Parcels and Print

Wednesday, 29th June 2005

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Brown Paper Packages

This parcel should have gone off this morning but when we got to the post office a man was standing at the counter with a black plastic bin bag, producing parcel, after parcel, after parcel, all of which were also wrapped in black plastic bin bags. We had allowed ourselves only ten minutes so we couldn't hang around.

Parcelling books is a major part of self-publishing: over the last five or six years I've parcelled up approximately 50,000 booklets (that's not 50,000 parcels, thank goodness; sometimes they go out in batches of a thousand at a time) so now I'm pretty good with the brown craft paper and the tape gun.

And I would never send out a book in a black plastic bin bag!

The Print Process

roadscape The other side of the business is book production and today we're going to see our printer in Cleckheaton.

There's a milky mist over West Yorkshire as we head out north along the M1 then west along the M62. After days that gave Barbara and I a touch of sunstroke it now looks more like autumn, except that the trees are uniformly a dark, drab green - especially in today's dull overcast light.

gorse bird's-foot trefoil There's an embankment behind the printers' and looking at it you'd hardly think that you were so near a clogged up motorway (thank goodness that was on the eastbound carriageway). This steep grassy bank with its clumps of gorse makes me think of our Dales Way walk. Bird's-foot trefoil is in flower at the foot of the slope, bringing a touch of colour to the edge of the car park.

Richard Bell, richard@willowisland.co.uk