WELL, Mrs Balbir Singh’s recipes must be good.
A copy of her cook book has been returned to Paisley Central Library more than 50 years after it was due back.
The copy of Mrs Balbir Singh’s Indian Cookery was last week posted to the library anonymously, along with a £20 note and a letter apologising for its lateness.
It was borrowed in about 1968, although it is uncertain by whom because lending records from this time are no longer available.
The accompanying letter said: “Please accept my apologies for the late return of this book. Enclosed is a token payment in recognition of this oversight. Thank you.”
The £20 will be donated to charity as Renfrewshire Libraries is currently not imposing fines for the return of overdue books.
Linda Flynn, Paisley Central Library team supervisor, said: “I was more than a little surprised when I opened the padded envelope and saw what was inside.
“It was a lovely gesture from whoever found the book to take the time to send it back with a £20 note as a token gesture for it being so long overdue. We’ll make sure the money goes to a good cause.”
The book, which was published by Mills & Boon in 1965, will not return to the lending shelves because it is not in a good enough condition.
Marks on the pages suggest that someone followed the recipes and it has been “well used”.
Flynn added: “Since it’s become a talking point among library staff, we’ll keep it in a safe place.”
Mrs Balbir Singh was born in the Punjab in 1912 and became an internationally renowned chef, cookery teacher and cookbook author. Her Indian cookery book met with acclaim when the first edition was published in London in 1961 and went on to inspire future generations of chefs and home cooks.
It sold hundreds of thousands of copies worldwide and several editions with revisions and extra recipes were printed in subsequent years. Mrs Balbir Singh died in 1994.
The best bit of this story is that there’s an amnesty on overdue library books at the moment due to Covid. So I hope it’s safe to fess up. I have a book which was due back and Cumbernauld and Kilsyth District Library on December 16, 1985.
It’s a copy of Two Plays by Jean-Paul Sartre, published in 1946 by Hamish Hamilton. The plays in question are Les Mouches and Huis Close.
I’d like to pretend I’m very high brow and philosophical. But here’s confession number two: the main attraction of this book was that it is an English translation. Yes, this is a tale of two plays and two shames.
Don’t tell my French teacher, but we were studying Huis Clos at school and I reckoned it made perfect sense to save a bit of time and go straight to the English version. Why struggle with all that pesky vocabulary and those tricky tenses?
The flysheet of the book bears the cost of 10s 6d. A shoofty on Google finds it’s now going for 30 quid.
I promise I will return the book tout de suite, perhaps with a few francs enclosed.
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