"Supplies are limited"

are dread words.

Right now they apply to eggs in one supermarket chain because we have an outbreak of avian flu in a neighbouring state but it made me think again about other supplies here. This time I have been thinking not just about food but other things.

My thoughts have been not only "supplies are limited" but "supplies are not available". I resorted to buying a book on line the other day. It came from a small supplier in another country. There was no other way to get the book. Yes, I inquired at our local indie. No, I did not resort to Amazon.  Yes, it was expensive - and yes, I did need it. It arrived yesterday and had, remarkably, taken less time to get here than a similar size book would from another state. 

There is something wrong with all this. If I order a book from the local indie the process goes something like this. I go in on a Monday or Tuesday perhaps and ask about a book. They look it up on line. Available? Perhaps.  The price is likely to be....  I wince but agree because I need the book.

"We'll put the order in on Friday," they tell me. The order goes to a local supplier on that day. The local supplier informs the supplier in another state. They inform the very big international supplier who supply it to them who supply it to the local supplier who supply it to the indie who supply it to me. 

Now you can see why I do not do this for books I actually need quickly. I look on line and it can even be cheaper to pay postage while ensuring the author actually gets a few pence or cents as well. 

There are also books I have which cannot even be ordered by indies here, or even by the remaining big names. I have a Welsh "O level" grammar book (don't ask but I did need it at the time) that nobody here could supply. One of my knitting reference books comes from a Norwegian museum and nobody here could work out how to get it. I have three books from a small press in the United States that the local people said did not even exist. Once on the trail of something I need or really want I am a cat on the prowl of my prey and I do not give up easily. 

The latest book actually came from a university in the United States. It is a big university and their maths department is, I imagine, very large. The material I needed was not available on line. I resorted to the physical version of the book. The person I dealt with at the other end was very nice indeed. She even let me pay the required money into her Paypal account and then paid it to her workplace. (We had "met" on line some time ago. I had to trust her.) All this was rather fortunate.

I know I live in a rather "remote" part of the world but this is the 21stC and the isolation should be less rather than more. Yesterday someone was saying how limited yarn supplies are here in this state. It was good to be able to tell her that two brave men are going to try and sell yarn and garments made from it - and they are going to do it up in the hills behind me. I hope they can make it work. I have met them on several occasions and like them. What the rest of us need to do is support the venture to keep it going...or I will be on the prowl again.