Bookworm

I think you know you're maturing (like a fine cheddar cheese) when you find yourself buying random books. As a child books were always a token present, not unwanted, but not exciting; no batteries, no flashing lights, and other gizmos. Yet as you get older the reason your Dad gets nothing but books at Christmas becomes apparent.

Today, after wandering around shops in North London, I returned home to discover I'd bought four books, each as disparate as the one before, both new and second hand. Intrigued by each one, their covers, the titles, the hard sell on the back, I parted with hard earned cash (in the middle of a bloody recession!) to buy books; paper, words, ideas.

Book readers and the like are all very well and good, but it seems impossible that books will ever go out of fashion or even print; and perhaps magazines can be an addendum to this; although time will tell on that one.

In the pub last night (The Olde Cheshire Cheese) there was a bit of graffiti that read, 'the irony of life is that it's lived forward but understood backwards' (click above). If you think this is pretentious then the underneath scrawl of 'oh wow, thxs nob' made that point for you succiently, but I thought it was a nice bit of drunken wisedom to pass on that seemed to chime with the above thoughts.