Losing myself in a book.

Like many, I share the  secret superpower of being able to lose myself in a book, and books have invaded most rooms of our house; so, many places to hide. This is the utility room, behind me a freezer, washing machine and bread maker. But this is what I would rather be looking at. The three large prints each have their own story and each historic in their own way: the Beatles Poster offering free gifts to the first 300 girls just to see them, the two Papal documents dating from the mid C18th. 

The books, too, have their own history, which is the prime reason I could never get rid of them. The Encyclopaedia Britannica, I inherited from my father-in-law. Published in 1925 when the British Empire was still at its peak, each volume is full of outdated certainties. Then again, come the apocalypse, when the new ‘certainties’ of Wikipedia and the internet are down for the duration, 1925 may come into its own again.

 

It may be I never read these books again, but that’s not the point. I walk past them, tracing the memories, and regretting the books from my childhood lost over the years—in particular, an almost complete set of Biggles. 

As a boy, I developed an obsession with ‘The Saint’ and the smoke-filled London underworld the original books conjured up; approaching my teens, The Saint was replaced by James Bond. I remember cycling two miles in the pouring rain on a rumour that a particular newsagent on Rice Lane had Thunderball, the very latest James Bond.

Other rooms house classics,  the academic, and other more worthy tomes; the battered and well used pulp on these shelves: Fu Manchu, Shell Scott, Micky Spillane, Michael Moorcock et al represent the guilty pleasures of my youth, more valuable to me than any fossil found on Chesil Beach.