), it is sometimes nice to lose books. I know it's a strange thing to say (write) after moaning about people losing my books, but it's true. A friend of mine lent a book to a friend, who in turn lent it to another friend and so on and the book never made it back to him. Not only did my friend (we'll call him "Stephen") not get annoyed over the fact his book was seemingly lost and, to some extent, somewhat irretrievable, he was actually comforted by the fact that he might not get it back. His Zen-like reasoning was that this book was now being enjoyed by someone else. His brilliant judgement came to him slowly (over a matter of weeks) but it was as simple as that. The fact that it was a good book that he'd enjoyed a lot made this thought ever-more comforting to him. He took this a step further when he went travelling (to Thailand, I think it was) and actually gave away the books that'd he'd read on the trip to people he met. He told them they could have the book as long as they passed it on when they read it. I got given a book once, when I was on holiday, under the same pretext, that I'd read it and pass it on. I like that idea. I know another friend (who we shall call "Miss X" - because I can't remember who it was who told me) who doesn't believe in owning books. She believes that literature, fiction, whatever should be in the public domain as much as possible and that owning a book and keeping on a shelf for years is a crime of culture. They weren't her exact words, but I think that's what she meant.