Two Heads Are Better Than ...

Last night, I read a wonderful collection of short stories by Canadian author, Barbara Gowdie.  We So Seldom Look on Love encompasses necrophilia, nymphomania, exhibitionism and voyeurism, auto-site parasites and a two-headed man - but not in a voyeuristic way. Yes, it is unusual to use two forms of voyeur twice in once sentence, but it had to be done. (For other paraphilias, click here.)

The Two-Headed Man (a story I shan't spoil for you by telling it - just read it) reminded me of the night The Banshee came crashing downstairs two hours after she'd gone to bed.
'I can't sleep,' she grumbled.
'Why?' asked her ever-solicitous ma, quickly stashing the Tanqueray under the sofa with an expert flick of the heel.
'I'm worrying about something.' She frowned.
'What is it, sweet child?' I adopted my un-frowning listening face.
'It's like this, like, if Siamese Twins - '
'Conjoined twins.'
'Yes, them, say, like, one of them murdered someone and was caught and was put in jail, does that infringe the human rights of the twin who hasn't, like, murdered anyone and shouldn't be in jail?'
'Ooh, it's a tricky one -' (Surreptitiously tries to nudge the Tanqueray back from under the sofa.)
'Because, like, the innocent twin hasn't committed a crime, has he? So why should he be in prison? But the murdering twin has committed a crime so it's not fair, like, if he is free, is it?'
'Erm -'
'Because the murderer should be in jail. And if there was capital punishment, he could be electrocuted which would proper kill the other twin which wouldn't be, like, fair, right?'
'Well -'
'I don't agree with capital punishment anyway, but say I did, right, and I was a Siam - sorry - conjoined twin then it would infringe my human rights to execute me when I hadn't done anything wrong, wouldn't it?'
'Yes, I mean, no. Er -'
'But it's not fair for a murderer to get away with a crime, like, just because he's attached to another person, is it?'
'Hmm -'
'And even if you made the murderer only serve half his sentence - that's if he wasn't executed - that still wouldn't be fair to the innocent twin, would it?
'Could I stop you for a moment, darling? You are infringing my basic human right to drink gin in peace when my children are in bed.'*

Disatisfied with her ma's poor show, The Banshee began a letter writing campaign to the great legal minds of the country. Mainly Marcel Berlins, it has to be said. Mr Berlins did not reply. I suspect he took out an injunction.

In the absence of any other great legal minds and because two heads are better than one, have you an answer to this conundrum?

* I would have said this. If I'd dared.

Great Hairy Ruins

I wish I could read dictionaries properly. Well, obviously I can read them; I just can't pronounce all the words. They have little symbols above letters which inform one - for example - whether the o is short or long (apparently). Only I can't read the symbols. It's some sort of code, I believe.

I went looking for an explanation and found this, which only made my head hurt.

Thesaurus is one of those words I never really know how to pronounce. Is it thes-aur-us as in tyrannosaurus? Or thes-aur-us as in - well, I can't think of an example.

(In my younger days, I once got into a terrible muddle with a clitoris. I thought the stress fell on the 'or' which isn't good when one is trying to give directions.)

I am thinking about dictionaries today because one of the Sunday papers ran an article on a new book based on A Classical Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue, published in 1785 by Captain Francis Grose. I cannot give you a link to the article as the paper thinks readers should pay for the privilege of being subjected to advertisements for Mercedes Benz motorcars, but I can give you the link to the text of the original book. Here! And don't blame me if you are lost for days wandering amongst totty-headed mopsies, sosse brangles, twiddle poops and fribbles ... Welcome, in fact, to Blowsabella's Pitstop.

By the way, I am hugely amused to read that Capn. Grose was ably assisted by one Hell-fire Dick, Esq. of Cambridge. Now, there's a name that lingers on the tongue.

Slang is a funny affair. Many of Cap'n Grose's words lollop from the mouth charmingly and yet their meanings are lost to us. Modern slang is not nearly so lovely. For example, Twitter is an online thingum - O, I don't know, look it up. Anyway, Twits are people who use Twitter. They tweet to each other. I tweet/you tweet/he/she/it tweets. Twits whose tweets are read by lots of other twits are called The Twitterati. Some of them are Twats - that's past tense, not gratuitous swearing.* And all of this appears (a.k.a. masquerading as News) in respectable broadsheets without a raised eyebrow. Even Cap'n Grose showed greater delicacy:

THINGSTABLE. Mr. Thingstable; Mr. Constable: a ludicrous affectation of delicacy in avoiding the pronunciation of the first syllable in the title of that officer, which in sound has some similarity to an indecent monosyllable.

Perhaps Mr Naughtie should refer to the Culture Secretary as Jeremy Thing?

