BA

Hello, my name is Coffee and I am a bookaholic. This is obvious through the lengths to which I will go to ensure that I always have reading material littering every room in my house. I question my priorities all the time; for example, my washing machine has not functioned since April. I have lugged my clothes to the homes of various understanding friends, switching before they all got tired of me. Or the fridge that desperately needs painting or the shower, that is now a waterfall instead of a drip, requiring a plumber urgently so that Hound is not swept away when trying to drink out of the bucket artfully placed to catch the downfall. These are just a few examples of Things That Need To Get Done. What did I do?

Well, on Saturday the call was too strong to resist, whipping into Chris' bookshop, lurking around furtively pulling books off the shelf into a pile at my feet, dumping my bag on the ground next to the armchair in preparation for delving into the selected tomes. Fresh paper, uncracked spines, fingers drifting across the newness, all delicious, sinking further into that chair, reading backs, first pages, trying to decide. Agonising over who would go home with me. Would it be Camara Laye talking about his childhood in Africa; homage to my youth with PG Wodehouse, or maybe a little Native American tales with Louise Erdich. It was too much. I knew I was in trouble and yet couldn't get enough, didn't want to put anything back. Knowing, even as I held on that I could ill afford to splurge on these.

Oh the bills have been paid, my landlord has gotten his fix as has the car finance people. Between HiLo and sundry other merchants I'd been pretty much relieved of any extraneous cash that might have been left but still, there was a tiny margin on the credit card. Imagine how my hands were shaking having narrowed my selection to two with great difficulty and fled to the counter before I could change my mind. Think positive, it will go through, and then, low and behold, it did.

Okay, for what the two books cost I could probably not have done any of the things listed above but I could have at least made a start. But I just didn't care anymore. I couldn't wait to get home and hunker down in my bed, book in hand, to crack the virgin spine and devour the words on the page. It's true that I could have spent my weekend tackling the work that came home in the bag, but my books were much more pleasurable. And for the pleasure that they gave me they were well worth the cost. Again.