Papering over the umm...books!

I was at an open day in my former primary school at the weekend and it got me thinking to how things have changed so much there over the years.

For instance, one of things the school has now is a terrific library packed with recycled books.

As I flipped through one of the books, it reminded me of how recently I had found a book at home that I had many years ago as a student.

What stood out for me, was not that I had found the book, but more that I had neatly written in the corner the price I had paid for it.

I can only assume at this stage that the reason I had written the price on the book, was to ensure I could determine the best possible price whenever I would decide to sell it on.

Since I found the book, I'm guessing I never did actually sell it but it did get me thinking about the way we went to great lengths to keep books in good condition years ago.

This usually involved wallpaper.

I’m not exactly sure where the relationship with wallpaper and schoolbooks began, but whenever I was at school, if you didn’t have wallpaper on your school books you were nobody.

Or maybe you were somebody.

And somebody who could be trusted not to scribble your name or any kind of mindless doodles on your book which in most circumstances would be sold on - or passed down.

I know I couldn’t. Which is why the wallpaper always came in handy.

It was probably around that time that I also discovered that covering a book (we used to always call it backing a book for some reason) requires the same kind of dexterity that people who are good at wrapping presents have.

I was not one of those people back then and funnily enough it is not something that has come to me with the experience of years.

There was a particular knack to it, making sure the paper was cut and folded in just the right places so that when you tried to close the book it wouldn’t spring open again.

I also discovered that using wood-chip wallpaper always made things that little bit more difficult, not to mention the fact that it increased significantly your chances of getting a splinter every time you reached into your schoolbag.

Instead we usually used old pieces of left-over wallpaper - mostly very old pieces from wallpaper that was nowhere to be found on any wall in the house any more.

The reason for this apparently was - we couldn’t use left-over pieces of wallpaper presently on the wall because these were needed in case a piece had to be fixed or patched.

The trouble with this of course was that this usually meant that your book was ‘backed’ with wallpaper that was terribly out of fashion.

Indeed I’m wondering now if there were at least some teachers who spent their lunch breaks trying to imagine what the inside of the various students’ houses looked like on the basis of how their books were covered.

Perhaps they thought that every wall in your sitting room was still covered with that dodgy looking flowery wallpaper that made an appearance in the mid seventies.

This may also have been the reason that some people began to put brown paper on their childrens’ books. And, if they couldn’t afford the brown paper they just turned the wallpaper around leaving the blank side on the outside.

If you wanted to be really fancy you used that sticky plastic paper, (fablon I think we called it at the time) - sometimes stuff with wood patterns on it so it looked as if your book was covered with a cheap sheet of wood.

Well that is of course, if you could imagine a sheet of wood with bubbles in it.

But it’s all different these days - or so I thought until the open day when one of the students showed me the fancy interactive whiteboards all linked up to a laptop computer

“So, do you know how the whiteboard works,” I asked.

“It’s all worked off the laptop computer, you can write on it like an ordinary board, but you can play games and all too,” she said.

“And do you know how to work the laptop,” I asked further.

“Oh yes,” she replied, “I have my own – I just put a new wallpaper on it this morning…”

Okay, so maybe things haven’t changed that much after all…