Anthony Buckeridge knew that slang was ephemeral and invented his own for the boys at Linbury Court School. Ozard (meaning bad) is the opposite of wizard (meaning good). Anyone at all clumsy, irritating or slow on the uptake is a great hairy ruin - which I'm campaigning to bring back into general usage (with some difficulty, I might add).

My society, the Campaign for Usage of Non-standard Terms (abbreviated to T.H.I.N.G. for obvious reasons) will be launched in the New Year. In the meantime, please consider joining Save The Words.

O, and if anyone can tell me another name for thesaurus I'd be ever so grateful.

* And the band played Believe It If You Will.

Inking Aloud

Talking of tattoos, I once dated a journalist who, when he was a Cub Reporter, had the misfortune to be put on Magistrate Court duty for months on end. Only one case stuck in his mind: Watergate.

Sorry, that wasn't it at all and if it had been it would have been petty theft in the Watergate Shopping Centre. No, the one case which the then (short-lived) innamorata remembered involved a man charged with breaking the Obscene Publications Act. My (but not for very long) chap turned up with his notebook. The defendant was slumped in the dock, a woolly hat pulled low over his brow. It was a hot summer's day and the man looked in danger of overheating. The Magistrate listened to the evidence of the Police and mulled over the charges. Eventually he looked solemnly at the defendant.

"Well, Mr. Shearer*, it is clear to me that every time you take off your hat, you run the risk of arrest. Either keep your hat on or grow a fringe. I am imposing a fine of -".

And so on.

Mr. Shearer - who was from Newcastle, by the way - in a fit of - what? Anarchy? Idiocy? Naked aggression? - had been tattooed across his forehead. Capital letters in blue ink announced :

 **** OFF OR I'LL KILL YOU!

I've remembered this for reasons which will become clear. For one, I've just read a short story which toys with a tattoo. It's in Polly Samson's latest collection which I've put down somewhere and now can't find. Anyway, it's very good. Then, of course, there's Parker's Back by Flannery O'Connor which is funny yet utterly, utterly heartbreaking. The Background by Saki is cleverer than a clever thing should be. It might even be the genesis of another short: Skin by Roald Dahl. And there are more tattoos than you could shake a dagger-pierced rose at in John Irving's novel Until I Find You. The tattooists mentioned therein are real people, as I discovered when I read Taschen's 1000 Tattoos.

Anyway, I haven't got a tattoo. I wouldn't dare. My mother glared at my pierced ears for decades.

"If God had intended you to have holes in your ears, you'd have been born with holes in your ears."

After fifteen years she didn't even need to make this statement aloud. I could hear her thinking it.

She extends this logic to body art. "You'll never get buried in a Jewish Cemetery if you get a tattoo."

The fact that we're not actually Jewish would be more of a hindrance to burial in The Mount of Olives, I suspect, than a tasteful butterfly on my ankle ...

Last week, I was talking to a man in his mid-eighties. I asked him about the tattoo on his forearm. He'd had it done at the Seaman's Mission in The Dingle. He pointed at a smudged and faded name. "I was knockin' about with a tart called Vera," he said. "And then I married Dolly and it caused me no end of trouble."

This morning was spent revolting again. (The Cuts, dear, must I remind you?) I have an antipathy to being addressed as Brother or Sister (even by close relations) but Comrade was a moniker too far. It propelled me towards a short spree of capitalist consumerism - and an eyebrow wax.

Alana, a purple-haired beautician whom I'd never previously met but am now intimately acquainted with, showed me - and I must stress that I had not mentioned tattoos at all at this point despite your impression that I'm obsessed with the things - her bum. A crown with Grandma inked above it. She then suggested I had my eyebrows tattooed. I declined (in more ways than one). After witnessing Grandma, I'd have been left with an expression of permanent surprise.

*Not his real name

Two wrongs absolutely do make a right

This post will attempt to combine mathematics, grammar and naughty school boys in a seamless and educative fashion.

Here goes.

I once brought my mathematics teacher close to a nervous breakdown. (At least that's what he said to my mother at parents' evening.)

Mr Kilburn had spent weeks explaining the concept of negative numbers. In one particular lesson, I must have snorted loudly or made some other indication of disdain.

'What was that, Moptop?'
'Nothing, Mr. Kilburn, Sir.'
'Were you sniggering?''
'Not exactly, Sir. It was more of a sigh.'
'A sigh? Why?'
'Well, it's these negative numbers, Sir. I don't believe in 'em.'
'You don't believe in them?'
'No, Sir.'
'But, Moptop, if I gave you an apple and you ate it, you would have minus one apple.'
'No, Sir, I'd have an apple core.'

And so on. The battle over the existence of negative numbers ran three times a week for two years and goes a long way to explaining the Unclassified mark in my Maths 'O' Level.

