Old Pond publishing days

Three new titles in stock at Old Pond including Juggernaut paperback and Fendt DVD

Old Pond Publishing now has three new titles in stock.

Juggernaut: trucking to Saudi Arabia is Robert Hutchison's acclaimed acount of his 1986 10,000-mile trip to Saudi Arabia and back with trucker Graham Davies. Now in paperback with previously unpublished photographs. Details and online ordering are here.

The Tractor Barn film-makers Stephen Richmond and Jonathan Whitlam have now filled a big gap with a new programme on Fendt tractors. Details and online ordering for their 110-minute DVD Fendt Tractors: a power on the land since 1928 are here.

Finally, we now have in stock the sixth instalment of Ax Men. See here for details and to order the 14-hour, 5-disk DVD set: Ax Men: the complete Season Six.

Cranes Etc praises the Hymac book

An informative YouTube appreciation of Jeremy Rowland's Hymac book has been made by the Cranes Etc website people is here.

Other details and secure online ordering for The Illustrated History of Hymac are here.

Old Pond - where the name originated

We are sometimes asked about the origin of the company name ‘Old Pond’ and its frog logo. It isn’t because we have a pond outside the building, even after all these days of rain.

The name comes from one of the most famous short poems by the Japanese writer Matsuo Bashō (1644-94): Furuike ya  kawazu tobimoku  mizu no oto.

In his springtime volume of Bashō’s collected haiku, R H Blyth put this into English:

The old pond
A frog jumps in, –
The sound of water!

The late Beat poet Allen Ginsberg had a livelier version: The old pond, a frog jumps in, Kerplunk!

Our frog logo was devised in 1998 by Liz Whatling, designer of nearly all our layouts and artwork on books and DVDs.

Below is ‘Hoji, Frog’, from Picture-Album by Celebrated Artists, vol 3 (1814) reproduced in David Cobb's book The British Museum Haiku (British Museum Press, 2002).

That’s it, spring is coming.
Sayonara