Today, in a moment of rare joy and rapture, I stumbled across a copy of The Best of Jennings by Anthony Buckeridge. (I stumbled in all senses of the words as it was a pile 'em high, sell 'em low book shop - only the staff had Spoonerised this instruction.) I've been reading it tonight and am half way through Book One.

For most of my childhood, Jennings was my hero - along with Nigel Molesworth and William Brown. (Yes, I've always had a penchant for naughty boys.) In the local library, there was a row of Jennings' books which I worked my way through (1 - 23*) and then started from the beginning again. Tonight, I am beginning to understand that Jennings was clearly a very bad influence on an innocent and impressionable young mind.

Stop laughing.

Jennings has an answer for everything, using an admirable form of logic. For example: instructed to label his gym shoes he writes his name in one shoe and 'ditto' in the other. Half way through Chapter Six tonight, I realised that Jennings is the reason I argued with Mr. Kilburn. He is the reason I failed Maths 'O' Level. He is the reason my bank account likes negative numbers - which I still don't believe in.

I should sue that library.

It was odd that I couldn't bring myself to believe in something that wasn't there (not least because for several years I harboured ambitions to be a missionary). Odd, because I had very much taken to heart William Brown's assertion that 'Two negatives make a positive.' In one** of the Just William  stories, he asks his mother, Mrs Brown, whether he can have a party whilst she is away. 'No, William, you may not,' is the reply. William takes the double negative to mean that, yes, he can have a party - a technique I employed several times myself during my teens.

A double negative in English works thus: No, I do not agree becomes I certainly agree.

Therefore No, you may not have a party becomes Of course you can have a party. Please blow the dust off the Créme de Menthe and make a lethal punch that will bring most guests to their knees after three sips. Also, refilling the whiskey bottles with cold tea and the vodka  bottles with water is absolutely fine by me.

I recently applied the double negative rule to a double double entendre using the logic that one cancelled out the other.

It doesn't.

And neither does eating two apples result in minus two apples, but rather plus two apple cores.

Still, none of this is my fault as I was brainwashed as a child. That's mine, Jennings', William's and Nigel's story and we're sticking to it.

* Books 24 & 25 were written in 1991 & 1994 when I was going through my Virago Modern Classics phase.

** A Question of Grammer is in Just William (1922)

Other people who purchased this also purchased ...

This time last year I was going a bit banonkas in the Border's Closing Down Sale. Six new bookcases later, I decided not to buy any more books until I'd read all the books I had already.

Cue hollow laughter.

So now, with Christmas looming, what do all the newspapers publish?

Great, long, four-page spreads of the 'Best Books of 2010'. Now I realise there is 'you-scratch-my-back' collusion between authors, and some publishers' puffery, but still ... there are many interesting books that I really didn't know I was interested in until I read about them in the Books of the Year features. For example, the history of the finger. If you'd asked me which body part I'd most like to read about in an historical treatise, the finger is the last thing I'd have pointed at.

But now it is my finger that is doing the most damage. Time was when I'd read all these Books of the Year lists, think 'Ooh, I'd like to read that', take myself off to a bookshop some days later and stand there stupidly blank thinking 'What was the name of that book I wanted to buy?' (Please note, for the sake of keeping Broken Biro quiet, I do the same stupid, blank stare in libraries.) Now I think 'Ooh, I'd like to read that' and click, click, click I've bought it on Amazon. And it doesn't help that Amazon then helpfully suggests a whole shelf of other books I might enjoy.

Look, I had no no little trouble smuggling vast quantities of books into the house after the buying spree in Borders (at one point I took to tucking them into my socks) but when the postie leaves great big day-glo labels that proclaim 'YOUR HUGE PARCEL OF BOOKS TOO NUMEROUS TO LIST HERE ARE HIDDEN BEHIND YOUR GREEN BIN. OW! MY BACK HURTS. DOUBTLESS I'LL BE CRIPPLED FOR LIFE. THAT'S THE SEVENTEENTH PARCEL THIS WEEK' then it's not so easy to explain away.

Which books have made it onto your Christmas list? I'm asking because if they match any of mine, I can pretend I've bought them for you. Anyone pining  for the recent unexpurgated Mark Twain autobiography? (she asks hopefully).

That Was The Week That Was

It's been a funny old week. To summarise, I've learned

• to play indoor bowls (as in the game rather than impromptu musical instruments)
• that when bowling wearing an above-the-knee skirt, it is always wise to refuse to let elderly gentlemen stand behind one
• that beginning a conversation with "It wasn't me who threw the testicles and vagina into the conversational hat" will make one laugh like a drain for days
• that an-almost-certainly-deranged-man-masquerading-as-a-woman thinks that heaven is some sort of slimming club for those of a Catholic disposition (..."I also believe that Catholics will be weighed on different scales...")
• that if one loans a handkerchief to a strange man who is weeping during Toy Story 3, it is best not to ask for it back
• that beginning a  swish poetry event with a rendition of Poppy Tupper's limerick about Jeremy Hunt will not meet with universal approval 
• and that buying second-hand books in Oxfam is far more exciting than buying books from Amazon or Waterstones.

Today, I found a first edition book dated 1888 entitled Archie Macnab Edited by He Himself for less than a bobbins book by Harlan Coben in Asda. Inside is inked William Morgan Xmas 1888, but I also found a business card tucked inside the pages:

HAROLD KING

Correspondant en Chef pour la France

DU YORKSHIRE POST

Directeur Général Adjoint á vie

DE L'AGENCE REUTER (LONDRES)

Correspondant en France

DE BATON BROADCASTING LIMITED (TORONTO)

presents h8s (sic) compliments to Lord Boyle

and hopes he will enjoy the book.

Paris Nov. 1973         3, rue du Sentier, 75002 Paris

This is diverting on all sorts of levels, not least because the suggestion that the Yorkshire Post ever had an International Correspondent is - frankly - unbelievable.

When I lived in Yorkshire, there could have been a political coup at Westminster, an earthquake in Cornwall, and Prince Charles's secret life as a cross-dresser who molests animals revealed all on the same day and the Yorkshire Post headline would have been

PENSIONER JOSTLED AT CROSSING IN HORSFORTH

That aside, Archie and I are getting on great guns. We have rather a lot in common (not least the dreadful habit of procrastination):

Naething worth daein' is ever dune in a hurry, sae the Author sat doon, and walked aboot, chew'd his nails, thocht an' thocht, and repeated owre to himsel', o'fen and of'en - "Archie M'Nab, are you a man worthy o' this privledge, this honour, this high office? Hae you got the penitration, the intuitive insicht, and the delicacy required to perform this michty task? Hae you got the geenus that'll keep ye frae being rideeklus, when yet fankel'd up in the warp an' waft o' sic an intricate and complex fabrication as a woman is? Great writer and a' as ye are, hae you the courage to attack sic a kittley subject?"

If you think you may also have an affinity with Archie, click here. And if you've ever found anything interesting inside a book, please comment in the, erm, Comments.

Once Upon a Time

Today I was given a piece of very liberating advice by my good friend The Librarian. (Welcome to our country!) I was moaning, amongst other things, about a truly dreadful book that is taking me an age to read, that I dread picking up each night, and that provokes outbursts of temper several times per page. (Antisocial, as my best reading is done at night.)

The Librarian listened as I listed a catalogue of crimes against writing. "Hmm," she said, "stop reading it then."

What? Stop reading a book? Before I get to the end?

"Yes," she said. "Life's too short. And there are too many good books to bother with a bad book."

But what about the author? All the hours he put into writing such an - admittedly awful - book?

The Librarian shrugged and sipped on her peppermint and chilli tea.

I sat, stunned. Why hadn't I thought of this before?

Possibly because as Voltaire said, 'It is hard to free fools from the chains they revere.'

Anyway, this is what I've been putting up with for the past four nights (and I only managed to get to page 54):

A smile played on his lips, but he was not foolish enough to turn around, to expose himself to her devastating weapons. (No, not a gun, but her breasts, her hair and her long, slender legs.)

She threw a silk robe over her shoulders, partially covering the gorgeous figure that had made her the world's highest paid fashion model up until her early retirement four years ago at the tender age of twenty-three. (Dan Brown, eat your heart out.)

'Don't worry,' she said, opening her sparkling blue eyes with flecks of silvery gray. (I wondered why she needed silvery gray flecks to open her eyes. Had her lids gummed up?)

Their oral barrages never slackened. (What???)

Laura's hands trembled, her face and eyes harried  and swollen from the torment of the seemingly endless night she had just endured. (I know how she feels, just from the torment of reading this seemingly endless book.)

But the very worst thing about this book is that the author (Harlan Coben, stand up and be shamed) says in his introduction, after admitting that this is a reissue of a much older book: "...So this is, for better or worse (worse, Harlan, definitely worse), the exact book I wrote when I was in my early twenties ... I love this book. There is an energy and risk taking in Play Dead that I wonder if I still have."

No, there isn't. It is a dreadful book and you should have left it in a drawer with other juvenilia instead of foisting it on unsuspecting members of the public. You owe me £7.99, Harlan, and a huge bunch of flowers.

Whilst I'm on the subject of dreadful books, let me direct your attention to Close-Up by Esther Verhoef. It's published by Quercus, whom one would assume know a thing or two about crime novels, having had previous run-away success with the Steig Larsson trilogy.

It's not dreadful all the way though but I lost all patience with it on page 301. Here, (page 301!) the psychotic serial killer gets the protagonist's (a very silly woman called Margot) ex-boyfriend (John) to inject himself with an overdose of insulin. On page  330 (330!) Margot says Not many people knew John was a diabetic ...Only family and friends knew.

Indeed, the character of John was so discreet about his diabetes that it is not mentioned in 300 pages. And, as the psychotic serial killer was neither family nor a friend, and had met John a mere five minutes before murdering him - well, it's really quite a marvellous coincidence that he happened on a insulin overdose as the ideal manner in which to dispatch his victim.

At this point the only sound I can utter that will demonstrate my utter frustration is Pshaw! Are there any other books you would caution me to avoid? My literary constitution is much weakened and I now need a rest-cure.

For more crimes against writing click here

Best Before

When I was a mere chit of a girl, I jetted off to Switzerland to work as a ragazza alla pari (which was gainful employment; nothing at all like this). I planned to stay away for a year at least so consequently began to pack thirty minutes before I was due to leave for the airport.

The only book I took was a slimline edition of The Bero Cookbook. A classic, if I say so myself though I suspect if La Famiglia Lotti never again see ruff-puff pastry it will be too soon.

At the airport I suddenly realised that I'd have nothing to read on the plane, so I bought the fattest book I could see in John Menzies: The World According to Garp by John Irving.

It was an eye-opener. As an ex-Sunday school teacher, I had thought - for several years - that an orgasm was a collection of cells. (Yes, of course I know what one is now. It's food that's been grown without pesticide.)

I read and re-read The World According once a month whilst I was away, alternating it with a battered copy of The Mayor of Casterbridge (which had been left by a previous ragazza).

It's a miracle, all things considered, that I've turned out so well.

During the Borders Closing Down Sale (of which we can only speak in hushed tones as I am drip-feeding my purchases into the common areas of the house and saying with all honesty "What? This old thing? No, I've had it for ages.") I bought a fancy-pants edition of TWATG - gosh! what an unfortunate acronym - and I'm wondering how I managed to read it once, let alone fourteen times.

Do books have a read-by date? Have I missed my window for Jane Austen? Will I ever again enjoy The Women's Room? Shall Martial's Epigrams continue to comfort me in old age?

Have you delighted in a book, gone back to it years later and muttered a disappointed or exasperated  Pshaw!? And if so, which books have never passed their read by date? Similarly, which books would simply be wasted on the young and have a do not read until date? (Most of Chekhov, I suspect.)

The Mayor of Casterbridge pleading with a local Ponte Capriascan for Moptop's Ruff Puff Pastry recipe

Editor's Ammendments

In regard to 'Weight Loss the Easy Way' the following clarifications must be made:

(For ease of reference, anyone intending to follow this regime, shall be referred to as a 'Slimmer'. In this context, Slimmer is a noun and not a comparative.)

1. The Slimmer should not place War and Peace, The Bros. Karamazov and Anna Karenina on the scales, balance atop them, note the displayed digits, remove said texts, weigh him/herself again and delight in his/her sudden diminution. This is known as a Russian Manoeuvre and is considered a foul.

2. Ditto (as above) using Martin Chuzzlewit, Barnaby Rudge and The Old Curiosity Shop - a.k.a The Dickensian Dodge.

3. If you (The Slimmer) wish to dawdle as you are listening to your book of choice, then you (The Slimmer) must accept that weight loss will be comparatively slower. Books that encourage dawdling include Poetry. Please note that it is difficult to walk at a brisk, effective pace whilst admiring hosts of golden daffodils. Admiring hosts of golden daffodils is to be discouraged whilst following this regime.

4. Running or jogging whilst listening to Great Works of Literature is unseemly. Eleanor Dashwood, Fanny Price, Catherine Morland et al did not jog anywhere. Neither should you.

5. If you eat 814 Cadbury's Creme Eggs whilst following this regime, you will not lose any weight at all.

Weight Loss the Easy Way!

Every so often, some journalist will publish a list of the 100 greatest books ever written. I'll read it, cross off the books I have read and then sob quietly, dismayed by the massive gaps in my literary knowledge.

Every so often, some journalist - probably the same rascally scoundrel - will publish an article expounding how we're sitting on an obesity timebomb (I thought it was just an sprung spring in the sofa) and then to prove his point, will include a table of healthy and desirable weights. I'll read it, go to the bathroom, stand on the scales, get off the scales, cut my finger and toenails, get back on the scales, get off the scales, shave my legs, get back on the scales, balance on one leg, get off the scales, pee, get back on the scales and then sob - not so quietly this time.

Does this sound familiar?

No more tears. For I have discovered a way to kill two birds with one stone. (Not literally, for that would be cruel and unnecessary.)

Download audio books! (Unabridged.) Today, I downloaded Hard Times by the writer Charles Dickens onto - well, I promised not to bang on about that gadget, so we'll stick with I downloaded and end the sentence there.

And then I went for a walk. I got to my destination, forgot it was my destination and kept walking. And then I walked a bit more. (To be honest, I'd gone somewhat astray.) And then I found myself again, and walked all the way back. Three and a half hours I walked, and all the time smiling and intermittently bursting into laughter. "You never meet with quadrupeds going up and down walls; you must not have quadrupeds represented upon walls." Why, I wondered, have I never read Hard Times before?

I came home and, out of interest, calculated how much energy I had expended on that walk. I have long legs and a long stride and averaged a speed of 4mph which burns approximately 400 calories per hour. The first third of Hard Times had earned me 1400 cals. It takes a deficit of 3500 calories to burn 1lb of fat. Ergo Hard Times is equal to the value of 1.37lbs of fat or 28 Cadbury's Creme Eggs. (I used that illustration as I thought it might be useful for some people.)

As I am not a journalist, I am publishing a helpful table. See below:

Hard Times - 11 hrs 50 mins/4800 calories

Martin Chuzzlewit - 38 hrs 20 mins/15400 calories

The Count of Monte Cristo - 50 hrs 45 mins/20300 calories

The Old Curiosity Shop - 26 hrs/10400 calories

Tristram Shandy - 21 hrs 46 mins/8700 calories

Barnaby Rudge - 30 hrs/12000 calories

Dombey and Son - 41 hrs 18mins /16550 calories

The Wings of the Dove - 20 hrs 41 mins/8300 calories

Anna Karenina - 36 hrs 46 mins/ 14700 calories

The Brothers Karamazov - 36hrs 47 mins/ 14700 calories

War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy - 60 hrs 40 mins/ 24250 calories

My reading - or, rather, listening- list comes to a total of 139300 calories which equals just short of 40lbs of fat. (Or 814 Cadbury's Creme Eggs.) I will be well-read and so slender I shall have to avoid gratings and grids.

Of course, if you weigh 8 stone, you won't burn 400 calories per hour walking at 4mph. But if you weigh 8 stone you can bloody well stick to reading Anita Brookner.

With all of these calculations in mind, even the dullest of dullards must concede there is a clear correlation between the rise in popularity of slim volumes of literary fiction and The Obesity Time Bomb, no?

Lusts of the Flesh #6

After my intemperate book-buying spree(s) in the Borders Closing Down Sale, I not only had to assemble six new bookcases, but also had to sort through all my books and cull them. I'd rather club a baby seal over the head than cull my books.

After four hours, I had one book in the charity shop pile: The National Trust Handbook 2002. After five hours, I'd added another book: a very worthy vegetarian cookbook, all brown rice, beans and carminative qualities. Eventually I added a book about The Chinese Art of Conning Money Out of Gullible Westerners (The Joy of Feng Shui) and one on aromatherapy. Look, it was the '90s: everyone went through a hippy-dippy phase.

And then I had to lie down and mainline ginger and Sal Volatile.

I suppose I ought to make my point. Books are a Lust of the Flesh. The solid weight in the hand, the texture of paper (soft and loved as a worn leather glove or smooth, crisp and new), the font, the cover, the familiar publishing logos. The makers of Kindle and other e-readers would have us believe that books are obsolete, outdated, so very yesterday. Phooey! I bet the Kindle will go the way of the Beta Max video tape - anyone remember Beta Max? Anyone remember video tapes?

We buy pulp fiction along with our Utterly Butterly and Fray Bentos pies, and forget that books were once so very precious they were chained to the shelves of the Bodleian Library and no-one, not even the king, was permitted to borrow one.

King Charles I: I'd like to borrow a copy of La Chanson de Roland, please.
Librarian: Sorry, your Highness, but that will not be possible.
King Charles I: But I am the King!
Librarian: Yes, Sir, but that is a book.

I was taught to love books but also to treat them with respect; not to crack their spines, make dog ears and certainly not to write or draw in them. I remember the horror of being given my mother's original copy of When We Were Very Young and discovering that she'd coloured in the pen and ink illustrations. Wicked, wicked child.

Still, a colleague has written a book about Robert Louis Stevenson's reading habits - having tracked down his original library and studied the comments he'd scrawled in the margins of his books. And the Bodleian librarians not only know that Romeo and Juliet was the most popular of Shakespeare's plays, but that the divinity scholars read and re-read the balcony scene more than any other. The evidence is on the Quartos: all grubby finger marks, worn page corners and even an elbow print where one reader rested on the book and swooned.

I cannot bring myself to write in the margins of my books (the memories of beatings and coal cellars linger) and so any future reviewer of the Moptop Archive will think I had a mind as empty as a drunkard's purse.

I shall go to my maker (a small factory in Taiwan) with a head full of characters, plots, poems, plays, obscure literary conceits and the odd drug deal in Baltimore. Take my jewels! Take my furs! Take the Limoges porcelain! But leave me my books.

And All By Page 4!

I am going to be a terrible bore now, and bang on about an author I have just discovered - or rather, was introduced to: Mary Renault. I am reading a 1972 Book Club Edition of her novel, The Persian Boy. (50p in a charity shop). This picture (see below) is a hasty sketch of me entranced by this book.

Entranced? Yes, truly - although perhaps mesmerised in horror would be more accurate. So far we've had a paternal mutilation (nose and both ears sliced off), decapitation, a maternal suicide (complete with skull exploding as it hit the courtyard), the rape and murder of three pre-teen girls, the enslavement, 'gelding' and subsequent prostitution of a very young boy - and all by page 4. Erk. On Chesil Beach it is not ...

I expect it's all right, though, because it's historical and they're all foreign.

I've also been told (by the same grate fiend who gave me Mary Renault) to read the novels of Dorothy Dunnett. As encouragement, two plot threads were described to me, including one where the protagonist is forced to play a game of chess with live people. (Hmmm, where have I read that before, Ms Rowling?). One chess move will result in the death of a three year old boy. There are two small boys to choose from, both of whom may be the hero's small son. (Yes, I know this is a bit garbled, but I was in shock. Again, OCB it is not.)

The second 'great selling point' has the protagonist espying (it's also historical; a lot of espying went on in those days) the Love of His Life dozing serenely on a garden terrace by a fountain. He rushes to kiss her - and notices yellow straw poking from beneath her eyelids. She has been flayed and stuffed.

I came home and Goggled (that is not a spelling mistake, by the way). Yes, Goggled.

Dorothy Dunnett looks like my Demon Aunt - a fine woman - who has only ever stuffed anyone full of scones, fruitcake, Victoria Sponge, oatcakes and Malteser Biscuits.

But it's still stuffing, isn't it?

To extend this argument: does this mean that all les femmes d'un certaine age are plotting really terrible comeuppances? (Which may or may not involve stuffing.)

You might think I've jumped to this conclusion because of one photo of Dorothy Dunnett. Not so! Look at Mary Renault. (Click on the link as you have no idea just how tricky this insert image stuff is. It's gone wrong several times already.)

That's two of 'em for starters, and I've not even begun to mention my mother ...

I mean, I've been plotting terrible comeuppances for ages now ... So I was struck by a thought more shockingly dreadful than anything Dunnett and Renault could conjure - does this mean I, too, am of a certain age?

I pondered this for a good five minutes, but consoled myself with the thought that I am still too young to be referred to as sprightly*.

Right, onto page 5 ...

* Many thanks to Patrick Joseph who assured me of this fact.

Ex Libris

Woman: You're being very unreasonable.
Doctor: Go away.
Woman: I'll only stay for five minutes.
Doctor: I'm not talking to you.
Woman: Erm, you are.
Doctor: I'm not talking to you any more.
Woman: You just did.
Doctor: Stop being so childish!
Woman (SMUGLY): I'm not the one with a chain on my door.
BEAT.
Doctor: I know why you've come. I know exactly why you've come.
Woman: I've brought you a present. (BEAT). To say thank you.
Doctor: A present?
Woman: Open the door. Please.
Doctor: What sort of present?
Woman: A book. I've bought you a book.
Doctor: You've been back to Borders, haven't you? I knew it!
Woman: I needed cranberries. M&S was my last hope.
Doctor: M&S?
Woman: It's next door to Borders.
Doctor: Stop there. I can see where this is going.
Woman: I would slide it under the door but it's ever so thick. (BEAT). Worked out at less than a penny a page.
Doctor: Give me a backstory.
Woman: What?
Doctor: I am not accepting any gifts until I have a backstory.
Woman: Is this fair? Really?
Doctor: You used me.
Woman: Only a little bit.
Doctor: Backstory.
Woman: O, if I must ... You are a reformed Jehovah's Witness who studied astrophysics at Havard before a minor nervous breakdown persuaded you that analysis was more your thing.
Doctor: A believable backstory.
Woman: What's unbelievable about that?
Doctor: Astrophysics?
Woman (SIGH): All right, you worked in community mental health for twenty years before beginning a private practice. You have a flatulent labrador, a daughter at university, you're divorced -
Doctor: Divorced?
Woman: Yes, which given the way you carry on is hardly surprising, and you attend open mic poetry evenings.
Doctor: Poetry?
Woman: Disgruntled.
Doctor: What?
Woman: You're clearly disgruntled. I go to immense trouble to buy you a book I think you will like, create a backstory at the drop of a hat, and all you've done is pick fault.
Doctor: You bought a book that was cheap. Cheap and thick.
Woman: But only because it reminded me of you ... Damn. I tried so hard not to say that.
Doctor: I -

ROLL CREDITS

Doctor: You can't roll credits just to get the last word! (BEAT). This is so unfair.

Doctor, Doctor

Doctor: So this dream you mentioned in your phone call ...?
Woman: O, it was awful! A nightmare!
Doctor: Yes ...?
Woman: I dreamed that Borders Bookshop was closing down and all the books were 20p.
Doctor: I believe Borders is closing down ..?
Woman: Yes, but the books weren't 20p. Originally, it was 20% off the R.R.P. Hardly a bargain, though now the discount is 50%-70% off, it's much better.
Doctor: Let's focus on the dream. Why was it so dreadful?
Woman: I couldn't get there. Borders - it was horrific - I couldn't get there. I was stuck in a shopping mall in Scotland pushing Judy Garland round Tesco in a wheelchair. Piles of red peppers - mountains - and bloody Judy Garland kept leaping out of the wheelchair to squeeze them. People were tutting!
Doctor: Tutting?
Woman: Yes, because she clearly didn't need a wheelchair at all. She was malingering.
Doctor: Is there anything else you wish to say about this dream?
Woman: No.
Doctor: Let's move on to the other issue you mentioned.
Woman: Yes.
Doctor: The daily visits to Borders. How many is it now?
Woman (PENSIVE): Ummm ... Five? Yes, five.
Doctor: And you buy a book each time.
Woman: No.
Doctor: No?
Woman: No. (BEAT). I buy lots of books each time.
Doctor: I see you have a bag with you now.
Woman: Mmm ...
Doctor: We discussed you not going to Borders today, didn't we?
Woman: We did.
Doctor: And yet - ?
Woman: I didn't deliberately go to Borders. I went to B&Q for a thingy.
Doctor: A thingy?
Woman: A thi - O, they're difficult to describe.
Doctor: Did you get one?
Woman: No. (BEAT). The man in B&Q didn't know what I meant.
Doctor: So you went to Borders instead?
Woman(FIRMLY): Not deliberately.
Doctor: Not deliberately ...
BEAT
Woman (RUMMAGING IN CARRIER BAG): It might help if I told you what I'd bought?
Doctor: Would it?
Woman: Almost certainly. (BEAT). How the Light Gets In - M.J.Hyland, Collected Stories of Janice Galloway, How to Paint a Dead Man - Sarah Hall, The Magician - Somerset Maugham, The Law of Dreams - Peter Behrens, Resistance - Owen Sheers, Complete Short Stories of Robert Graves, Complete Shorter Fiction of Oscar Wilde, Big Mouth - Blanaid McKinney, The Collected Fiction of Neil Jordan and Something of Myself - Rudyard Kipling.
Doctor (SLOWLY): This isn't really a mini drama, is it?
Woman: No, I don't suppose it is.
Doctor: And I'm not really a character, am I? I'm just a thinly-veiled excuse for you to confess to buying a lot of books again - aren't I?
Woman (PACKING BOOKS AWAY AGAIN): I feel much better now, Doctor.
Doctor: Whereas I am left questioning the reason for existence in a post-Jungian panorama. (BEAT). Thanks.
Woman (HELPFULLY): There were still a lot of books left on the Psychology shelf ...

ROLL CREDITS

Alas, poor Borders Books...

I am not admitting how much I spent in the Borders Books Closing Down Sale but added to my to-read pile are:

Molesworth - Willans & Searle (Penguin)

Oscar's Books - Thomas Wright (Vintage)

Curfew and Other Stories - Sean O'Reilly (Faber)

Best International Crime - Maxim Jakubowski (Robinson)

The Ask and the Answer - Patrick Ness (Walker)

Smiley's People - John le Carré (Sceptre)

Letters of Ted Hughes - Christopher Reid (Faber)

The Vagrants - Yi Yun Li (Fourth Estate)

The Old Devils - Kingsley Amis (Vintage)

Wolf Hall - Hilary Mantel (Fourth Estate)

Cautionary Tales for Grown-ups - Chris Addison (Hodder)

The Collected Stories - Katherine Mansfield (Penguin)

Far North & Other Dark Tales - Sara Maitland (Maia)

Diary of a Madman & Selected Stories - Nikolay Gogol (Penguin)

Selected Tales - Edgar Allan Poe (Oxford Classics)

This Night's Foul Work - Fred Vargas (Vintage)

The Three Evangelists - Fred Vargas (Vintage)

Rosie Little's Cautionary Tales for Girls - Danielle Wood (Allen & Unwin)

Wish I was Here - Jackie Kay (Picador)

The Reader - Bernhard Schlink (W&N)

The World According to Garp - John Irving (W&N) - the latter two books being bound in thick cardboard with hand-marbled end papers; far too gorgeous to leave on the shelf

and - most thrillingly - Wyoming Tales by E. Annie Proulx; three beautifully bound hardback books in a dark blue slipcover, an edition I have coveted for almost a year.

"'Reality,' sa molesworth 2, 'is so unspeakably sordid it make me shudder.'"